From "Is America really going to do this?," by Melanie Phillips in The Spectator, October 24 (thanks to all who sent this in):
Obama assumes that Islamic terrorism is driven by despair, poverty, inflammatory US policy and the American presence on Muslim soil in the Persian Gulf. Thus he adopts the agenda of the Islamists themselves.
It's true: Obama adopts the jihadists' grievance-based analysis, which is based on the proposition that the anger toward the U.S. in the Islamic world stems from something the U.S. has done, not from imperatives within the Islamic world itself. This is not just a Leftist point of view: in this Obama has something in common with many on the Right, such as Dinesh D'Souza, who insists that the Left provoked 9/11 by making American pop culture so rotten that when it was exported it aroused the ire of straitlaced moralists like Osama bin Laden.
The problem with all of these analyses, whether from the Obamaite Left or the D'Souzaite Right, is that they completely ignore what underlies the shifting lists of grievances that the jihadists produce -- and that is the jihad and Islamic supremacist imperative to subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Islamic law. This imperative that is not based on anything those unbelievers have done or not done, but solely upon their status as unbelievers. This imperative is rooted in the Qur'an (9:29), the Hadith (Sahih Muslim 4294) and Islamic jurisprudence (all the orthodox schools of Islamic law accept the principle that it is a responsibility of the Islamic community to wage war against unbelievers until they convert or submit). The contents of the grievance lists will change, but this will remain constant.
Yet virtually no one in public life dares even to face the fact of its existence.
This is just more proof that the Democrats have no fresh ideas at all about how to run a foreign policy. Always the tired mantra of poverty and American support of Israel--as if OBL himself weren't a silver spoon baby and originally incensed by Kufr troops defending Arabia's Islamically sacred sand.
Sometimes, I'm tempted to agree with the D'Souza-ites about the rottenness of American pop culture, which I also find disgusting. Yet at base, our problem is that Islam always seems itching to find some cause against everyone else. Unhappily, we have nobody in the major parties in the USA who's willing to state the obvious about Islam.
Folks are assuming Obama is just ignorant of Islam is and the threat it represents and can be cured from a visit from Hugh or Spencer.
Such wishful thinking.
The problem is he doesn't care and he associates with people who hate this country and its people as much as Osama bin laden does.
As usual Melanie Phillips is a voice of wisdom in the Wilderness. She always writes poignant articles and never holds back, albeit still holding her ladylike manner.
The outcome of what happens in America is of great importance not only to Americans but to the free, democratic, liberty loving world. Here in the UK I have been following the election and although I can't say I like McCain, he's always get my vote in front of ant Democrat.
Obama, from the article has many 'rotten apples' around him and his anti American views are beyond me. How on earth the American people can vote for a man to rule the country who hates it, beggars belief.
Look what socialism has done to the UK fellow Americans, with Blair and his crew. Do you really want the same over there as what's happened here? Do you really want America to turn into a Caliphate, as is the way that Britain and Europe are heading? Voting in Obama, will certainly bring this to conclusion, or definitely get the balls rolling that's for sure.
Although I know that possibly 100% of those who post here are anti Obama and Democrats, these are still my views as someone from Britain, concerned for the overall stability of the West.
It's so important for us to emphasize in our discussions with others Robert's main point here, that the grievances keep changing depending on circumstance, but what remains constant is the hatred, the intolerance, and the violence.
OT, A quote from our soon-to-be first "post-racial" President, culled from the Hew York Times of all places:
"I'm not interested in the suburbs. The suburbs bore me."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/us/politics/28obama.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5090&en=bed3d00e987394c2&ex=1327640400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
"Obama assumes that Islamic terrorism is driven by despair, poverty, inflammatory US policy..."
I would like to see how Mr. Obama explains the fact that the airport bombers in Scotland were doctors. Paying for their University tuition will make them like us?
"straitlaced moralists like Osama bin Laden"
What other religion considers a mass murderer to be a moralist?
Richard the Lionheart,
The problem is: by voting for Obama we will be giving the world what it has been asking for. We are being asked to "show" that we are ready to join the world rather than fight it.
Once we elect McCain we will hear that America is too "militaristic", even from Britons.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Countries that worry about the fate of the US need to start helping the US. We are not omnipotent.
