Who is even doing that? Powell’s bizarre statement is yet another sally in the never-ending battle to establish Muslims as victims and smear every opposition to jihad terror as “bigotry” and “Islamophobia.” These endless straw men have the effect of fooling people into thinking that any opposition to jihad terror, any proposal designed to stop it or limit it, is victimizing innocent Muslims and must therefore be opposed. Powell, after speaking sensibly here about the vacuum in Libya, should know better, as should all of the present military brass. But they apparently do not.
“Colin Powell: U.S. Should Not ‘Single Out Just Muslims as Being Bad,’” by Nicholas Ballasy, PJ Media, September 28, 2016:
WASHINGTON – Using the war in Libya and the conflict in Syria as examples, former Secretary of State Colin Powell cautioned against U.S.-backed regime changes.
Touching upon the debate surrounding U.S. immigration from the Middle East, Powell said Muslims should not be “singled out” as threats.
“You better be careful because – and I have considerable experience with this – just taking out the regime doesn’t necessarily fix the problem. And especially in the post-Cold War world I saw this over and over where you had a pressure cooker that you have kept the pressure inside for the last 60 years, because of the Cold War strategy and because we knew there was a Soviet Union we had to deal with and there was a NATO and there was an Atlantic alliance,” he said at the International Bar Association conference last week.
Powell said the U.S. military intervention in support of the Libyans’ Arab Spring revolution, supported by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of State, led to the death of Moammar Gadhafi but resulted in chaos.
“Now we have chaos because there was no plan to do anything for the Libyans or with Libya,” he said….
“We should not isolate and single out just Muslims as being bad. We do have terrorists that come from the Muslim community but we also have some that are homegrown, nutty terrorists that do terrible things. But it would not be our way of doing things if we were to condemn an entire people merely because of their religious belief, and I’ve spoken out on this repeatedly,” Powell said….