I thought this had been done some time ago, but in any case this "larger effort...to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education" reflects Obama's core assumption that the jihad against the United States is our fault, and can be quelled by our overtures of good will to the Islamic world. This is based on the further assumption that there is no Islamic imperative to jihad against unbelievers simply because they are unbelievers. Unfortunately, however, there is, and so Obama's exercise in willful blindness and obfuscation is as doomed to failure as was Bush's and all the rest.
"Obama Bans Islam, Jihad From National Security Strategy Document," from AP, April 7:
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century."
The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the document still was being written, and the White House would not discuss it. But rewriting the strategy document will be the latest example of Obama putting his stamp on U.S. foreign policy, like his promises to dismantle nuclear weapons and limit the situations in which they can be used.
The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.
That shift away from terrorism has been building for a year, since Obama went to Cairo, Egypt, and promised a "new beginning" in the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. The White House believes the previous administration based that relationship entirely on fighting terror and winning the war of ideas.
"You take a country where the overwhelming majority are not going to become terrorists, and you go in and say, 'We're building you a hospital so you don't become terrorists.' That doesn't make much sense," said National Security Council staffer Pradeep Ramamurthy.
Ramamurthy runs the administration's Global Engagement Directorate, a four-person National Security Council team that Obama launched last May with little fanfare and a vague mission to use diplomacy and outreach "in pursuit of a host of national security objectives."...
Remember that the Obama regime always tries to mesmerize the viewer. So, never forget to watch the left hand while the right hand seeks the viewer's attention.
Islam and terrorism are inseparable. Islam is such an evil, loathsome and irrational cult that it could not maintain itself, let alone spread, without terrorism, intimidation and the ever-present threat of violence.
....just another attempt to hide the truth about Islam from the populace....an attempt to ease the path to a victory for Islamic terrorists..
Hear no evil
See no evil
Speak no evil
.................
And they accused Bush of ignoring facts?! Yeesh.
Obama is deceit.
Obama is obfuscation.
One can just hear Hogan's Heroes' Sgt. Schultz saying...
"I see NOTHING...I hear NOTHING...I know NOTHING..."
... to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.
Those with long memories will be reminded of Lyndon B. Johnson's offer to the North Vietnamese, in April 1965, for an $1 billion development program along the Mekong River as a an enticement to a peace deal. Johnson figured "... old Ho [Chi Minh] can't turn me down." The following day, Ho told LBJ to go shit in his hat.
The rest, as they lugubriously say, is history.
This is not only a problem in the United States. It is a problem all over the Western world. How are the people of Western Europe to understand their own reality if they cannot speak truthfully, and openly, about the ideology of Islam? If they have noticed -- and they have at long last noticed -- that Muslim immigrants are particularly aggressive, demanding, hostile, and un-integrable, save always for a small, discrete minority of people who arrive as Muslims but become integrable only to the precise extent that they cease to take Islam to heart, or even, in the best cases, as a result of the mental freedom and physical security that the West offers them, become estranged permanently from Islam (for who knows better what Islam is all about, than Wafa Sultan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Magdi Allam, and all the other outstanding and brilliant apostates who offer us their articulate testimonies?), should the peoples of Western Europe not allow themselves to employ the only vocabulary that allows them to discuss this matter? And when they realize, as many of them now do, that this is a problem not in one, or two, or a half-dozen, countries in Western Europe, but in all of the them, without exception, and perhaps most noticeably so in the two countries that have elevated Tolerance to the level of State Religions (i.e., Denmark and the Netherlands), are to be rendered mute through a policy that fills the collective heart of the O.I.C. with satisfaction and deep pleasure?
If they realize that these Muslim immigrants pose a permanent problem that no group of non-Muslim immigrants poses, should they be reduced to whispers, their permitted lexicon lacking in such words as "Jihad" and "dhimmi" and "Jizyah" and even, it seems, of "Islam" itself, which is always and everywhere, if applied to the case, to be modifed fore and aft, with such meretricious verbal tricks as "Islamism" and "Islamists" or sleight of word, as with "violent extremists who have kidnapped -- in the alternative, hijacked -- "a great religion."