Barrie is just your average academic liar and Chicago demagogue.
He is a say anything do anything panderer who is no longer able to hide his true self as a Black Liberation Marxist.
These people are grounded in class warfare and hate and redistribution of wealth. But the only jobs in a Obaminator administration will be those of henchmen to coerce you out of your money.
Barrie has done whatever he can so far to hide this.
America's enemies will applaud to see America wounded with an Obamination presidency. ence the foreign support with both accolades and campaign contributions
Get out there and fight. Get out there and vote.America needes you now.
The fears Obama raises in this area are certainly not without reason, though he is not necessarily locked into his past advisers and misunderstandings, if he chooses to learn more. In the same way, while Biden's remark just after the 9/11/2001 attacks that aid should be sent to Iran, just to show that our American hearts were in the right place, and there were no hard feelings, is surpassingly idiotic, but perhaps some think Biden, too, can learn a bit more, think a bit more, and show a little more comprehension of Islam than, as head of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he has so far managed to.
Obama has given hints that he would favor a grand Reaching Out To Muslims, as if the entire non-Muslim world had not been bending over backwards not to offend Muslims, not to study Islam, not to take offense at example after example of the large-scale mistreatment of non-Muslims -- of every kind -- all over the Muslim-ruled lands, for the past several decades, and especially in the last several years.
In his possible reluctance to recognize what is inculcated by Islam, and his belief that, for example, if we only bring "prosperity" and Good Government to Muslims, when the lack of prosperity is due not to lack of capital within the Umma but rather to inshallah-fatalism, and the lack of Good Government, the penchant for despotism, largely the result of a political theory rooted in Islam, whereby political legitimacy is located not in the will expressed, however incompletely or imperfectly, by the people, but by whether or not the Ruler is a Muslim or not, and how closely he adheres to the rules of Islam.
The dreamy belief that we, Infidels, can help cure what ails Muslims, when what ails them will recur, constantly, because it comes out of Islam itself, is shared by many of those in the Obama camp and by the remaining loyalists to Bush and his floundering, and squandering, attempts to deal with the incompletely-recognized threat that Islam and the doctrine of Jihad poses, permanently, to all non-Muslims whatever they do or do not do. For the Jihad is merely the struggle to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam, and it goes on forever.
In failing to learn, or taking far too long to learn, this lesson, those who wish to transplant "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" in the Muslim world, or who wish to bring "prosperity" by spending tens or hundreds of billions of Infidel dollars, without doing the obvious -- asking the Saudis and other rich Arabs to share their wealth with fellow members of the Umma as they are supposed to -- the American government is more likely to seek a false but seemingly painless, for it, solution of throwing others to the wolves, and the main Other in this case is Israel, which may be asked to surrender even more of its legitimate claims, based on history (the terms of the Mandate), law (the continuing viability of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, the laws that govern the dispensation of territory acquired in wars of self-defense), and moral claims (including the claims of "distributive justice" that the Rawlsian Obama appears to favor, for tiny Israel exists on 1/1000th of the lands possessed by the Arab people, who everywhere deny to non-Arabs and non-Muslims even the barest autonomy, while they demand, as part of their salami strategy, that Israel yield up even what little remains of it in Western Palestine, a yielding sure to whet, not sate, Arab appetites, and feed Muslim triumphalism everywhere.
The failures and lack of understanding, and lack of imagination, of our own policymakers are to be paid for, some rightly fear, in the coin of other peoples' rights and security and legitimate claims, rooted in history, morality, and public international law. In this respect, the outgoing administration of Bush, and the one that replaces it, if the latter merely continues the Bush policy of refusing to come to grips with the texts, tenets, and historical record of Islam, will be very much alike. And Infidels everywhere will pay.
Neither McCain nor Obama understands Islam but McCain's not as gooey as Obama is about socio-economic causes and so-called Western arrogance being at the root of Islamic radicalism. McCain also understands far better than Obama that the only really good radical Muslim is a dead radical Muslim.
To some extent, American policy does inflame terrorism. It is our policy to support Israel's right to exist. It is our policy to support democracy and human rights organizations around the world. It is our policy to defend ourselves and our allies from terrorists and hostile enemies. It is our policy to promote religious freedom. It is our policy to allow private enterprises to exchange goods and services with eachother even though they are not halal.
