On Monday in Michigan, Obama became exercised when talking about the need to give even suspected terrorists legal rights.
“We may think this is Mohammed the terrorist,” he said at a campaign rally, but “it might be Mohammed the cab driver. You might think it’s Barack the bomb thrower. But it might be Barack the guy running for president.–
Continuing, he got more heated, his voice booming. Referring to the Constitution, he said: “Don’t mock the Constitution! Don’t make fun of it! Don’t suggest that it’s un-American to abide by what the founding fathers set up! It’s worked pretty well for 200 years!!”
He finished with a sigh: “These people.” — from the LA Times blog
Of course “Mohammed the terrorist” might not be the same as “Mohammed the cab driver” — though he might indeed be the same, come to think of it. Otherwise “Mohammed the cab driver” might offer “Mohammed the terrorist” financial, political, and moral support. There is no one way to participate in Jihad. You do not have to participate in violent acts yourself. You can support those who do.
And clearly, a great many Muslims are doing exactly that — supporting those who participate in violent Jihad. They do so by defending and protecting and making excuses for them, by giving them financial or moral support, by showing up in courtrooms or to picket trials, and helping to use the liberties of our system (the ones that our Constitution guarantees and of which Barack Obama claims he is so fond) in order to undo, in the end, those very guarantees of those individual rights — and to put, in their place, something modeled on the Shari’a, or the Shari’a itself.
And, of course, “Mohammad the terrorist” or “Barack the Bomber” are not the only people to worry about it. Such a list overlooks so many others. There is “Mohammad” the campaigner for Da’wa, “Mohammad” the builder of mosques and madrasas, “Fahd” the Saudi who spends tens of billions on propaganda for Saudi Arabia and obviously for the Islam on which Saudi Arabia rests (and also, by the way, to prevent any intelligent energy policy from being put in place). There is “Fuad,” who smilingly defends the Egyptian government from its failure to protect the Copts from inhuman mistreatment. There is “Nuri” — a recent arrival, an apparent “refugee,” though it is entirely unclear exactly what he is a refugee from, as either a Sunni Muslim or a Shi’a Muslim for whom vast swathes of Iraq are open and welcoming. Or is just that he’d like to be in America, and we are ready to accommodate his desires?
There is “Mahnaz,” the very sweet and plausible Pakistani lady who comes to your children’s elementary school, with a pretty prayer rug and pictures of families (family values!) sitting down to their Iftar dinners in Pakistan, in Indonesia, in Syria, in Morocco. See, children? Islam is so diverse! Islam is so unmonolithic! She passes around pictures of mosques in Islamabad, and Jakarta, and Istanbul, and Jerusalem and Rome and London and Washington (diverse! unmonolithic!).
The delighted children get to touch the prayer rug and listen in rapt attention to a tape of a muezzin calling the Faithful to prayer (a sound that Barack Obama said he found so hauntingly beautiful, but non-Muslims awakened by such a sound at an ungodly hour may beg to differ). Then, if the teacher permits (“May I?” asks the Pakistani lady, sweetly, as she has been carefully instructed), the kids even get to lisp the shehada. After that they go home, proud and excited about the nice lady and their first memorable encounter with Islam — an encounter with all kinds of possible after-effects, later on, when that first impression is so sweet, so innocuous, and they so very young and deeply impressionable.
No, there’s much more to the Jihad than the caricature provided — about “Mohammad the Terrorist” and “Barack the Bomber” — by that man who knows so little of Islam. He knows so little of what is in the Qur’an, the Hadith, the Sira, but dangerously thinks he knows all kinds of things about it, because he too, from the ages of 6 to 10, was just like those impressionable children, but with just a little more southern exposure to it. Still, it was hardly enough, it is clear, to give him the sense that perhaps there was something there he needed to find out more about. And had he found out more, he might have based his opposition to the war in Iraq on the only grounds that make sense — that is, the grounds presented by me here. The only “victory” in Iraq that makes sense is an end-result that leads to a weakening of the Camp of Islam and Jihad. That result can be achieved not through Americans staying, but by means of Americans withdrawing.
That, which is an argument that cannot be refuted and so is simply ignored by the Bush loyalists, is one that Barack Obama cannot make. He cannot make it because he, you see, cannot bring himself to talk about, or even recognize, the need to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam and Jihad. Nor can he bring himself to talk about the other instruments of Jihad, such as the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da’wa, and demographic conquest (as in Western Europe). And why can’t Barack Obama do this? Because he, Barack Obama, has a sentimental attachment to Islam. He, Barack Obama, cannot see what is wrong and dangerous, civilizationally dangerous, about Islam. He, Barack Obama, though he has never written a single law article in his life, thinks of himself as the Constitution’s True Defender — with his ill-concealed self-preening about his “passion” for the Constitution of the country that he “loves so dearly.” But he gives no sign of remembering Mr. Justice Jackson’s “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” Nor, I’m afraid, has he seen fit to explain why and how the Constitution “of the country that I love so dearly” is flatly contradicted, in letter and spirit, by the Shari’a.
For that alone, his world-view, and his grasp of things, should raise eyebrows, and arouse skepticism about his touted intellectual gifts, which so far seem to have been confined to a gift of the gab, an ability to slither out of tight spots (those twenty years out far and in deep with Rev. Wright, for example), and an o’erweening arrogance that, given his actual intellectual abilities, puts one in mind of the line in “Lolita” about the little girl “wearing a halter with little to halt.”