If Israelis wish to begin to grasp their own reality, and to comprehend why "peace-processes" and treaties mean nothing, but are merely part of one unending Treaty of Al Hudaibiyya being used to whittle away at the state of Israel, in order to push it back into conditions of maximum peril and hopeless vulnerability, they will need to use, and to hear others use, such words as "Islam" and "Jihad" and "dhimmi." If the Hindus, Sikhs, and other non-Muslims of India are to grasp the permanent threat to them, one not assuaged by a possible surrender of Kashmir, but that goes on, unassuageable, forever, they will need to use such words as "Jihad" and "dhimmi" and "Dar al-Islam." If the Thais, or the Russians, or the Filipinos, wish to understand what it is that they are dealing with, they must -- they cannot but -- use the words that exist to properly explain this reality. The Christians of the southern Sudan, and the Christians of southern Nigeria, have used such words as "Jihad" before. They understand, perhaps better than those in the West, what Islam is all about because in black Africa, the Arabs, and those whom they have islamized and arabized, have been able to treat the black African non-Muslims as roughly, as murderously, as they wish, and have had no need to engage in the kind of stuff -- Interfaith-Healing, Outreach Nights at the Mosque, taqiyya masters such as Tariq Ramadan spreading their smiling word in order to charm or confuse the unwary and the ill-prepared, and to keep up this mountebank's patter at such a pace that no one, speaking quietly, logically, with attention to the evidence, can get in a word, or if he can get in a word, can truly, by those unwary and those ignorant Infidels, over the steady tariq-ramadanian hum, be properly heard.
Perhaps those who make policy and construct policies for dealing with with a reality that they refuse to learn adequately about, and in so refusing, hobble themselves from thinking sensibly, and at times imaginatively, about what makes the most sense, what would weaken the Camp of Islam, and thus the threat to all non-Muslims from Islam and its adherents, and prefer to throw money at the problem, and men, and materiel. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, before we are through, will have cost well over three trillion dollars. Think of what that could have done, as far as this country goes. We fight over a few hundred million here and there, we fight about health care and social security, and we keep avoiding, in some collective mental paralysis, connecting these budgetary woes with the sums being spent -- futilely, and quite unnescessarily, in the lands of Muslims, in order to bring them (for how long? forever?) prosperity, to bribe them into (most temporarily) being "our friends" (that is, not becoming or giving harbot to those "violent extremists" who, we tell ourselves, are a discrete, isolated group, when in fact any Muslim who now, or in the future, for whatever reason, chooses to take Islam fully to heart, can become one of those "violent extremists" and, long before that, Muslims have shown, in thought, word, and deed, that they do take Islam sufficiently seriously to attempt to press its case everywhere, to change our legal and political institutions, and our social arrangements, to interfere with our academic teaching and thinking about Islam, to interfere with our freedom of speech, and our ideas of what can or cannot be spoken and written, and do this unapologetically, with violence or the threat of violence, and what's more, conduct, unhindered, vast campaigns of Da'wa targetted at the most vulnerable, and also the potentially most dangerous, kinds of people -- the psychically and economically marginal -- who, in converting to Islam, add to the security threat to all the non-Muslims among whom those former fellow citizens, now changed utterly, become a threat to us and the political institutions of this country, and the physical security of its citizens.
Because of the ignorance of Islam at the top, we have instead locked ourselves into a Tar Baby policy that requires the expenditure of vast sums on places that cannot, because of Islam, ever embrace advanced Western democracy, that cannot -- because of Islam -- ever be our true allies, or ever be counted on to help suppress the forces of violent Islam (save, however, that they will do what they can to divert the fury of those who are working against their own regimes to take their fight to the Infidels outside,as the Saudi government's "re-education" efforts of Al-Qaeda supporters consists not in ending their Muslim fanaticism, which the Al-Saud share or promote, but in re-directing their murderous fury away from the Al-Saud themselves to the Western Infidels who deserve whatever those local fanatics wish to inflict on them,, and please leave us, the nice Al-Saud, alone).
Never before has such sustained stupidity, in the face of a decade of what should have led to some obvious conslusions, been exhibited by the Western world. Even with Hitler and the Nazis, there was only six years from his resisistible rise, in 1933, to the outbreak of war in 1939, when suddenly "everyone" appeared to have "known all along" what Churchill and a few others, and only they, had known. We have had perfectly good information -- for those who do not put their trust in the New York Times but go on-line -- about the Jihad, in its violent manifestations, and in those that employ non-violent means -- for nearly a decade. We have had the vain efforts in Iraq, and the vain effort now in Afghanistan, where the actual goals are never clearly stated, because to even attempt to do that would expose the whole enterprise to the quizzical looks, and the criticism, even the mockery, the assumptions upon which it rests deserve.
Eventualy reality will break in. But when? At what considerable unnecesary future cost? Perhaps there are those in the Obama Administration who have never read "Politics and the English Language" by Orwelll, though it is now a staple in freshman composition courses. Perhaps they are unaware of how Hitler, and Stalin, re-fashioned the lexicon, or how such words as, for example, "People's Democracy" came to describe the most despotic of regimes.