If those policies piss off the Muslim world, well then that's their problem. We should not compromise morally just policies if they upset fanatic barbarians.
PMK,
Trust me, that part of the World that wants Obama does not include me. I can see through the charade and it's exceptionally easy to see.
Of course your damned if you do and damned if you don't but then, Americans should be voting for the overall well-being of America and not any other country. When in Rome as they say.
I'm worried about the American election because I know that a vote for Obama would mean utter chaos for America and would play right into the hands of Islam and Islamisation.
We can't help America PMK, we have a big enough problem here in the UK and Europe trying to stop Islamisation from happening. All America has to do is make sure that it stays strong. For goodness sake PMK, America is watching Europe and can see the Islamisation of it. This in itself is good enough reason NOT TO vote for Obama.
However, we will all find out next month whether or not America wants Islamisation or not.
Muslims are inflamed merely by the presence of infidels who don't submit to them.
Just think back to the Muslim slavers of Jefferson's and Washington's day who raided the European coastal villages and shipping lines for slaves and loot.
Europe did nothing to them and this was Islam's response - attacks.
Jimmy is dead on...we are indeed hated for our policies and, in most cases, that hatred should be seen as a badge of honor (though it rarely is).
I also agree with Wellington, that while both candidates are witless about Islam, Obama is much more predisposed to the multicultural paradigm, which is the principle vehicle for Islamic penetration of America. Furthermore, he seems much more willing to sacrifice principles such as political and economic freedom in the service of his vision for "social justice."
But that's not the worst of it.
Mark my words folks, and remember you heard it here first - after gutting talk radio through the re-adoption of the 'Fairness Doctrine', Obama will set his sights on the net as the last great bastion of alternative opinion. The means of disposal are ready-made...and conveniently, not even his idea; in the name of multilateralism, he will "reluctantly" acquiesce to the demands of the so-called international community to turn over control of the internet to the UN.
The UN will assure us it will regulate the net sparingly, that there will be little difference between now and then. But in fact, new guidelines will be quickly drawn up and before long, the internet will begin to resemble our universities, where the most vile invective hurled at America and Israel will be protected as "free speech"...but critical scrutiny of Islam will be outlawed as "hate speech".
No one will be arrested, so the outcry will be muted. They'll simply pull the plug on one web-site after another. And that will be that.
To echo Cornelius, the Fairness Doctrine, various types of speech restrictions and similar rot will come with an Obama Administration and a Democratically controlled Congress. The only thing standing in the way of this (because the Democrats in any case will control both the House and Senate) will be if McCain is elected instead of The Messiah. Frankly, I'm getting a little tired of folks who don't see this, and other things like judicial appointments and the proper response to Islamic terrorism, and keep maintaining that McCain is really no better than Obama. Rubbish. McCain is indeed less than savory but he's not a Far Left type. Obama is. It's a choice between having an average President who will disappoint us several times or a disastrous one who will transform America into something many of us can only shudder at when contemplating the possibilities.
I agree with Cornelius and Wellington. The more I look into this, the more I see Obama's associations with Marxists, jihadists, and anti-Americans. These associations are meaningful, not just bad luck on his part.
There is a difference between suffering from a leader who does not understand and suffering from a smooth-talking leader who understands but has an anti-American agenda.
We have been able to get through with bad leadership in the past, but we have never elected a leader who would like to see the end of free enterprise and American ability to stand against those who would curb our individual freedoms of speech, religion, and assembly.
Things are different now than when we survived Watergate. Watergate was a small conspiracy by a few people. The Courts were not compromised. Congress was independent. The press was independent, and fiercely interested in the potential abuses of power. These things are no longer true, plus we have the crisis in the economy which causes everyone to wish to hand over a blank check to the executive branch.
If we have a huge crisis during the four years of an Obama administration, in which appeasement is represented to us as being the only option to, for example, an attack with weapons of mass destruction, Obama might take the appeasement route not as a matter of grudging necessity, but because he agrees with those who he is appeasing, and is happy for the opportunity.
If I were a Manchurian candidate, I would get my people into positions of power, limit the press and free speech as much as possible, and then help to manufacture a crisis in which the answer would be to accept a dhimmi status for the US and its citizens in return for promises of security.
