Here he goes again. Ron Paul and Barack Obama agree that jihad terrorism is our fault, caused by our actions, and capable of being ended by something that we do. It never occurs to either of them how ethnocentric and condescending this is: they both assume that Muslims are just passive reactors to American enormities, not people who might be able to think for themselves and hate us for reasons of their own that are independent of what we do or don't do -- such as the doctrine of jihad. "Ron Paul: ‘Flawed’ US policies led to 9/11," by Justin Sink for The Hill, November 20 (thanks to Wimpy):
Ron Paul said that American policymakers were at least partially at fault for the country being attacked on 9/11 during a discussion of foreign policy on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday.Paul argued that the American military presence in Saudi Arabia - rather than ideological differences or anger over American prosperity - were motivation for the September 11 hijackers.
"Just remember that immediately after 9/11, we removed the base in Saudi Arabia, our policies definitely had an influence," Paul said. "To argue the case they want to do us harm because we're free and prosperous I think is a very dangerous notion, because it's not true."
Host Bob Schieffer then pressed Paul on whether that wasn't the equivalent of blaming America for the attacks.
"If you have a flawed policy, that may have influenced it… that's a far cry from blaming America," Paul responded.
"So what you're saying is that it was the government's fault," Schieffer then said.
"I'm saying the policymaker's fault," Paul responded. "[They] contributed to it, contributed to it."
Paul went on to say that if he became president, he would pull troops out of overseas bases, arguing that submarines and long-range missiles would work just as well as deterrents.
"Absolutely, and the people are with me on that, those troops oversees aggravate our enemies," Paul said....
Yes, indeed, just as American troops aggravated the Nazis in Europe in 1944 and 1945.
"I think the greatest danger for us now is to overreact… Iran doesn't have a bomb, there's no proof, and for us to overreact and talk about bombing Iran is much more dangerous," Paul said....
Every time that Ron Paul opens his mouth, he digs himself deeper. As the great American poet/philosopher Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon!".
He is a dangerous moron.
"...jihad terrorism is our fault, caused by our actions"
vs.
http://schnellmann.org/9-11-ten-years.html
Islamic martyrdom wherein those who “slay and are slain”
in Allah’s cause are promised paradise Qur’an 9:111
which fulfills verse 9:5 + 9:29
Ron Paul sould read this
from Sultan Knish
Sunday, November 13, 2011
The Dangers of Legitimizing Muslim Grievances There is no surer path to Muslim violence than through the legitimization of Muslim grievance. And once you accept the legitimacy of the grievance, then you are also bound to accept the legitimacy of the violence that follows.
Violence begins with grievance. Grievance is the pretext for violence and the narrative for the violence. Liberals make a fetish of separating the grievance from the violence, emphasizing constructive means of resolving the grievance. But what do you do when the grievance and the violence are inseparable?
Grievance is the stories that Muslims tell themselves to justify their violence. To explain why they kill children and why they murder the innocent. The list of grievances is an endless as the violence. Every act of violence carries its own narrative. The endless Muslim conflicts throughout the world all carry their burden of history. But it isn't a history that can be resolved with a tolerance session.
Muslim grievances are the frustration of conquerors, the broken teeth of predators who weren't allowed to feed on the world until their stomachs burst. All the lands they couldn't conqueror, the peoples who rebelled against their rule, the inferior civilizations that pushed them back and drove them off. The swine who build skyscrapers and enjoy the fine things in life.
The civil rights model of social conflict resolution accepts grievances as legitimate and then tries to 'heal' through them through social justice. And when that model is applied to Muslims, it turns into empty appeasement because the conflicts at the heart of Muslim violence cannot be resolved through integration or representation. Applying the word "justice" in any form to a conflict involving Muslims is wasted ink.
The problem begins with a clash of definitions. To a citizen of a secular Western state, "injustice" means a lack of representation. To a Muslim, "injustice" means a lack of Islamic jurisprudence. A Non-Muslim state is always unjust simply because it is not ruled by Islamic law.
The fundamental Muslim grievance is that they are not in power, not just in Israel where the world has accepted their demand to be in power as a wholly moral and legitimate demand, or throughout the Muslim world where Western governments have helped bring the Islamists to power with bombs and political pressure. The fundamental grievance is that they are not in power... everywhere.
If you believe that Islam is the fundamental law of mankind, that all mankind at one time were Muslims and that there is no true justice except through Islamic law-- then it follows naturally that Muslims have been cheated of their rightful power, that they are forced to live under "atheistic" regimes and that "justice" demands that the world "revert" to Islamic rule.
It's why the rhetoric of democracy falls notoriously flat when it comes to Islam. Muslims are not out for representation except as a preliminary stage to absolute power. They may route the guardianship of that absolute power power in various ways, through a dictator or some form of popular democracy, but these are only vehicles for the imposition of Islamic law.
The absolute power of Islamic law is justified by its origin in Allah and the unjust nature of non-Muslim law is equally proven by its lack of divine origin. If you take Islamic assumptions at face value, then this makes perfect sense. Therefore a devout Muslim cannot view a non-Muslim society as just. Equating an infidel code with Sharia is blasphemy. And so the logic of Islam dictates that Western Muslims must view themselves as oppressed.
Like the struggle with the left, this is a clash between the ideal and the real. Totalitarian idealists are always outraged because compared to their ideal every system is rotten, corrupt and unjust. Whether it's the ideal of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat or the Guardianship of the Jurists, it all comes down to the tyranny of the ideal against the immorality of the real. The representational compromises that make the modern Republic work are anathema to people who believe that they have the perfect system which will be absolutely just... because it is perfect.
Muslim grievances justify endless war against the real, in the name of the ideal, without ever having to deal with the shortcomings of the ideal. The collectivism of the ideal disdains the individual except as a foot soldier, a martyr in bringing about the ideal. The infidels are unworthy of life because they are immersed in the grossness of the real. And the suicide bomber rejects the real for the ideal by disdaining his own life, much as he disdains the despised earthly women, but the demon virgins of paradise who represent another ideal.
The common denominator of the cartoon controversies, Muslim wars around the world and just about every other grievance, from their claim to Spain to their demand for more mosques, is an insistence on power at the expense of others. Everyone has to keep paying a price for Muslim grievance-- either in rights and freedoms, or in blood.
Muslim violence is already a self-perpetuating grievance engine. If Muslims win a war, then they're heroes. If they lose a war, then they were betrayed, undermined from within and had what was theirs stolen from them. The grudges will fester for a thousand years and touch off endless wars until they get what they want or they lose the ability to fight those wars.
The purpose of war is conquest. Islam treats Muslim conquest as a form of justice. A failed conquest is an injustice. Try applying social justice to a mindset like that and what you're left with is Europe today.
Since no Muslim should ever have to live under the unjust rule of infidels, there is always a cause for war and a fifth column waiting to rise up and demand their right to rule over everyone else. And the war is endless-- its origins written in blood on the pages of Islamic scripture.
Innocence is the root of grievance, the "I was minding my own business until he came up and hit me and then I had to burn his village, rape his daughters and spend a thousand years enslaving his descendants" narrative of Islam. First comes the innocence and then comes the genocide.
Legitimizing Muslim grievance means accepting their narrative of innocence. Their "I was minding my own business until this cartoon offended me, until I was hauled off to Gitmo for absolutely no reason, until people give me dirty looks on the street for absolutely no reason and then I just had to kill as many of them as I could" narrative.
That narrative of innocence is a lie. People are not innocent, and the conquerors and oppressors of much of the world are certainly a long way from innocent. Historical Islam was a brutal conquering ideology that fed off blood and human misery. No amount of revisionist history will make that go away and the revisionist history is a disgusting insult to the millions killed and the cultures wiped out for the greater glory of Islam.
A religion that has never stopped practicing genocide, slavery and repression as religious mandates is the worst positioned to act out the charade of innocence, to pretend that everything was fine until the Ottoman Empire fell and the British and French colonialists replaced the Muslim colonialists and gave the local minorities civil rights instead of a spiked boot in the face.
Legitimizing Islamic grievance is dangerous not only because it feeds the self-righteous violence of Muslims, but because it convinces well-meaning Westerners that maybe they have a point. Once we accept the grievance, then it becomes hard to resist the violence, except by calling for more peaceful means of resolution. And if those peaceful means of resolution fail... then the violence is justified.
The Israeli peace process is a case study of how this process operates, how the legitimization of Muslim grievance comes to justify its violence, and how its own obstruction of negotiations disproves the peaceful means of resolution, which then doubly justifies the violence.
Rejecting the grievance also rejects the violence, it prevents the narrative from getting its foot in the door, the mosquito whine that pitifully pleads even as it's sinking its stinger into your neck. Fighting that narrative requires pulling back to see the sweep of history, the conquering armies of the Caliphs bringing slavery, destroying cultures, burning books and oppressing millions. And it requires that we see history repeating itself again.
