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.
Radical Islam is evil. There is no doubt about it, and the President has said so.
So the president is the final determining factor between what is "good" and what is "not good"? Good lord... you really DO believe he's God, don't you?
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.
We don't want to promote a religion. We just want to destroy the ones that are actively trying to destroy us.
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.
We're citizens. At least it's better than being a sycophant.
You are correct in that belief, but by his repeated references to Islam as "a religion of peace," that is exactly what Bush has done: promote Islam.
As Daniel Pipes points out in his new book, "Militant Islam Comes to America," "during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-81, the US government limited itself to "policy pronouncements on Iran. Islam was mentioned hardly if ever, in keeping with the time-honored and correct practice of US officials saying little about matters of faith....But the reticence ran deeper: as spokespersons for the U.S. government, a constitutionally secular institution, they knew not to articulate on the truth or falsehood of specific religions."
"When the "Real IRA" killed twenty-eight at a fair in Omagh, Ireland, the U.S. president did not seize the opportunity to ruminate on the true nature of Catholicism. Baruch Goldstein's murderous rampage in Hebron spurred no commentary on Judaism by the secretary of state. The Bharatiya Janata Party, with its Hindu nationalist outlook, prompted no high-level analyses of Hinduism on its coming to power in India."
"The same used to be the case with Islam."
"But this is simply not true any more. Islam, the most political of religions, now enjoys a privileged place in Washington, just as it does in every capital around the world...And since September 11, the president and his team have devoted intensive efforts to explaining what role Islam did and did not play in the recent tragedy."
Immediately after 9/11, you could make a case for these pronouncements, as an effort to prevent a backlash against Muslims in this country (although I believe that fear was planted in the administration by American Muslim groups, and not by any violent outbursts in the public at large). In the intervening months, the president's failure to drive home the truth that militant Islam is indeed an ideology bent on destroying the West, this administration's prolonged failure to acknowledge the complicity of Saudi Arabia in sponsoring terrorism, the government deferential attitude to radical American Muslim groups, and the president's continued apologies for Islam as a religion, have blurred the line that must be drawn in the sand if we are to halt the scourge that threatens to engulf the world in violence for decades to come.