The problem might be understated by Melanie Phillips. The problem may be way more serious than that.
We need to at least consider the possibility that Obama is not merely misunderstanding the problem, but in fact is a Manchurian candidate who intends to use his office to advance the jihadist agenda. Granted, we should not just assume such a motivation, but we need to at least consider it, and what would happen if a Manchurian candidate was ever elected. We do ourselves no favor by automatically rejecting such a possibility out of hand on the grounds that it is insane or unthinkable.
Most people reject the possibility that Obama is a Manchurian candidate without looking long and hard at the evidence. They reject the possibility in a fraction of a second, accusing anyone raising even the possibility as being either a racist, or crazy.
The effort of digging out and interpreting a complicated web of circumstantial evidence evidence is daunting and the mainstream media are not doing that work for us. So, nearly everyone will discount the possibility of a smooth-talking candidate with overtly anti-American or pro-jihadist goals is on the verge of getting elected and ending our democratic system.
People who are unconcerned reason:
1) it has never happened before;
2) it can’t happen here;
3) any such thought process is just plain crazy, so why take the time and effort to even explore the possibility;
4) if such a possibility existed, surely there must be someone somewhere in the government or the media who would uncover it and stop it;
5) what could a Manchurian candidate do even if elected? After all, would he not the abuse of his powers be checked and prevented by the media, the Congress, the Courts, the state and local governments, and the military?
But, the argument that the executive power could be checked does not work so well.
First, you need to remember that the media is no longer the independent lion that it was during the Watergate crisis. Some of this may be the result of many years of a balance of payments problem which has placed money into the pockets of many who are looking for a good place to invest. There are no laws preventing foreign interests from acquiring ownership interests in the news media, even though there should be when you consider the potential problems arising if jihadists figure out that one way to fulfill their obligation of jihad would be to acquire interests in the media and use that influence as a means to shape public opinion on Islam generally, and in regard to elections in particular. Perhaps that could affect what is covered and not covered. Anyway, a lot of what a Manchurian president could do at first would be to simply speed up the process of strengthening an nation-wide grass roots organization that is already well-started. From there, he could carefully place sympathizers in government, even worse than we already have. It is one thing to have naive people running State, etc, and another to have persons with overtly jihadist loyalties, waiting for the moment to spring.
Wellington, Karl, folks...
Some poignant observations from the great Mark Steyn...
"I agree with Thomas Sowell that an Obama-Pelosi supermajority will mark what he calls "a point of no return."
"It would NOT be, as some naysayers scoff, "Jimmy Carter's second term," but something far more transformative. The new president would front the fourth great wave of liberal annexation – the first being FDR's New Deal, the second LBJ's Great Society, and the third the incremental but remorseless cultural advance when Reagan conservatives began winning victories at the ballot box and liberals turned their attention to the other levers of the society, from grade school up."
From post above: Jimmy is dead on...we are indeed hated for our policies...
Possibly, but can anyone say just which policy it was that pushed Islam over the edge into jihad, and terrorism?
If it's policy, which one was the straw that broke the camels back?
I think someone is fooling someone.
Jihad started in 600 something and has never actually stopped.
Policies are just excuses to fight for Allah's cause(s). We already know what those are...
Obama represents an unholy alliance between the far left, represented by his good friend and neighbor Bill Ayers, and the jihadists, represented by his other good friend and neighbor, Rashid Khalidi. The Marxists and the jihadists are not natural allies, and the jihadists will likely have the last laugh at the expense of the Marxists, if they succeed in taking over together.
But look at and google the associations:
Obama and Percy Sutton and Khalid al-Mansour and his Saudi financial backer.
Obama and Tony Rezco.
Obama and Bill Ayers and Rashid Khalidi.
Obama and Rev. Wright and Louis Farrakhan and Nation of Islam and Libyan dictator Khaddafi.
Obama and Raila Odinga and the August 29, 2007 secret Memorandum of Understanding in the Kenya elections.
Obama and the D.S.A. and the New Party.
Obama and ACORN and election fraud
Obama and foreign campaign fund contributions from Islamic sources
The list could go on.
Within one year of an Obama presidency, the people who elected him will be howling for his impeachment...