Grievance was at the root of Mohammed's conquests. His "I was minding my own business, preaching a totalitarian ideology that said non-Muslims are inferior dogs when someone made fun of me, so of course I had them killed and fought a war and enslaved their descendants for all time" narrative. Poor innocent me.
Muslims must believe themselves to be moral, or accept that they are mass murderers fighting wars and destroying civilizations. And they need us to accept their narrative, to view them as moral actors resisting oppression and injustice-- rather than monsters spreading pain, hate and fear in formerly peaceful places. While we may not be able to prevent them from believing their lies, accepting their lies deludes us and them... and directly feeds violence.
When Americans keep repeating that Islamophobia is a major problem, Muslims treat this as an admission of guilt and a justification for violence. When Europeans accept that freedom of speech should take a back seat to Muslim sensitivities, then Muslims hold it up as proof that they don't really believe in freedom of speech and that those who insist on it are not following principles, but are deliberately agitating against Muslims.
Everyone who shouts "Blood for Oil", denounces Gitmo, rants about Israeli occupation and all the rest of it is legitimizing Muslim violence, whether or not they mean to do so. And when they perpetuate a myth of Islamic innocence, they are denying Muslims the opportunity to make a moral reckoning without which they cannot improve or change.
Wars begin as stories and end as stories. The Muslims have been telling their story for a long time. And these days we're telling their story too.
Ron Paul sould read this
from Sultan Knish
Sunday, November 13, 2011
The Dangers of Legitimizing Muslim Grievances There is no surer path to Muslim violence than through the legitimization of Muslim grievance. And once you accept the legitimacy of the grievance, then you are also bound to accept the legitimacy of the violence that follows.
Violence begins with grievance. Grievance is the pretext for violence and the narrative for the violence. Liberals make a fetish of separating the grievance from the violence, emphasizing constructive means of resolving the grievance. But what do you do when the grievance and the violence are inseparable?
Grievance is the stories that Muslims tell themselves to justify their violence. To explain why they kill children and why they murder the innocent. The list of grievances is an endless as the violence. Every act of violence carries its own narrative. The endless Muslim conflicts throughout the world all carry their burden of history. But it isn't a history that can be resolved with a tolerance session.
Muslim grievances are the frustration of conquerors, the broken teeth of predators who weren't allowed to feed on the world until their stomachs burst. All the lands they couldn't conqueror, the peoples who rebelled against their rule, the inferior civilizations that pushed them back and drove them off. The swine who build skyscrapers and enjoy the fine things in life.
The civil rights model of social conflict resolution accepts grievances as legitimate and then tries to 'heal' through them through social justice. And when that model is applied to Muslims, it turns into empty appeasement because the conflicts at the heart of Muslim violence cannot be resolved through integration or representation. Applying the word "justice" in any form to a conflict involving Muslims is wasted ink.
The problem begins with a clash of definitions. To a citizen of a secular Western state, "injustice" means a lack of representation. To a Muslim, "injustice" means a lack of Islamic jurisprudence. A Non-Muslim state is always unjust simply because it is not ruled by Islamic law.
The fundamental Muslim grievance is that they are not in power, not just in Israel where the world has accepted their demand to be in power as a wholly moral and legitimate demand, or throughout the Muslim world where Western governments have helped bring the Islamists to power with bombs and political pressure. The fundamental grievance is that they are not in power... everywhere.
If you believe that Islam is the fundamental law of mankind, that all mankind at one time were Muslims and that there is no true justice except through Islamic law-- then it follows naturally that Muslims have been cheated of their rightful power, that they are forced to live under "atheistic" regimes and that "justice" demands that the world "revert" to Islamic rule.
It's why the rhetoric of democracy falls notoriously flat when it comes to Islam. Muslims are not out for representation except as a preliminary stage to absolute power. They may route the guardianship of that absolute power power in various ways, through a dictator or some form of popular democracy, but these are only vehicles for the imposition of Islamic law.
The absolute power of Islamic law is justified by its origin in Allah and the unjust nature of non-Muslim law is equally proven by its lack of divine origin. If you take Islamic assumptions at face value, then this makes perfect sense. Therefore a devout Muslim cannot view a non-Muslim society as just. Equating an infidel code with Sharia is blasphemy. And so the logic of Islam dictates that Western Muslims must view themselves as oppressed.
Like the struggle with the left, this is a clash between the ideal and the real. Totalitarian idealists are always outraged because compared to their ideal every system is rotten, corrupt and unjust. Whether it's the ideal of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat or the Guardianship of the Jurists, it all comes down to the tyranny of the ideal against the immorality of the real. The representational compromises that make the modern Republic work are anathema to people who believe that they have the perfect system which will be absolutely just... because it is perfect.
Muslim grievances justify endless war against the real, in the name of the ideal, without ever having to deal with the shortcomings of the ideal. The collectivism of the ideal disdains the individual except as a foot soldier, a martyr in bringing about the ideal. The infidels are unworthy of life because they are immersed in the grossness of the real. And the suicide bomber rejects the real for the ideal by disdaining his own life, much as he disdains the despised earthly women, but the demon virgins of paradise who represent another ideal.
The common denominator of the cartoon controversies, Muslim wars around the world and just about every other grievance, from their claim to Spain to their demand for more mosques, is an insistence on power at the expense of others. Everyone has to keep paying a price for Muslim grievance-- either in rights and freedoms, or in blood.
Muslim violence is already a self-perpetuating grievance engine. If Muslims win a war, then they're heroes. If they lose a war, then they were betrayed, undermined from within and had what was theirs stolen from them. The grudges will fester for a thousand years and touch off endless wars until they get what they want or they lose the ability to fight those wars.
The purpose of war is conquest. Islam treats Muslim conquest as a form of justice. A failed conquest is an injustice. Try applying social justice to a mindset like that and what you're left with is Europe today.
Since no Muslim should ever have to live under the unjust rule of infidels, there is always a cause for war and a fifth column waiting to rise up and demand their right to rule over everyone else. And the war is endless-- its origins written in blood on the pages of Islamic scripture.
Innocence is the root of grievance, the "I was minding my own business until he came up and hit me and then I had to burn his village, rape his daughters and spend a thousand years enslaving his descendants" narrative of Islam. First comes the innocence and then comes the genocide.
Legitimizing Muslim grievance means accepting their narrative of innocence. Their "I was minding my own business until this cartoon offended me, until I was hauled off to Gitmo for absolutely no reason, until people give me dirty looks on the street for absolutely no reason and then I just had to kill as many of them as I could" narrative.
That narrative of innocence is a lie. People are not innocent, and the conquerors and oppressors of much of the world are certainly a long way from innocent. Historical Islam was a brutal conquering ideology that fed off blood and human misery. No amount of revisionist history will make that go away and the revisionist history is a disgusting insult to the millions killed and the cultures wiped out for the greater glory of Islam.
A religion that has never stopped practicing genocide, slavery and repression as religious mandates is the worst positioned to act out the charade of innocence, to pretend that everything was fine until the Ottoman Empire fell and the British and French colonialists replaced the Muslim colonialists and gave the local minorities civil rights instead of a spiked boot in the face.
Legitimizing Islamic grievance is dangerous not only because it feeds the self-righteous violence of Muslims, but because it convinces well-meaning Westerners that maybe they have a point. Once we accept the grievance, then it becomes hard to resist the violence, except by calling for more peaceful means of resolution. And if those peaceful means of resolution fail... then the violence is justified.
The Israeli peace process is a case study of how this process operates, how the legitimization of Muslim grievance comes to justify its violence, and how its own obstruction of negotiations disproves the peaceful means of resolution, which then doubly justifies the violence.
Rejecting the grievance also rejects the violence, it prevents the narrative from getting its foot in the door, the mosquito whine that pitifully pleads even as it's sinking its stinger into your neck. Fighting that narrative requires pulling back to see the sweep of history, the conquering armies of the Caliphs bringing slavery, destroying cultures, burning books and oppressing millions. And it requires that we see history repeating itself again.
Grievance was at the root of Mohammed's conquests. His "I was minding my own business, preaching a totalitarian ideology that said non-Muslims are inferior dogs when someone made fun of me, so of course I had them killed and fought a war and enslaved their descendants for all time" narrative. Poor innocent me.
Muslims must believe themselves to be moral, or accept that they are mass murderers fighting wars and destroying civilizations. And they need us to accept their narrative, to view them as moral actors resisting oppression and injustice-- rather than monsters spreading pain, hate and fear in formerly peaceful places. While we may not be able to prevent them from believing their lies, accepting their lies deludes us and them... and directly feeds violence.