The Obama Administration does not strike me as full of people terribly interested in,or impressed by, faith -- in the way that George Bush, a born-again Christian, was so impressed with what religion had done for him, that he simply couldn't believe that something -- Islam -- called a "religion" could be other than good.
So what is it that prevents the Obama Administration from learning about, analyzing, studying the history of, Islam and Islamic conquest, as it would, presumably, anything else? What makes it so fearful, in the councils and corridors of power, of people speaking truthfuly about such matters, or at least asymptotically coming close to that truth, and are now apparently being deliberately told they cannot use the very lexicon they most need, and now most lack?
The self-inflicted intellectual wounds here will have, do already have, fantastic consequences -- not good ones for us, but very good for the Camp of Islam -- in the world we like to call "real."But the Obama Administration is engaged in the political construction of a reality that does not exist, and is leading itself, and those whom it presumes to instruct and protect, astray.
It is not jihad! It is a powerful inner struggle to become a better muslim by killing as many infidels as you can!
- Abdullah Bhullah, the wacky mullah.
Obama and his adminitration are a Democratic Party Trojan Horse to further IslamicProgressiveLiberal agenda.
If you don't believe me, look what he has done so far and I quote fellow JW reader George who summarized it properly in another post:
Can you even believe any of this? "Muslim Outreach." "Man-Caused Disasters." Socialized medicine. Sealed personal records.
The Cairo speech. Curtsying to muslim tyrants.
"Amnesty." Turning away from Israel. The "Rev" Jeremiah Wright. Pro-muslim advisers. Billions to barbaric Pakistan. Tacit approval of Iranian nukes. Civilian trials & Miranda-Rights for muslim war criminals. And on and on...
This has to be one of the lowest points in our history. It just HAS to get better. Doesn't it??
NO George it won't get better until we mobilize and throw every Koran inspired Obama ass kissing demoncrat out of office this coming election and replace him/her with a conservative, we are doomed !
WAKE UP AMERICA, YOUR COUNTRY IS ON FIRE !
If this doesn't merit a mental competency evaluation of Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Sortero, nothing will. Dr. Wafa Sultan could size him up pretty quickly.
http://www.aish.com/ci/s/88998187.html
From Hugh's post -
"Never before has such sustained stupidity, in the face of a decade of what should have led to some obvious conslusions, been exhibited by the Western world. Even with Hitler and the Nazis, there was only six years from his resisistible rise, in 1933, to the outbreak of war in 1939, when suddenly "everyone" appeared to have "known all along" what Churchill and a few others, and only they, had known. We have had perfectly good information -- for those who do not put their trust in the New York Times but go on-line -- about the Jihad, in its violent manifestations, and in those that employ non-violent means -- for nearly a decade."
We have, to counter the bleatings of our liberal elites, the historical record. The history of Islam is simply a history of Jihad, with the periodic intervals of the "peace" of an Islam too weak to wage jihad. As long as there are Muslims and the Qur'an, we face a lifetime of struggle to retain our liberty. There can be no compromise with our self-appointed slave masters.
Let's recall what one of Buraq Hussein's administrations's most, important, esteemed and listened-to members said her job was... Yep, I'm talking about that jihadist-breeding mobile tent that goes by the name of Dalia "sharia-equals-gender-justice" Mogahed:
"My job is to tell Buraq Hussein what it is that mahoundians want."
Do mahoundians want the filthy kufr to know about jihad?
Do mahoundians want the filthy kufr to connect the dots between Mein Qurampf, terrorism and what mahoundianism does to any society it gets in contact with (which is just about the same thing as locusts do to any fields)?
Do mahoundians want to see preparedness against jihad from the militarily-, technologically- and intellectually-superior filthy kufr?
Whatever it is that mobile-tent Mogahed's been telling Buraq Hussein, he sure has been listening.
The oath of office specifically directs Obama to enhance national security and our nation's interests. O's ban of this specific terminology applies only to those groups whose use of said terms enhance national security, essentially breaching his oath.
Any such ban should be applied universally or directly to the parties most likely to use the terms against America, Americans and this nation's interests.
Witness this political/cultural pendulum swing to opposing extremes as it descends towards bloody contact.
There is another interpretation of BHO's machinations pointing to much that is positive.
As his attempts at free-shot Dawa increase and strengthen, the more people he will convert to TROP.
There will be a critical mass achieved.
At that point, the USA, a TROP-run enterprise, will engage in TROP-ical activities.
These will include such time-honored endeavors as conquering others, slavery, jizya, taking spoils.
