If this were a game of football, your side would have already lost because of your refusal to think offensively on the basis that your cheerleaders are hotter than the other team's.
Those who want to hear the President ranting about the defects of Islam (evident to anyone with an IQ above turnip stage) are going to be waiting a long time. It is not his style nor in his nature; in the same way he campaigns by dwelling on the positive instead of going into a full-frontal attack on the democrats.
Well, you'll most likely never understand what I'm about to say, because to a Bushie's mindset it's only about something so petty as "keeping the Democrats out of power", but I'll give you the opportunity all the same...
Islam is not a religion. It is a power-mad collective based in self-nihilism that seeks to impose that same nihilism upon every form of life on this earth. To a Muslim, you are either one with him or you are outside of him... and thus must be made to conform. The very word "Islam" means "submission" and that's what Islam does best: if one does not submit willingly, then he will be made to submit by force.
It's all too easy for a Muslim to blow himself up inside a crowded pizza parlor, or to kill thousands by driving an airplane into the side of a building: they have no individuality to call their own. It can't be said that they really exist of their own free will. They live in submission, and they will die for sake of submission. And they do not acknowledge the value of your soul or any other's soul, because they have consciously disavowed themselves of the sanctity of their own souls.
Islam is the same thing that communism was during the Cold War, but far worse. Communism was imposed upon people who otherwise would not have wished it to be. Islam is something that a person is given a free and clear choice to embrace. He can choose against it - and perhaps be met with the alternatives of death or slavery - but his free will in the eyes of God would be intact. Or, he can choose to submit to another god, Allah, who is merely the old god of this earth with another name. He can choose the way to escape temporal pain, but in truth he is choosing against his own accountability before God by embracing the centralized collective of power, to the detriment of all others.
That, dear lady, is evil. And it's the same evil that we fought against in Nazism, and in "emperor-worship" of Imperial Japan. Those were "religions" that we readily made war against. How is it, then, that Islam must be treated any different? And yes, Nazism was a religious system as much as a political one. We crushed it. But that's nothing compared to what we did with Japan: we crushed it spiritually, so that never again could whole squadrons of kamikaze crash themselves... we did it for them as much as we did it for ourselves. We did Japan a favor in smashing their old religion after World War II... just as we would do the entire world a favor by calling Islam for what it is: an evil engine of destruction.
Islam is a cancer upon civilization. If America has been wounded by it, she - and her leaders - have none to blame but herself if she refuses to have the tumor excised.
Besides, there are plenty of people to carry on the war against the PC culture, and it is not the President's job to do this when there are so many more weighty things on his plate.
"I can't fight communism... there's more important things I have to do": things Ronald Regan would never have said.
Political correctness is in the same leage of evil as is Islam, Nazism, and every form of socialism. If Bush won't call it for what it is, he's morally blind, value-neutral or plain bloody wimpy.
When I first read that I pictured a bunch of Borg saying you will be assimiliated...
I agree with you and Miss Marple. I think the President was trying to avoid two things... Jethro and Bubba in a pickup truck shooting every "muslim" they found. And the argument digenerating into a PC fight over multi-culturism on September 12th. Both instances would have derailed the war on terror in a heart beat.
But more importantly, this facade that Islam is a religion of peace has to be done away with before the American people will realize that this clash of civilization is to the death. That our enemy can't be characterized as the guy behaving badly. Those towers coming down was the first of many attacks if we do not fight back--with everything we have - now - until Islam voids the field in defeat and doesn't even think of attacking us again.
If one thinks Islam can live peacefully with other religions and other cultures haven't been paying attention. They have never done so in their history. They are not doing it now. We have seen just the beginning of their mode of fighting... They are Islam... and they are evil.
Radical Islam is evil. There is no doubt about it, and the President has said so. Regular Islam is just plain wrong, but it is NOT the President's job to missionize the Middle East. In fact, I believe government promoting a religion is prohibited by the Constitution.
As I said before, if you don't like the President's style and strategy, you are just going to have to learn to live with it. Just because you, or Mark Steyn, or any one of a hundred other gripers isn't pleased with his mmanner of addressing this issue does not mean he is going to change.
AND, just because you make denigrating comments to me does not mean I am going to change my position either. Simplistic and belligerent as usual, you fail to address the fact that not all Muslims are the same, that we wish to get them to turn from the temptation of the radicals, and that in the large scheme of things and the context of this war the direction that you wish the President to take would be highly destructive. It may come to the point that we fight all of Islam. I pray this doesn't happen, because we are outnumbered significantly, and in a context such as that would gain few allies. Are you willing to throw the Turks over the side because they are Islamic? How about the Indonesians? Pakistan? Ready to abandon Afghanistan because they are Muslim?
I want all those countries on OUR side, and I want the radicals discredited. Only when there is a chance of secularizing those countries and removing Sharia law is there a chance for those countries to open up to the west and change.
So, no, Reagan wouldn't have abandoned his fight against Communism; on the other hand, he was cordial to Gorbachev and didn't call him names, but worked with him as much as he could.