When Americans keep repeating that Islamophobia is a major problem, Muslims treat this as an admission of guilt and a justification for violence. When Europeans accept that freedom of speech should take a back seat to Muslim sensitivities, then Muslims hold it up as proof that they don't really believe in freedom of speech and that those who insist on it are not following principles, but are deliberately agitating against Muslims.
Everyone who shouts "Blood for Oil", denounces Gitmo, rants about Israeli occupation and all the rest of it is legitimizing Muslim violence, whether or not they mean to do so. And when they perpetuate a myth of Islamic innocence, they are denying Muslims the opportunity to make a moral reckoning without which they cannot improve or change.
Wars begin as stories and end as stories. The Muslims have been telling their story for a long time. And these days we're telling their story too.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
The Dangers of Legitimizing Muslim Grievances There is no surer path to Muslim violence than through the legitimization of Muslim grievance. And once you accept the legitimacy of the grievance, then you are also bound to accept the legitimacy of the violence that follows.
Violence begins with grievance. Grievance is the pretext for violence and the narrative for the violence. Liberals make a fetish of separating the grievance from the violence, emphasizing constructive means of resolving the grievance. But what do you do when the grievance and the violence are inseparable?
Grievance is the stories that Muslims tell themselves to justify their violence. To explain why they kill children and why they murder the innocent. The list of grievances is an endless as the violence. Every act of violence carries its own narrative. The endless Muslim conflicts throughout the world all carry their burden of history. But it isn't a history that can be resolved with a tolerance session.
Muslim grievances are the frustration of conquerors, the broken teeth of predators who weren't allowed to feed on the world until their stomachs burst. All the lands they couldn't conqueror, the peoples who rebelled against their rule, the inferior civilizations that pushed them back and drove them off. The swine who build skyscrapers and enjoy the fine things in life.
The civil rights model of social conflict resolution accepts grievances as legitimate and then tries to 'heal' through them through social justice. And when that model is applied to Muslims, it turns into empty appeasement because the conflicts at the heart of Muslim violence cannot be resolved through integration or representation. Applying the word "justice" in any form to a conflict involving Muslims is wasted ink.
The problem begins with a clash of definitions. To a citizen of a secular Western state, "injustice" means a lack of representation. To a Muslim, "injustice" means a lack of Islamic jurisprudence. A Non-Muslim state is always unjust simply because it is not ruled by Islamic law.
The fundamental Muslim grievance is that they are not in power, not just in Israel where the world has accepted their demand to be in power as a wholly moral and legitimate demand, or throughout the Muslim world where Western governments have helped bring the Islamists to power with bombs and political pressure. The fundamental grievance is that they are not in power... everywhere.
If you believe that Islam is the fundamental law of mankind, that all mankind at one time were Muslims and that there is no true justice except through Islamic law-- then it follows naturally that Muslims have been cheated of their rightful power, that they are forced to live under "atheistic" regimes and that "justice" demands that the world "revert" to Islamic rule.
It's why the rhetoric of democracy falls notoriously flat when it comes to Islam. Muslims are not out for representation except as a preliminary stage to absolute power. They may route the guardianship of that absolute power power in various ways, through a dictator or some form of popular democracy, but these are only vehicles for the imposition of Islamic law.
The absolute power of Islamic law is justified by its origin in Allah and the unjust nature of non-Muslim law is equally proven by its lack of divine origin. If you take Islamic assumptions at face value, then this makes perfect sense. Therefore a devout Muslim cannot view a non-Muslim society as just. Equating an infidel code with Sharia is blasphemy. And so the logic of Islam dictates that Western Muslims must view themselves as oppressed.
Like the struggle with the left, this is a clash between the ideal and the real. Totalitarian idealists are always outraged because compared to their ideal every system is rotten, corrupt and unjust. Whether it's the ideal of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat or the Guardianship of the Jurists, it all comes down to the tyranny of the ideal against the immorality of the real. The representational compromises that make the modern Republic work are anathema to people who believe that they have the perfect system which will be absolutely just... because it is perfect.
Muslim grievances justify endless war against the real, in the name of the ideal, without ever having to deal with the shortcomings of the ideal. The collectivism of the ideal disdains the individual except as a foot soldier, a martyr in bringing about the ideal. The infidels are unworthy of life because they are immersed in the grossness of the real. And the suicide bomber rejects the real for the ideal by disdaining his own life, much as he disdains the despised earthly women, but the demon virgins of paradise who represent another ideal.
The common denominator of the cartoon controversies, Muslim wars around the world and just about every other grievance, from their claim to Spain to their demand for more mosques, is an insistence on power at the expense of others. Everyone has to keep paying a price for Muslim grievance-- either in rights and freedoms, or in blood.
Muslim violence is already a self-perpetuating grievance engine. If Muslims win a war, then they're heroes. If they lose a war, then they were betrayed, undermined from within and had what was theirs stolen from them. The grudges will fester for a thousand years and touch off endless wars until they get what they want or they lose the ability to fight those wars.
The purpose of war is conquest. Islam treats Muslim conquest as a form of justice. A failed conquest is an injustice. Try applying social justice to a mindset like that and what you're left with is Europe today.
Since no Muslim should ever have to live under the unjust rule of infidels, there is always a cause for war and a fifth column waiting to rise up and demand their right to rule over everyone else. And the war is endless-- its origins written in blood on the pages of Islamic scripture.
Innocence is the root of grievance, the "I was minding my own business until he came up and hit me and then I had to burn his village, rape his daughters and spend a thousand years enslaving his descendants" narrative of Islam. First comes the innocence and then comes the genocide.
Legitimizing Muslim grievance means accepting their narrative of innocence. Their "I was minding my own business until this cartoon offended me, until I was hauled off to Gitmo for absolutely no reason, until people give me dirty looks on the street for absolutely no reason and then I just had to kill as many of them as I could" narrative.
That narrative of innocence is a lie. People are not innocent, and the conquerors and oppressors of much of the world are certainly a long way from innocent. Historical Islam was a brutal conquering ideology that fed off blood and human misery. No amount of revisionist history will make that go away and the revisionist history is a disgusting insult to the millions killed and the cultures wiped out for the greater glory of Islam.
A religion that has never stopped practicing genocide, slavery and repression as religious mandates is the worst positioned to act out the charade of innocence, to pretend that everything was fine until the Ottoman Empire fell and the British and French colonialists replaced the Muslim colonialists and gave the local minorities civil rights instead of a spiked boot in the face.
Legitimizing Islamic grievance is dangerous not only because it feeds the self-righteous violence of Muslims, but because it convinces well-meaning Westerners that maybe they have a point. Once we accept the grievance, then it becomes hard to resist the violence, except by calling for more peaceful means of resolution. And if those peaceful means of resolution fail... then the violence is justified.
The Israeli peace process is a case study of how this process operates, how the legitimization of Muslim grievance comes to justify its violence, and how its own obstruction of negotiations disproves the peaceful means of resolution, which then doubly justifies the violence.
Rejecting the grievance also rejects the violence, it prevents the narrative from getting its foot in the door, the mosquito whine that pitifully pleads even as it's sinking its stinger into your neck. Fighting that narrative requires pulling back to see the sweep of history, the conquering armies of the Caliphs bringing slavery, destroying cultures, burning books and oppressing millions. And it requires that we see history repeating itself again.
Grievance was at the root of Mohammed's conquests. His "I was minding my own business, preaching a totalitarian ideology that said non-Muslims are inferior dogs when someone made fun of me, so of course I had them killed and fought a war and enslaved their descendants for all time" narrative. Poor innocent me.
Muslims must believe themselves to be moral, or accept that they are mass murderers fighting wars and destroying civilizations. And they need us to accept their narrative, to view them as moral actors resisting oppression and injustice-- rather than monsters spreading pain, hate and fear in formerly peaceful places. While we may not be able to prevent them from believing their lies, accepting their lies deludes us and them... and directly feeds violence.
When Americans keep repeating that Islamophobia is a major problem, Muslims treat this as an admission of guilt and a justification for violence. When Europeans accept that freedom of speech should take a back seat to Muslim sensitivities, then Muslims hold it up as proof that they don't really believe in freedom of speech and that those who insist on it are not following principles, but are deliberately agitating against Muslims.
Everyone who shouts "Blood for Oil", denounces Gitmo, rants about Israeli occupation and all the rest of it is legitimizing Muslim violence, whether or not they mean to do so. And when they perpetuate a myth of Islamic innocence, they are denying Muslims the opportunity to make a moral reckoning without which they cannot improve or change.
Wars begin as stories and end as stories. The Muslims have been telling their story for a long time. And these days we're telling their story too.
Ron Paul has made many statements showing the absurdity and incoherence of his position. But after all he has claimed in blaming U.S. foreign policy, to then advocate that we should use "submarines and long-range missiles" as "deterrents" is really bizarre. On the one hand, he blames the U.S. for "bombing them." So what does he advocate? Bombing them.