(Another benefit will be reinstatement of the USA's "leadership" role/honor/respect in the world.)
Each has the potential to directly or indirectly increase the coffers of the TROPified USA.
Obviously, an intent is to generate revenue to pay for this administration's programs.
Viewed in this blinding light of political brilliance, it is sad to see so many in opposition to BHO's extraordinary financial, and other, management skills.
Robert Spencer,
It is become increasingly clear that Jihad Watch is going to become the target of those who would silence free speech.
Stand strong. You are a light in the dark, a voice in the silence.
Keep on with the "struggle" (sorry I couldn't resist.) we are with you, and will not stop.
Stand tall people, our libertys are under attack.
Hugh's piece stirred some questions that have been developing since I recently heard RS talk about offensive jihad and defensive jihad (at FSU), but before inquiring in a separate comment I want to briefly comment on Papa Whiskey's contribution above. He wrote:
"Those with long memories will be reminded of Lyndon B. Johnson's offer to the North Vietnamese, in April 1965, for an $1 billion development program along the Mekong River as a an enticement to a peace deal. Johnson figured "... old Ho [Chi Minh] can't turn me down." The following day, Ho told LBJ to go shit in his hat.
The rest, as they lugubriously say, is history."
There can be no analogy between the Vietnam war and Islamic jihad and Papa does the fight against Islam a disservice to draw one.
What made Vietnam history tearful was the unjustified and bellicose American intervention in Vietnam's resolution of its war with France. The combatants had entered into a peace agreement hammered out in Geneva in 1954 that established a temporary dividing line between pro-communist north and pro-west south and which provided for national elections for leadership of a united Vietnam in 1956. The USA intervened to break the accord and cancel the election, an election that Dwight Eisenhower said would have been won by Ho Chi Minh by a 95% popular vote. The US in cahoots with the small anti-communist party installed Ngo Diem as President of a supposedly independent So Vietnam contrary to the terms of the Geneva agreemnt between France and the Vietnamese. This was the same Ngo Diem that piloted and dropped bombs from French fighter planes in his countrymen's war with France. He was soon thereafter assassinated. Not much surprise there and things never stopped going downhill from that point. The obscene damage and killing the US did in Vietnam was lugubrious in deed.
I don't know if LBJ really did offer money to build a bridge, but if he did, it was no doubt conditioned on the maintenance of a puppet regime in Vietnam. The trajedy and horrible US mistake in Vietnam still has a lingering effect on this country and its people. For shame.
If there is any analogy to be drawn between then and now it might be the rotten choices the US makes in its establishment of puppet government presidents, Witness the latest antics of Pres Karzai.
PfL,
I totally agree with you about outing the ass-kissing libs this November! I want to think that'll make it better--but will it?
Is there anyone out there, even on the conservative side of the spectrum who, as a candidate, will speak OPENLY & HONESTLY about the islamic threat? I mean, without the usual watered-down PC disclaimers, like, "Islam has been 'hijacked' by extremists," or "Most muslims are benign 'moderates,' it's just this tiny minority of terrorists..."
I will NOT vote for ANYONE who mouths the above politically-correct platitudes. God, I am so SICK of hearing this eyewash. But I predict that they ALL will! (or they'll be branded as racists, bigots, right-wing extremists, and hence, unelectable)
The problem is that we've not yet arrived at that point where the truth about islam can be TOLD and ACCEPTED without the purveyor committing political suicide. As a society, WE CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! (a little Jack Nicholson there) I keep asking myself what it'll take? And I'm damned if I know...
PfL, I'm sure you're right. Let's get as many ass-kissing Dhimmis out-of there as we can in November, that's a start. Let's hope we can replace them with people who WON'T be just a new crop of ass-kissng Dhimmis!
I heard RS speak about offensive jihad and defensive jihad on the tapes from the FSU lecture. I was intrigued by RS's statement that there can be no offensive jihad until a caliph is established (there is none). All jihad is now defensive. Of course, that term has a very broad definition so that it becomes almost synonymous with offensive jihad or, at least, the distinction is blurred.
What I need clarification on is whether jihad can be reined in (or even totally curtailed) if it really can be limited in a way that is truly defensive, to wit, that there are no grounds/argument/basis for Muslims to committ violent acts in the name of their religion?
Where can I learn about the distinction betwen ofensive jihad and defensive jihad, how they are practiced, and whether there is a theoretical basis upon which to hope for an end to the religiously motivated violence perpetrated by Muslims throughout the world.
darmanad --
You wuite missed my point. The analogy I drew was not between the two wars but between the reactions of two determined opponents bent on nothing less than victory. The North Vietnamese leadership didn't give two hoots for a grandiose riverine development project; it wanted a unified Vietnam under its communist heel. Nor does Islam's leadership, from Ihsanoglu right down to your local mosque's imam, give two hoots for "health care and science [and] business startups and education"; it wants the entire world under its sharia heel.