For all the reasons stated in the above article and comments...
PS - Folks, I didn't just conjure the idea that the UN is trying to take over the net, there was a very real attempt in 2005 (just google "internet, UN, control").
Fortunately, Pres. Bush stubbornly refused to relinquish control.
There will be a new UN attempted takeover in the first years of the Obama campaign. But this particular President will be eager to see it happen, because it will relieve him of a media that he can't control, a media where his most ardent opponents are embedded.
Obama and the UN share the very same liberal, pacifist, multicultural agenda; UN control of the internet will be far more comforting and useful to Barak Obama than its continued existence as a free media.
Get the word out: If you want to save internet freedom, elect McCain.
Duh Swami,
You're arguing into the mirror. I'm on your side. Islam has a 1400 years history of hatred form, and subjugation of infidels.
America is hated because we are an impediment to Jihadist aspirations. The hatred means we're doing something right.
Duh Swami,
You're arguing into the mirror. I'm on your side.
I wasn't arguing, and I know what side you are on...And I stopped looking in mirrors after the first time...I was commenting only...
Maybe I should brush up on my Nixon impersonation,
and make myself perfectly clear...or at least clearer... :)
Sorry Swami, my mistake...but watch those mirrors, they'll get you every time!
PS - 'I am not a crook!'...
...or better yet,...'you won't have Cornelius to kick around any more.'
That anyone could deny that Obama is a Manchurian Candidate is beyond me. All the shady associations, all the legitimate neo-Nazi associations that he's not even hiding, the police-state tactics in Illinois and Minnesota, the Freedom of Choice Act, all point to one thing: totalitarianism. And actually, I see little difference between Islam and Marxism. Islam is about sharing the spoils of war and giving the biggest cut to the totalitarian leader. They argue that women should not work because sex slaves have no place in society and that if no man is around to own them outright then the state will support them. Plus Marxism is also a milieu-control cult with no freedom of conscience or inquiry. So Marxism isn't that far removed from Islam. They're both totalitarian, regressive, genocidal (Marxism kills off the 'class enemy'), parasitic ideologies that can never be self-sustaining and once they have already parasitized their invented enemies they cannibalize. Jamie Glazov and Abul Kasem have had a couple of interviews about the similiarites between the two ideologies. Nazism was socialist and it differed very little from Islam.
And let's not forget that there is absolutely zero theology in Islam, one of the many reasons why Islam is not a religion. It IS essentially atheist, or it's as 'theological' as Nazism. God exists but has no role in human affairs, is in no way anthromorphized, has no personality or humanity, and can never have a relationship of any sort with humans. It's Hitler's God. Allah is an alibi for Perv Mo and a lame way of legitimating his claim that 'Arabs are the best of people.' Perv Mo wasn't even careful in the Koran to keep 1st- and 3rd-person perspectives straight. He didn't even try to hide the fact that Allah was his invention.
In any event, Obama's completely disingenuous when he says that poverty is the cause of terrorism. He studied in an Indonesian madrassa for four years. He signed that document with Odinga. He understands Sharia and jihad in and out. He's waging the most ingenius sort of stealth jihad ever. He hates AMerica for the same reason everyone hates America: because we're awesome and because we got that way through honest, hard work and our success highlights the failures of, well, failures as countries. Italy supports Israel and requires that Muslims do so, but people don't hate them like they do us. And Obama hates honest, hard work. He hates legitimate success. He also hates the underclass, as do all Leftists. That's why he wants to screw them too. He did this as a community organizer by diverting funds that could have improved public schools to programs that essentially work for communism and stealth jihad. He loves socialism, and it's socialism that's caused today's modern underclass. It's high taxes and regulations that keep minority upstarts down and keep the Ol' Boy Network in place. It's the socialist monopoly on schools that keeps poor blacks in perpetually underfunded ghetto schools and keeps them out of good schools. It's the Democrats who were against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 80% of Republicans for voted for it. And that's Obama's party.
And of course, he wants to DOUBLE the amount of money we give to nations that, to quote McCain, "don't like us very much," who we should be starving into both decency and recognition of the fact that Islam is the reason why they are failures. Somehow I know he's not talking about Guatemala, Nepal, and Rwanda.