This guy should have been dismissed as a nut a long time ago. Everything he is saying on this issue is b.s., because, for one thing, he advocates the sorts of policies he criticizes.
The reason he has not yet been dismissed is that the media wants a political mouthpiece for their view that the U.S. should not be allowed to defend itself, and that U.S. foreign policy is the cause of Islamic terrorist attacks on civilians.
This is just not good enough. Criticize a candidate but why not leave the empty rhetoric to leftists?
"Yes, indeed, just as American troops aggravated the Nazis in Europe in 1944 and 1945."
I'm sorry that a conservative constitutionalist, Dr Paul, is held so much below contempt, to receive such an off-hand Godwin. That really ought not to be the level JW should aspire to.
Wouldn't Ron Paul have supported the Allied war against the nazis? Is there a less than subtle implication here?
"Ron Paul has gotten more donations from the military than President Obama and every Republican candidate. They don’t even come close to him. [..] Between April and June he received over $35000 dollars from the military. Mitt Romney and Herman Cain barely got $5000 dollars each. And Perry didn’t even register on the scoreboard."
Care to explain as to why Dr Paul enjoys so much support among the military and receives more donations from active duty military personnel than all other candidates? Or perhaps take into consideration that of the current GOP presidential candidates, only one has served the nation in the military, yep, Ron Paul.
There's one depressing fact that needs to be mentioned in a wider but not unrelated context, i.e. that the bipartisan block of neo-progressives (Libs/neo-conmen) are - by their own words, and I tend to believe them on this one - definitely not waging war on Islam ("a peaceful religion hijacked by a tiny minority of.." etcetera). As far as I know, the only US politician on "our" side would be Allen West, who doesn't go to war against a tactic.
Instead, what the establishment elect does, is wage this "War on Terror", like all of these "War on Drugs" schemes and what have you, on behalf of the managerial state. And by all means, they're certainly not resisting islamization home and abroad (think of the incessant push to have Turkey enter the EUSSR, or the creation of "democratic", "Arabic Spring"(TM) sharia states: Egypt, Lybia, and the Islamic state of Bosnia in Europe).
In my opinion, the Wilsonian, neo-progressive and thoroughly PC/MC, WoT-agenda isn't really about fighting or resisting Islam at all. Me thinks some prudence is in order before resorting to single out Dr Paul this way, with marchin' nazis close at hand, thus implicitly presenting neo-progressive nation builders as the ones fighting Islam. Not my cup of tea, I'm sorry to say.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag
Hi Kinana -
"The reason he has not yet been dismissed is that the media wants a political mouthpiece for their view that the U.S. should not be allowed to defend itself [..]", you said.
If that's the case, they're sure doing a lousy job using their mouthpiece: 89 seconds granted in a debate that went on for more than one hour?
Could the fact that he's knowledgeable about Austrian economics and has been a consistent voice in favour of a true free market and limited constitutional government have anything to do with the fact that quite a few of "we, the people", acknowledge that he was practically alone among politicians to predict the current financial crisis?
Cheers,
Sag
Dr. Paul went on to talk about Reagan's misadventure in Lebanon, and if he had only maintained his "neutrality" (there's that word this supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah likes to throw around) we might not have lost 241 U.S. Marines to a Hezbollah - Iranian-sponsored - suicide bomber.
Paul is very dangerous.
Watching tv and there is breaking news on CNN, FOX and other media reporting arrest of muslim "lone wolf" terrorist wannabe getting his info from online "Inspire" al-Qaeda mag targeting NYC area sites, caught with pipe bond. Apparently hispanic convert to Islam from some upstate mosque. Bloomberg is going to be holding a press conference shortly, and media are commenting that it is unusal for him to do that in a case that just involves some "lone wolf" making pipe bombs, so they think there is something bigger going on.
You wrote: "Care to explain as to why Dr Paul enjoys so much support among the military and receives more donations from active duty military personnel than all other candidates? Or perhaps take into consideration that of the current GOP presidential candidates, only one has served the nation in the military, yep, Ron Paul...."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Didn't Governor Perry serve in the Air Force? To answer your question, it has surprised me how many military people lean toward pacifism, isolationism / non-interventionism on foreign policy. Take Israel as an example. Some of the strongest proponents of the phony peace process between Israel and her inveterate enemies are former military people, even officers. Go figure.
Ron Paul's remarks are, in fact, representative of a small minority of Americans. The fact is, they are mostly wrong.
"Mostly"? Yes. There is a tiny kernel of truth in the statement that American policies (support for Israel, power-brokering amidst unpopular Arab regimes, etc.) have contributed to anti-American resentment among Arabs and the Islamic world at large, but, and that is a very large but, the existence of Muslim aggression in many other corners of the world belies such sentiments.
One can not argue that jihadi atrocities in the Phillipines, Thailand, Kashmir, the Caucuses, Ethiopia, Somalia, and countless other locals has anything to do with support of Israel or American policies in general.
At the end of the day, a clear-thinking person has to arrive at the conclusion that Ron Paul and his followers have been imbibing too much good old Texas tea.
My moRon Paul cartoons. http://bit.ly/rYGgVS
He's a very talented writer. I used to argue with him at length on his website about George W. Bush. I finally gave up.
FOOL!!!!!!!
Fool
They attacked us and will continue to attack us because that's what Muslims are required by their religion to do to infidels.
Terrorism is intrinsic to Islam.
Islam cannot spread or even maintain itself without violence: violence to those who attempt to leave Islam, violence to those who criticise Islam, and violence to those who refuse to be subjugated by Islam.
Islam has been a terrorist cult since it was founded. Mohammed said "I have been made victorious with terror"
Now since Mohammed is 'the perfect man' and role model for all Muslims, it follows that terrorists have divine approval for what they do. All that stuff about a 'tiny minority of extremists' is a load of taqiyya. Terrorism is mainstream, standard orthodox Islam. The more Muslims you have in a country, the greater the incidence of terrorism.
Islam has an obsessive hatred of infidels.
Islam is the only religion which is more obsessed with unbelievers than it is with its own followers. Muslims define their own identity solely in opposition to the Kuffar. Islamic accomplishments are so negligible that they have no positive cultural features with which they can identify. Hence the unceasing and implacable aggression toward civilized peoples and envy of their accomplishments.
The development and deliberate cultivation of hatred is such a central feature of Islam that there is nothing that we Kuffars can do, or not do, that would make our univited guests hate us any less or any more.
Rage is so intrinsic to Islam that external events are irrelevant. Hatred of non-Moslems is the pivot of Islamic existence. Muslims are bound together by a shared and carefully nurtured animosity to 'The Other' developed from earliest childhood, which ignites a permanent fire of tension between Moslems and non-Moslems. Ever since Jihadists started immigrating into the West, we have become all too familiar with concepts such as 'Killing the unbelievers wherever you find them' and the tribal polarities of Dar al-Harb versus Dar al-Islam , Ummah versus Kuffar etc...
http://crombouke.blogspot.com/2010/01/islam-terrorism.html
The roots of Ron Paul's views are becoming clearer.
Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad is a Muslim academic and Libertarian (?) who served formerly as a Ron Paul adviser in 2008, and perhaps later:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imad-ad-Dean_Ahmad
http://www.minaret.org/index.html
Among other articles rationalizing Islam, Dr. Ahmad has written about the US actions which he claims caused al-Qaeda's aggression towards the US:
http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/us_foreign_policy_not_islamic_teachings_account_for_al_qaedas_draw/0015920
Among the reasons are 6 reasons listed below. The quotation is taken from Dr. Ahmad's article:
The quotation is originally by Michael Scheuer, but Dr. Ahmad quotes it approvingly. Dr. Admad is affiliated with many organizations, among which are Islamic-American Zakat Foundation (" a 501 (c)(3) tax-exempt religious and charitable organization which primarily serves poor and needy Muslims in the United States") , and Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding.
Please note that Zakat, the Muslim claim to charity, only satisfies a Muslim's obligation if it is given to Muslims. In other words, official Muslim charities would have to help non-Muslims "off the books", so to speak.
Anyway, this is where Ron Paul is getting his advice and views on Islam and the Middle East. Ron Paul apparently has not taken the initiative to explore other points of view, or to investigate the very real Muslim political and demographic threat to the US, Canada, and Europe.
Sagunto,
I'm not sure what 89 seconds or what debate you are referring to. The media have been quoting this guy for years. The left-leaning mainstream media loves him primarily because they can quote someone other than themselves to express their own views* about U.S. foreign policy and the nature of Islamic terrorism--*a tactic the media loves to use.
I think Ron Paul is incidentally right about one thing: We should not have troops over there in Afghanistan and Iraq in the current missions. But he has only incidentally, or accidentally, hit upon the correct view in that case. His wrong-headed views about Islam and Muslims would lead us into further troubles.
