Posted on 12/04/2002 11:21:44 PM PST by Kaiwen
Edited on 12/05/2002 2:18:12 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
PARIS A part of the neoconservative intelligentsia in Washington is trying to turn the Bush administration's "war against terrorism" into a war against Muslim civilization and the Islamic religion.
Such influential figures as Eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Kenneth Adelman of the Defense Department advisory policy board, a former Reagan administration official, criticize President George W. Bush for his efforts to assure Muslims that his war is against terrorism, not against their religion.
Just doesn't happen.
I don't see that he did that at all. For instance with respect to this:
"The Bush critics say Islam itself is America's enemy because Islamic religion and civilization are intolerant, hostile to Western values, proselytizing, expansionist and violent.
Note that the author, whatever he may privately think, never argued that this perception was necessarily wrong. Instead he confined his argument to the claim that targeting the culture as such is wrong. He further allowed that targeting instead the individuals, institutions and political entities that immediately manifest or promote such qualities (intolerance, hatred & violence) is legitimate, or at least that it is a different matter not suffering from the same illegitimacy as targeting the whole civilization or culture and (imlicitly) all its members. (It is not clear which of the two views the author actually holds.)
And who is turning them that way? It seems like the author is inconclusive, but brings up a good issue. We did not start this and Islam is well known to be in the business of telling others what their business should be. Women and children are used in Islam for Jihad, regularly. There is no sanctuary in Islam, all muslims have a duty to fight.
Bull, moderate muslims, like the good Germans of WWII, are not fighting back. They are passive at best. Just look at Algeria where the GIA kills people just like that and people let them do it.
Carthage must be destroyed, I mean Islam must be destroyed.
I disagree with the author too: who would be making the situation potentialy even more dangerous here? Us? We're just warning people that we have a job to do and we doubt Islam is compatible with that, because Islam has not sided with the US and Israel on the punishment of key terrorist acts.
WE cannot even do our jobs for goodness sakes while they are free to build mosques all over the country!!!
Someone saying we started it and that Islam is peace and containst moderates is dead freaking wrong.
ANd making sure the treaties' words are kept. How many time did Islam grow by breaking treaties, it is in their books and their methods. Islam is not a religion of G_d, it is a god self-privileging religion. It is Orwellian in its iconoclasm inherently. Enough said.
America-bashing is anti-Americanism at its most radical and totalizing. Its goal is not to advise, but to condemn; not to fix, but to destroy. It repudiates every thought of reform in any normal sense; it sees no difference between American liberals and American conservatives; it views every American action, both present and past, as an act of deliberate oppression and systemic exploitation. It is not that America went wrong here or there; it is that it is wrong root and branch. The conviction at the heart of those who engage in it is really quite simple: that America is an unmitigated evil, an irredeemable enormity.
Here's an excellent article that well-uses that exact argument. I post it a lot when people defend "the good, peaceful, friendly Muslims":
Of course, the great majority of Muslims are peaceful -- so what?
What is my thinking concerning Islam? I don't have a problem with it. I have a problem with people that commit specific acts. If they don't do anything, then leave them alone. There is no such thing as thought crime, or religion crime.
The whole idea that 'Islam' is inherently anything is ridiculous--that includes peaceful, warlike, whatever. There is no monolithic Islam. There are Wahhabis, Salafi, Sufis, Shi'as, Ismailis, etc...
If specific groups target innocent people, they should be delt with the way our president is dealing with them. This rhetoric that 'Islam is the enemy' is stupid and counter-productive. Attacking Islam will hurt our relations with those allies we need to win the war on terrorism, as well as hurt any Muslim voices who try to speak out against extremism.
Or read their section on extremism, or their press releases.
This group has been warning the world about Wahhabism and bin Laden since long before 9/11.
Slainte,
CC
Islam is a religion founded on violence and deception! Terrorism is the equivalent of a sacrament of Islam.
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