Another nail in the coffin. Barry is a clown. Most independents realize this now. As Bush dragged down the republicans in '08 (sad but true) so shall barry sink the democrats/progressives in '10 and '12. The Dem's can run but they can't hide from the long shadow that the One casts from the pedestal they built for him. Change can't come to soon for me.
Roger that, Papa Whiskey,
LBJ was a big Texas wheeler-dealer who was accustomed to buying and selling people as daily business; he had no idea with whom he was dealing! "We'll just throw 'em a hydroelectric plant & a ride in Air Force One (with them fancy matchbooks) and they'll see it our way!" Nothing like letting the enemy know you're clueless!
Now, enter LBJ's political descendant Obama;
not a blustering deal-maker, but apparently a pie-in-the-sky, self-deluded, multicultural idealist. And he's trying the SAME GAME! If anyone thinks muslims care about, "healthcare and science and business startups and education," just look at their countries! Like the North Vietnamese, they couldn't care less! The North Viets wanted hegemony in their country and we got in their way. Islam wants wants WORLD hegemony and we're in their way.
Nothing like letting the enemy know you're clueless...
Golf Sierra
"Obama's Jihad on Jihad"
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/08/obamas-jihad-on-jihad/
From across the pond, I'm watching this with much interest
A similar request here from UK's Gordon Brown about 5/6 months ago led fairly quickly to a documentary on the jihad culture. So East London mosque was the subject of something of an expose - complete with footage of anti-West hate speech as you might guess - and the programme's ending was telling, with footage of no muslim wanting to discuss or define jihad, as if they were all instucted to keep schtum.
The public perception of the mosque and islam was pretty much as it was before Brown's ignored decree.
Nobody liked Islam that much before it, and people still talk about jihad.
I see your point, Papa Whiskey!!! Thanks.
What is the first and foremost goal of Islamic leaders everywhere? Is it peace, freedom, progress, prosperity, happiness or is it Islamic supremacy? Where they already have and also where as yet they do not have it? What do the followers of Islamic leaders want and choose? And especially when a cross-roads opens and they can choose 2 loyalties; 1. to country, democracy, progress & prosperity or 2. to Islam and its supremacy, what will they choose, in vast majority?
And why won't PC-MC-people not allow us to at least consider the worst-case-possibilities about Islam, its leaders and followers? So as to implement good defensive counter-measures, and actually good offensive counter-measures in favor of Democracy in Islamic countries too?
If governments were making sure the essential measures for defending and enhancing democracy were in place, THEN we can afford to be nice and supporting to Muslims, and give them some slack etc, in return for occurring good behavior of them, but not now, not without thorough Islam-investigation, monitoring and with total trust in Muslims without so much as asking them about their first aims and loyalties.
Please see http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/islamic-scholars-criticize-ancient-fatwa-calling-for-jihad.html for RS's report on the Marden, Turkey conference of Islamic scholars who reinterpreted in a positive way the Islamic call to arms and about which RS said:
"This is very positive and important, depending on what they mean. "Tolerance and peaceful co-existence" could refer to the arrangement of dhimmitude under Sharia, which Muslims often refer to as a tolerant system that makes for peace, or to Muslims and non-Muslims living together as equals under a non-Sharia government. This needs clarification."
I, for one, hope to see follow up and further clarification from RS, Hugh and others.
Ho Chi Minh was to Vietnam what George Washington or Thomas Jefferson were to the 13 colonies. Of course, he was bent on victory and justifiably so. He was bent on victory over the agent orange, bomb dropping invader of his country, an invader who sought to impose its will on the Vietnamese despite the fact that 95% of the population supported Ho Chi Minh and opposed the USA. It is laughingly absurd to assert that Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnam leadership did not want to do what was in the best interests of their countrymen. They were patriots.
Are you really saying that because HCM rejected the offer of a public works funded by the USA which, no doubt, was conditioned upon acceptance of a separate puppet state in the south, it demonstrates that he did not want what was in the best interests of his countrymen? Talk about sustained stupidity!
p.s. I don't dispute the negative elements of Islam, but I also believe that its leaders want good health care, education (subject to inherent gender discrimination), etc for its adherents. They may not make the best choices to achieve their goals.
p.p.s. Hugh, RS, I would be interested in more follow up on the Mardin conference.