Well, I agree with him partially. US policies regarding jihad, and Islam were flawed and they are what caused 9/11. Shiekh Anwar al Awlaki met with almost all of the hijackers, he was from Yemen, and he's from the Awaliq* tribe... come on guys.
* One of the tribes in Yemen, it's primarily involved in the ongoing "al-Qaida" insurgency in Yemen.
Dr. Paul expresses the same sentiments re the 9/11 attacks as Faisal Abdul (GZM) Rauf, who declared that 9/11 was, "to some extent made in America." Anyone fronting this nonsense is beyond clueless. Which, for me, places him well beneath the discussion-bar for any public office...
Hello, Sagunto. Here's my take on Ron Paul.
This man, who is bright and has some very good ideas on economic matters, functions in the forefront of a very long American tradition extending back to colonial times, to wit, that America would far prefer to really not have anything to do with the rest of the world. British North America was founded on this very principle, examples being the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Pilgrims (a subset, in effect, of the 17th-century Puritan movement) of New Plymouth Colony and even those who settled Virginia, though here a deep-rooted isolationism was not as prevalent right up front as with those already mentioned farther north.
But here's the rub. The world is a screwed-up place. Always has been and probably always will be. And America, becoming by its own efforts the greatest power in the world, and this at a time when modern technology has reached its zenith, has had in the modern era, by default, obligations worldwide (like defeating Nazism, Imperial Japan and Russian Communism) which it simply cannot ignore. Isolationists like Robert Taft of half a century ago, and Ron Paul of today, were (are) simply ignorant of this. Respecting Ron Paul specifically, he is totally clueless of Islam's real intentions and, by reflex action, thinks that America in isolation will be OK and that, to the extent that America isn't, that it's America's fault when shit hits the fan.
Well, he's wrong. Islam is spiritual wickedness, just as Nazism and Marxism were secular evils, and the Ron Pauls here in America are oblivious of this fact and also of the obligation of America to stand in the forefront for liberty worldwide. I mean in this regard the guy is an ignoramus.
American isolationism, which is implicitly, if not explicitly, what Ron Paul desires, is no longer a realistic position to take. And yet Paul takes it. His is an anachronism which goes way beyond quaintness and which has steered itself into very dangerous waters. In short, he's not the right person for the top job in the world. Not even remotely. What America and all the West needs right now is another President who will give a new Evil Empire speech, with Islam the well deserved villain here. Ron Paul doesn't even remotely fit the descripton of such a person. In fact, he's the polar opposite of such a person. And that's a damn shame.
I hope you are doing well, my friend. Always good to have your input here at JW. Take care.
Since when has it been the duty of the USA to secure anything other than our own borders?
Since when has it been the duty of the USA to do anything except follow the Constitution?
Ron Paul is speaking out against, and has been for decades, the violations of the Founding Father's principles.
Whether he "gets" jihad mentality or not is irrelevant.
His point is to get back to the Federal Republic as it was intended and created.
It is obvious to even the miscreant that the federal government has been drawn into, through despicable outside influences, to alter (un-Constitutionally) and forever brainwash the American populous to the condition that it is somehow OUR responsibility to administer every idea, whether good or ill.
What about the states? What about the republics?
That is what Ron Paul is about.
His point that our troops aggravate our enemies is true, in that we (the USA) have been drawn in to wars and world events (WWI and WWII mainly, but others besides) that were not our own.
We Americans need to concentrate on our own country and protect our borders.
I eagerly await my opinion to be bashed "right" and "left" because the right and left are one in the same to me.
Get to it!
For anyone who wants to have a look at the confused salad-of-ideas that Ron Paul presents re Islam, Muslims, and U.S. foreign policy, begin with a brief stroll into the Jihadwatch archives:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/08/ron-paul-those-who-hate-us-and-would-like-to-kill-us-they-are-motivated-by-our-invasion-of-their-lan.html
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/11/ron-paul-drone-attacks-are-reason-people-of-pakistan-cant-stand-our-guts.html
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/11/ron-paul-reaches-out-to-iran-says-concern-over-nuke-program-blown-out-of-proportion.html
"His wrong-headed views about Islam and Muslims would lead us into further troubles."
True. That, however, goes for most of the other GOP candidates as well (needless to say, the Dems are totally clueless as well). Like I said, i.m.o. the only politician with a clear view of Islam is Allen West.
The left leaning and other lamestream media love the nation-building foreign war agenda and have consistently presented this "Arab Spring" phenomenon as a victory for "democracy". These thugs use this politician who consistently opposes wars declared by the United Nations, Nato and what have you, but I see no reason to distort the man's non-interventionist views in their wake.
Here's mention of the 89 seconds, btw.
I think that the reason you provided sounds plausible enough (yes, the leftist media would do that). But Ron Paul is quoted by "conservative" media just the same. My guess remains that he's not out of the picture because of his views on the economy and sound money.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag
Wildjew--and Sagunto
I'm not surprised one whit about the pacifism of military and former military people. Even though I've never served in the military, I've known people who have, including some who went through wars.
The uncle for whom I was named came home from WWII, dug a hole in the back yard, threw in his uniform and decorations, doused it with gasoline, lit it, then buried the ashes. He generally did not like talking about his wartime experiences, possibly because a lot of his friends who were transferred out of Europe sooner than he was made it to the Pacific theater, only to die on Okinawa.
A man I knew who served with the Rep. of Korea forces in the Viet Nam war (a force that had the VC and NVA scared silly)mustered out and became a Presbyterian minister, serving congregations both among immigrants in the USA and in his own country. In seminary, he and a couple of American vets were a small, mutually supportive group who had lots of sympathy for hurting people. Nor was he the only veteran I've known who chose the ministry. Another told me that after what he'd seen, he knew that people were sinners who needed a savior.
I've known other people who'd been through wars, either as soldiers or civilians in war zones, who really and truly had the Hell scared out of them.
As an American diplomat, I covered the aftermaths of the Cambodian and Rwandan conflicts, and that was bad enough.
I believe that for every Chingiz Khan or George Patton who loves a fight, there are three dozen who'd heartily agree with Sherman that War is Hell.
Ron Paul clearly could or would easily be more dangerous to America and its heritage, than even Hussein. And that is disgusting, and not tolerable in a potus. He should be disqualified. He is certainly a moron, who doesn't know the basic truth of islam, that it declared war of the world, from about 632 AD onward, and has so practiced its trade of criminal war on all peoples, and individual crimes against humanity, including its own people, as well. He is a joke, something about as naive of the world's actual ways and facts, of about a 12 year old. I personally have conservative sympathies, but not for old fools, who have risen above their level of competence.
He should be ashamed of himself, as should the tea party, for being so naive, uneducated and outright dangerously stupid, about islam, and several, or numerous other of his unacceptable positions. He was an ob-gyn, back in the day, and that is not by itself any qualification to be a potus, not even close. Such specialization tends to lead to missing critical broad knowledge, and to he mistake of thinking only inside the box. If you have brains, sort of, but don't know how to use them, it means you are a smart moron, not a wise person, of broad knowledge. It takes more than specialized brain power, God knows, as do I also.
Among a few, Peter King and Alan West could run circles in knowledge around a Ron Paul, and neither are perfect, if anyone is, as potential POTUS candidates.
And yes, the NYC terrorist take down is a Dominican, convert to muslim, Pimentel or similar spelling. So far it is a state not a federal matter, but in cooperation with feds, with self assembled pipe bombs. He is a true el quieda sympathizer. He liked inspire magazine, and had a jihad website. Dimwit clown loser.
I wonder what six reasons Dr Ahmed could supply for the Muslims' hatred of Buddhists?
I'm not so hard on Ron Paul. He is a constitutional conservative who is aware of the frightful wash of red ink in which our republic is drowning due to our political class's forgetting that the Messiah's name is not Uncle Sam and throwing other people's money around to buy the electorate.
When Barry Obama was campaigning, he was going to be the great lovey-dovey, peace-and-justice bringer who'd end America's enmity with the world. Then he won, got his first security briefing, and came out of it looking as if he'd been kicked in the sotmach (and lower). While I doubt I'd ever vote for him (and did not vote for him in '08), I will grant that he was enough of a learner to have Usama Bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki whacked when the opportunity presented itself.
I strongly suspect that Ron Paul would be a faster study than the O.
Perhaps the fact that Rick Perry didn't have a sizable amount of military donations from April to June is because he didn't officially announce his candidacy until August. Perry also was a pilot in the US Air Force.
Were Ron Paul a member of the ruling class during 30s and 40s, I believe he absolutely would have been against supporting the cause against the Axis. He is a strict isolationist and would have fit in perfectly during the 1930s when so many chose to ignore the rising threat of the Nazis and the Japanese. Just as in 1941, the Pacific and the Atlantic are not sufficient walls to protect America from external threats, then when you couple that with Paul's advocacy of an open border....it's a recipe for disaster.
Ron Paul is spot on when it comes to the economy and government's influence on it, but he falls flat on his face when it comes to foreign policy.
"Whether he "gets" jihad mentality or not is irrelevant."
Sorry, Aiken, but I think it's damn well relevant, likely more so than ever in
history. He could be dead-right on everything else, but being dead-wrong on our most serious threat is grounds for disqualification.
And, while our involvement in WWI can be questioned, are you suggesting that we "aggravated" Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan by fighting them in WWII? That we were "drawn in" by that little Pearl Harbor-thing? And, just a reminder, Germany declared war on us after Pearl Harbor, not we on them.
Like our muslim enemies today, those enemies
hardly needed our "aggravation" to seek world-hegemony.
Ron Paul has gone so far to the isolationist-right that he's come around full-circle to the far left--not a good place to be in the midst of a global jihad.
Aiken, I know you're a frequent poster here & I enjoy your contributions. I intend no disrespect here, we're just 180 degrees out-of-phase on this one...
G
Ever hear of Thomas Jefferson, the barbary coast wars, the Marines, the Navy, all of the history of islam from 632 AD, onwards? What the muslims did to us, from the get go?
Ever hear of the principle that the only thing worse than making war and fighting for right is cowardice, submission, or surrender?
Did you ever hear that living as a civilian can get you killed, or nearly so many many times over, more times for some, less times of peril for others (not even talking about inner city and guns or gangs, nor even crime)?
Living conservatively, and intelligently, I managed to miss being killed by others on the road at their faults, or in the air, far too many times. And I came within 2 weeks of being in Nam, in the USAF. And I've saved certain people from grievous medical care giver deadly mistakes.
I could say more, but not here.
Islam dictates war, period. People need to wake up and learn the horrible truth behind the terrorist supremacist organization of perpetual war, crime, intolerance, enslavement, perpetual ignorance, and hate of all others.
Hi Wellington -
Doing a-okay over here. Thank you for your excellent reply.
And for sure, my impression is that Ron Paul is and remains clueless about the danger of Islam. Not that any of the other candidates fares much better in this regard. I reckon all of them subscribe to and will propagate the meme that, "Islam is a religion of peace". They are at war with Terror. This view reinforces the complementary meme that the problem is only with "a tiny minority," etcetera, you know the drill.
In your opening paragraph, you make the case for Ron Paul as an isolationist, subscribing to the view that America "would far prefer to really not have anything to do with the rest of the world. By that definition, Ron Paul is not an isolationist. He is a fervent supporter of free market capitalism and world trade. It is true that he doesn't believe in unconstitutional wars on behalf of the centralized managerial state, but he describes that point of view as non-interventionism (consistent with and as an extension of his free market views). As far as I can see, his views are that the US is better of with a strong national defence and secure borders (don't you find it puzzling as to why so many of the neo-progressive nation builders favour quasi open borders?).
"What America and all the West needs right now is another President who will give a new Evil Empire speech, with Islam the well deserved villain here."
That's so d*mn right. Yet, no such candidate in sight.
So now one has to ask, has stability in, say, the Middle East been served by this bipartisan foreign policy of nation building? Haven't we seen this so-called "Arab Spring" turn into an Islamic winter, while being paraded as a victory for democracy?
And you're right of course about the world being a screwed up place. I don't reckon Ron Paul to be oblivious to that well-known fact of life. As to your vision about the role of the US, there's a lot of truth there, and some things that I might mention as well to complement the story from a somewhat different perspective:
The progressivist and unconstitutional superstate USA (Unified States of America, est. 1913) has been a destabilizing/restructuring force in Europe since this nation's participation in WW-I, which gave rise to the Wilsonian fascism of the managerial state (see: Nisbet, 1973; Gottfried, 2002). Whether it's the Wall Street war reparations-scheme foisted upon Germany, or the incessant push for Turkey to enter the EUSSR - today's mirror image of the USA - or the creation (thnx Mr Clinton) of an Islamic state in Europe (or Afghanistan under Reagan, Egypt under Barack Hussein O, Lybia under BHO, Gaza-strip/West bank, all prez.). Political Americanism (i.e. Wilsonian neo-Progressivism) has in fact been something of a double-edged sword.
In the wake of the US' progressivist cultural dominance after WW-2, European nations have been introduced to one particularly nefarious export product from across the Atlantic, which is political correctness and the cult of "Diversity", pushed by those seeking to emulate the US managerial state. We now even have the updated version, Unified States 2.0, the managerial state that masks the exercise of power as a form of caring. As both the protector of designated victims and the sensitizer of consciousness, this expanding centralized state is authorized to make constant interventions, directly or indirectly, home and abroad, in a wide range of human and commercial relations. This therapeutic state is the end-point of a historical development that since the early 20th century has been characterized by the inherent interests of the state being extended to society, through the extension of its authority to once free areas of human activity, including the economy.
In the case of the Unified States of America, welfare state economy and warfare state hegemony are just other sides of the very same coin. Therapeutic nannyism, Political Correctness and the homogenizing cult of "Diversity", and military progressivism, these are the characteristics of the "deconstitutionalized" USA that many patriotic people in Europe (and the US) would like to see marchin' home.
Here's where I imagine you wouldn't mind voicing some strong objections, which will most certainly make for an interesting exchange ;)
BTW, sorry for the rant, turned out to be the 12'' version.
Anyway, always a pleasure to hear from you, Wellington.
All the best from Amsterdam,
Sag
Ron Paul has points for domestic policy that are sound, but his world-view about policy, support of Israel, and war will get many people, and countrys, destroyed.
If elected, his views would not be able to last long before being sucked into world conflicts, that would be filled with danger to the U.S. because of his positions.
We all live on a ball, run away you can not, and run in one direction, you will end up in the same place you started, if you survive the journey.
I might add, he is in second place in a number of polls, and that is somthing to think about.
A lot of destruction is getting closer, and there is nowhere to run, no place to hide.
Sagunto,
Thanks for the link. Also, I'm agreed that Ron Paul is similar to most other politicians in Islamo-cluelessness.
I will say this about Paul: If he were elected president and, on the Islam/U.S.-foreign policy front, only deviated from the status quo by (a) removing our troops and the enormous expenditures from these delusional nation-building projects in Afghanistan and Iraq, and (b) withdrawing all funding to Islamic countries, these moves would constitute a significant advance over our current position.
Yet I fear Ron Paul's Islamo-cluelessness may lead to further problems, so I don't think he can be trusted to do only those things on the Muslims/U.S. foreign policy front. His quoting of Pape also suggests his views are not only the result of cluelessness, but of Islamophilic and anti-western ideological tendencies.
Kinana -
"His quoting of Pape also suggests his views are not only the result of cluelessness, but of Islamophilic and anti-western ideological tendencies."
I also find that source ample reason for keeping a close eye on what Ron Paul actually says about Islam. Yet, and in keeping with the view both of us have, i.e. that Ron Paul is utterly clueless about the danger of Islam, I reckon with the possibility that he is unaware of the CAIR link, and if he were, he'd probably be as uninformed as so many Americans about the stealth jihad mission of this group.
I have read some of his work, but nowhere have I found any indication of anti-western ideological tendencies, in fact, quite the contrary: he supports the return to free market principles (grossly violated throughout the West for decades now) and sound money, and also the actual downsizing of the welfare state. All pretty occidentophile and ideologically sound principles, which cannot be said about most of the establishment nomenklatura currently running the bipartisan show in the US, or the progressivist welfare states in Europe.
Cheers,
Sag
Here's the bigger picture (full vid) of how an anti-establishment candidate gets treated.
Sag
This is the main reason Ron Paul has no business becoming the president. The man has failed miserably to read and understand the built in aspirations of Islamic Supremacy that has been coming at us for nearly 1,400 years. In fact his ignorance on Islam is so stark and nakedly obvious that it is down right scary to even consider him in the position of commander and chief
Paul
I just read that piece by 'Sultan Knish' on Muslim 'grievance'.
Nail. Head. Hit.
Wow.
That one deserves to go viral.
To all concerned -
I'd like to emphasize once more that, regrettably, cluelessness about Islamic doctrine is widespread among US politicians.
What I'm kind of missing though, in some of these rather one-sided, Godwinian depictions of Ron Paul's non-interventionist, free market views, is the fair and balanced notion that would also simultaneously warn us to be cautious with candidates who push the establishment's WoT, "Islam is Peace" agenda.
My impression was always that JW is sort of a safe haven for people to educate themselves about the existential threat to our way of life and our liberties. That would represent the thus far excluded "third position", so to speak, that has one single focus which is exclusively based on actual knowledge of Islamic doctrine. That, i.m.o. is the principled stance from which JW draws its scholarly authority.
From that perspective, I'd imagine that the most consistent and truly even-handed way for this "blowback" vs. "blue-jeans" debate to be depicted, would be as a game of false choices with regard to the essential issue - at least to dedicated JW readers - which is understanding Islam.
On that final note I think it's best to bow out, but not before leaving you with hopefully some food for your kind attention and thought, pertaining to stealth jihad and the clear and present danger it presents, operating within our borders.
Here's the hypothetical question I'd like to put before my fellow commentators over here:
What would be the chance, you think, of Dr Paul ever condoning these so-called "hate-speech" laws, used by the established representatives of the managerial state to suppress undesired opinion? Think he'd be more or less eager than the diamond dozen candidates to use state power in service of curtailing freedom of speech? Note that these laws have been a great tool for stealth jihadists all over the West.
Thnx for the exchange.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag
If anyone wishes to see a fictional portrayal of how to properly deal with Islamic jihad in the United States – and especially that funded and promoted by the Saudis – read Edward Cline’s “We Three Kings,” which can be read on Kindle, Nook, or a PC. In it an American businessman is harassed by a Saudi sheik over possession of a rare gold coin, and our State Department gives the sheik a free hand to deal with the hero as he wishes. Finished in 1980, long before anyone had ever heard the term “jihad,” no publisher has been courageous enough to publish it. Nevertheless, it is available and an audio book deal for it is in the works. You can find it on Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Kings-Merritt-Fury-ebook/dp/B003YXXKP2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321879866&sr=8-1
By way of coincidence, the novel also knocks the underpinnings from under Ron Paul’s contention that “it’s all our fault” that the Arabs don’t like us. Au contraire, it has been our pragmatic, conciliatory foreign policy over the last half century or more that has allowed Islam to become a nemesis. And for a heartening, cheer-rousing portrayal of how we dealt with Muslims who kidnapped Americans, see this sequence from “The Wind and the Lion.” Absent from it is any evidence of “winning hearts and minds,” or “bringing democracy” to a barbaric, medievalist culture. “Isolationism” needn’t entail an absence of moral efficacy in dealing with governments that initiate force against us, nor an unwillingness to exercise force in answer to force.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGWdng1hl0U
"Such specialization tends to lead to missing critical broad knowledge, and to the mistake of thinking only inside the box."
That was damn funny... Yes, clearly Paul is not the best choice. But I'd rather have a highly specialized doctor over a statist community organizer any day.
Outstanding piece, I'll be distributing it widely.
Paul is scary dumb on global matters.
I would contend, Sagunto, that there are Republican candidates for President who do "get" Islam at least somewhat. They are Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachmann and Newt Gingrich. All three have spoken very publicly about the many dangers inherent in Sharia and how it is often incompatible with basic Constitutional principles like free speech and freedom of religion. Ron Paul, by contrast, has remained insouciantly ignorant of Islamic doctrines to the present day. Now, while Santorum and Bachmann don't really have any realistic chance of capturing the Republican Presidential nomination, Gingrich does. Gingrich is probably the smartest of all Republican candidates, though Paul and Romney are also very smart and, notwithstanding assessments to the contrary, every single candidate in this field is bright enough to take on Obama, who would be my selection for being possessed of the most overrated intellect in the Western world.
Respecting America, and specifically Wilsonian interventionism coupled with the managerial state, there is much merit in what you contend, though I would argue that PC/MC nonsense originated as much in Western Europe as in America and is even worse over across the pond where you live. Your "rant" as you called it (I did not find it such), reminded me of what that great man, Winston Churchill, said of America, which he was very fond of and which he often referred to as the "Great Republic," to wit, that America always does the right thing after exploring every other possibility. There's also the sage assessment, which you perhaps already know of, offered by the cantankerous but effective British general, Viscount Montgomery, that it does no good to win a war but lose the peace. America has been better over the long run at winning wars than winning peaces. We Americans need to start winning both.
I also don't think of Ron Paul as an isolationist regarding trade (who is?), but he certainly is isolationist respecting foreign policy and possibly any military endeavor that America might have to engage in in the future. He clearly is ready to essentially abandon Israel, and that's a damn shame since Israel is the only true democracy in the entire Middle East. Overall, while I certainly think that America has at times gotten too involved in world affairs, Paul represents to me the other extreme of not wanting to get involved enough. He's a "no go" for me principally because of this and also because of his extra amount of ignorance about Islam.
Kind regs from America, Sagunto
Wellington
Any US politicians should be required to read Koran from cover to cover, and especially passages regarding Jews, Christians and "infidels". Also, they should read passages which dis Jews for liking life on earth while "true Muslims should prefer "eternal life" (presumably with 72 virgins.
It is easy to see how in a sexually repressed society, as most Muslim countries are, young men find the life in Paradise with 72 virgins preferable to their grim future in dysfunctional societies which deny their basic human rights. Therefore they could be lured into "martyrdom" (blowing themselves up while murdering Jews and Americans) by imams who consider murder of non-Muslim (and Muslim) civilians deserving a fast ticket to Paradise with 72 virgins.
Most Muslim countries never signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights sine their sharia is incompatible with granting rights to individuals. Forget about freedom of expression! Telling the truths about various aspects of Islam may get you "legally" stoned to death or hanged, just as that poor Christian woman in Pakistan is awaiting her sentence. Being a Jew in Pakistan may get you beheaded, as Daniel Pearl was.
When one also understand that 1600 MILLIONS of Muslims take as a supreme role model an illiterate pedophile polygamist (who married Aisha, one of his 12 wives, when she was 6 and he was 50 years old man) and murderer, responsible for gruesome murder (by beheading) of 900 Jews, then we do have a problem!
It is not a coincidence that Nazi ideology, after being defeated in Europe in WWII found a fertile soil in Muslim countries, particularly Arab countries. Borg like, Jew-hating ideology of Islam is very similar. The Nazi war criminal (who spent WWII in Berlin egging Hitler on to exterminate all Jews), Amin al Hussayni, (the Mufti of Jerusalem) was let go by the British and French to to spread his Jew hatred and prevent the second partition of Palestine. This irrational Jew hatred is the major cause of most of Middle East problems.
Hi Wellington -
Just a quick afterthought about your contention (and then some more):
"I would argue that PC/MC nonsense originated as much in Western Europe as in America"
I write from a Dutch perspective, not a European one, because for us, the people, there is none. There are no "Europeans", except for the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. Anyway, in Holland, right after the war and during all of the fifties, it was still possible for a widely read Dutch writer like Godfried Bomans to use the word "nikker" (no need for a translation, I guess). Holland wasn't multi-ethnic back then.
Things started to change during the sixties and seventies, when the ascendancy of US political correctness coincided with the sudden and large scale immigration of blacks from Surinam. In the eighties, things had already changed beyond recognition. In those days we witnessed increasing state-sponsored attempts to sanitize public speech, following the US example.
Regarding trade and the economy in general, there's only one GOP candidate who really gets (Austrian) free market economics. He's therefore the only one who predicted the crisis of 2008 seven years ahead. All of the other electable candidates support the FEDishist, IRS based welfare state system that is responsible for the current economic crisis. These two institutions practise legalized looting that Ron Paul would seek to abolish, to be replaced with nothing (probably the real reason he is hated by the establishment).
Unsurprisingly, the other candidates also supported the scandalous bailouts of the politically well connected pseudo-entrepreneurs. David Stockman has called TARP "the single greatest economic-policy abomination since the 1930s, or perhaps ever." Here Ron Paul has stood with the American people, while on the other hand, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, and Rick Perry sided with the welfare state establishment.
And finally, when someone isn't willing to wage wars that are undeclared by Congress and therefore unconstitutional, that doesn't make him an "isolationist". Dr Paul just doesn't toe the neo-progressive line of the welfare/warfare state.
In the 2007 edition of this race, John McCain said the following:
"Congressman Paul I heard him about bringing our troops home. And about the war in Iraq and how it's failed. And ehm.. I wanna tell ya, that kind of isolationism, sir, is what caused World War II. We allowed [cheers from crowd] .. We allowed Hitler to come to power with that kind of attitude of isolationism [..]"
My concern isn't with the isolationism argument, that I find rather unconvincing; it isn't even with Ron Paul getting or needing a fair thrashing for his apparent ignorance about Islamic doctrine (to me, the other pre-packaged establishment candidates sound eerily like Reagan or Bush, pandering to Christian conservatives on the well known issues, thanking them afterwards by leaving them empty-handed like nothing ever happened.)
My real concern is, like I said in my previous comment, with JW keeping its focus on educating the public about Islamic doctrine. Some of the posts about Ron Paul, with the facile use of Godwin-like jabs and all, presenting an eminently discourteous "interview" to illustrate a point, are i.m.o. not that far removed from the depth and quality of analysis of the above quote by Mr McCain.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag
I agree with most of the comments. But I'd like to add a few things just incase some legislator might read this.
1. As in all wars the first thing the "leaders must do is get to know the enemy". The U.S.A. legislators or military have yet to do this. Therefor, they have know clue of this enemies motivation, commitment, location, funding, size, its history, its leaders, and or most important is this enemies ideology.
2. This didn't start with 9-11 so Ron Paul is way off base with that remark. As most of you have said this began in the 6th century. Headed by Muhammad and his army of terrorists against all non-Muslims.
3. America is not the only country under attack by this enemy. I hope we can agree that the entire world is this enemies battle field. So has the United States really created this? I would say if anything the U.S. has been too appeasing with regard to this enemy. To the point that some legislators should be brought to justice for treason.
4. This war is unlike any other war before it. And not just a little bit different, but a lot different. For example this war has no front lines, or borders. So we can't fight this enemy like we have fought others.
5. This enemy wears no uniform, or colors. So it would appear that its entire military is made up by civilians. And therefor is not clearly diffind. It is foolish to make the claim that Americans have killed civilians because they (all terrorists) are all civilians.
6. This enemy is instructed by God (so they claim) to kill all none Muslims (kuffars) if they wont become Muslim themselves. That is a huge undertaking it wont happen in a life time or a generation.
7. This enemy has no rules of war or ethics. They attack when it is easiest and most effective. They are best at killing civilians and no confronting their enemy head on.
8. This enemy uses fear and surprize as its most effective tool or weapon. Take notice that fear goes unseen throughout the world. And surprize is most effective. Both make our military at a huge disadvantage.
9. This enemy uses the entire world as its battlefield and training ground. I've heard that there are 13 training grounds right here it America. So if it is the legislators duty first and formost to defend this nation against all enemies foreign and domestic they have certainly not done so against this enemy.
10. This enemy uses stealth applications that go unnoticed
and which use the athority of the pen, civil law, the government, the universities, and grade schools, congress, local law enforcment, federal law enforcment, the courts, and the media to their advantage. Hitler never had anything close to this.
11. This enemy always uses taqiyya against its foe to its advantage. Which is to disolve the enemies defense and gain trust before it attacks.
12. This enemy will always say it is the victim, and totally innocent of any wrong doing, or crime. It is very effective in a civil society.
13. This enemy has been at this for 1400 years and has no intent of stopping. It knows exactly what it is doing and when best to do it. Their instructions are in the Qu'ran, and the Hadith which also happens to be their holly books.
14. This enemy uses religion as its mask to gain the respect and trust of its enemy before it attacks. This also helps hide its ideology.
15. This enemy will never stop this jihad on non-Muslims. They even give birth so that they can help supply the jihad martyers with more warriors. They also have as many as 4 wives for the same reason. Life means very little to these martyers.
This list could go on and on but one thing is for sure Ron Paul doesn't know this enemy at all. And neither do 98% of our legislators or media. Everytime they open their mouths they show just how ignorant they are.
Hi Wellington -
Just one last bit of anti-establishment propaganda ;)
Don't know whether you or @Kinana are still visiting this thread, but anyway, here goes.
Here's a classic Ron Paul for you, 1999: “Serbia has not threatened us nor used any force against any American citizen”.
What you have not been saying, yet what the disproportionate amount of warnings featuring on JW against Ron Paul and some of the commentators are suggesting, is basically that one must trust the U.S. neo-progressive establishment, which, in neglecting the warnings of, yes, Dr Paul, provided the world with an Islamic state in Bosnia (cheered by McCain c.s.), bombed Serbia over Kosovo (the neo-progs, again, in full agreement), and which overthrew the secular Saddam Hussein, thus playing midwife to an Iraq (Egypt, Lybia) whose fundamental law is now based on Islam?
Let's forget about the fact that all of these acts were unconstitutional.
Remember that the neo-progressive establishment is bipartisan in nature and consists of the wide spectrum of allowable opinion that ranges from Hillary Clinton all the way to Mitt Romney.
That's what some commenters are unwittingly defending, when they allow some of these teleprompted, focus-grouped and groomed empty suits to pose as pseudo-allies in our struggle against the islamization of our lands. The managerial welfare state sponsors islamization (it certainly does here in Holland), and they represent the managerial state.
Think the righteous ones standing with Israel, will pass the Serbia test, when in the not so distant past they failed so miserably? Only then will such people be truly believable to me.
My guess is that they talk a good deal about the danger of sharia, like Bush told the Christian conservative voters what they wanted to hear, and then, after the votes have been cast and the position secured, they'll do nothing whatsoever to resist Islam's gradual infestation of our nations.
Think about it.
All the best from Amsterdam,
Sag
As much as I disliked TARP, Sagunto, a good case could be made for the argument that not having it would have created worldwide economic meltdown. Yes, greed and stupidity, both in America and Europe, created huge economic problems from 2006 onwards, but if John Maynard Keynes' ideas have ever had any legitimacy, they did with TARP.
Respecting unconstitutionalism, I would vigorously argue that the President of the United States can, effectively and constitutionally, use the America Armed Forces without getting a declaration of war from Congress. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the sole power to declare war but Article II makes the President the Commander-in-Chief of the American military. Hence, a constitutional ambiguity has existed from 1789 onwards. And note this well and that is that America has been involved in some two hundred military conflicts since the Constitution came into effect and in only five of these conflicts (War of 1812, Mexican War, Spanish-American War and World Wars I and II) has Congress officially and legally declared war. It is therefore, I would argue, bordering on high theory to a preposterous level to maintain that a President cannot use the American Armed Forces without an official declaration of war by Congress. An an example, the Korean War is one of the ten largest wars in history, and yet President Truman never received a declaration of war from the American legislature. I would contend he didn't need to. And I write this as the American attorney that I am.
Regarding Serbia in 1999, I supported that action by Bill Clinton. There are two stages to the breakdown of Yugoslavia which began in 1991. The first stage lasted from 1991-1999 and was characterized by brutality and massive instability on all sides. All of Europe was deeply worried about spill-over effects (e.g., Italy and Hungary profoundly concerned about untold thousands of Yugoslav refugees making their way into their countries). The bombing of Serbia put a stop to this acute stage of the Yugoslavian meltdown and functioned as a relief to one European NATO member after another. I'm sorry Serbia was made the fall guy here but sometimes such things are necessary. The second stage of the breakdown has existed from 1999 to the present. It's a sorry spectacle in many instances to be sure, but it has not immediately threatened European stability like the acute stage did. I am convinced that if America had not acted as it did, sending a message to all, and not just the Serbians, to cut it out with the massacres and slaughters ad nauseam, America would have been blamed for not acting and continental instability would have roiled markets worldwide. Sometimes, and especially if you're the great power, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Rome found this out. So did France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ditto for Britain in the nineteenth century. And so on and so on. BTW, I was opposed to the creation of an independent Kosovo. This was moving too much in the other direction.
Respecting Ron Paul, whatever merit he has as an economic thinker, he still remains utterly clueless about Islam. The man is a walking ignoramus regarding Islam and Gingrich, Bachmann and Santorum are not. I also find his general isolationist inclinations to be unrealistic in this modern age, though believe me, Sagunto, when I say that if American isolationism was realistic, I would be the first to sign on board. I'm very tired of the rest of the world. It keeps screwing up again and again (e.g., Europe started both world wars) and America has had to come to the rescue many times over because Russians and Chinese were not collectively smart enough not to adopt Marxist idiocy. Ditto, respecting screwed-up areas of the world, for an almost permanently dysfunctional Latin America. Need I go on about the highly dysfunctional Middle East? And so on and so forth. Also, whatever faults America has engaged in over the past century, the student of history that I am has led me to the irrevocable conviction that the entire world would be far darker today had no America existed over these past ten decades. As Mark Steyn has observed, a world without America is a world that would be subject to the tyrants of the earth. Just so.
Hope you're doing well. Thanks for the intellectual give and take. You're very good at it. Take care, my friend.
Wellington
My pleasure, Wellington.
I'm pressed for time, so here's just a quick notice that I'm still following this thread. (how do you keep track? Do you receive mail when new comments arrive, because I've not managed - yet - to get those with Typepad).
Will be back for perhaps some final remarks. Take care, and all the best from over here.
Sagunto
Final remarks will have to wait 'till perhaps another post on Ron Paul (reckon this won't be the last on JW, I'll just look him up in the category of "useful idiots").
So I'd like to leave you with my hypothetical question about the subject of this topic:
What would be the chance, you think, of Dr Paul ever condoning so-called "hate-speech" laws, used by the established representatives of the managerial state to suppress undesired opinion?
Think he'd be more or less eager than the diamond dozen candidates to use state power in service of curtailing freedom of speech? Note that these laws have been a great tool for stealth jihadists all over the West.
Until we meet again Wellington. Many thanks for the honourable exchange. Take care, and, as always:
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag