Newshoggers.com

Change Because Obama is Saying It

By BJ Bjornson

One of the big stories today is the speech Obama gave in Cairo. The reactions in the US are mostly predictable, with the majority of people quite impressed and some right wing nuts snatching tiny quotes out of context to scream about appeasement, apologies, weakness, anti-Americanism, and how just giving the speech is doing Iran’s diplomacy for them.

Michael Crowley, however, notes that much of the rhetoric Obama employed in his speech is hardly new or unfamiliar.

But in fact, much of Obama's speech had a different sort of familiar ring. Most of his main arguments have been made before--not just by Obama himself, but by his predecessor. "Today I'd like to speak directly to the people across the broader Middle East," George W. Bush said at the United Nations on September 16, 2006. Like Obama, Bush explained that the United States is not at war with Islam. Like Obama, Bush said that America respects the history and traditions of the Muslim world. Like Obama, Bush deplored the September 11 attacks and vowed to fight the tiny minority of Islamic extremists. Bush also assured his audience that "freedom, by its nature, cannot be imposed. It must be chosen;" Obama said that "no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other." Bush lamented the "daily humiliation of occupation" suffered by the Palestinians; Obama said the Palestinians "endure the daily humiliations... that come with occupation." Bush assured Iran that he did not oppose their use of peaceful nuclear power; so did Obama.

He then asks why Bush’s speech was forgettable while Obama’s seems likely to resonate for some time, and gives a partial if woefully incomplete answer; that Obama speaks at a higher intellectual and rhetorical level and has a reputation for honesty and decency, but that the main reason is Obama being black with Muslim roots.  Only passing reference to the fact he doesn’t have that pesky foreign invasion of W’s on his resume.

I rather think that last, and much of what preceded and progressed from it, are why Bush’s speech was forgettable.  In Bush’s case, his actions had long since made clear that such platitudes were, “just words”.  “Freedom, by its nature, cannot be imposed”, but we’ll do our damnedest to impose democracy on Iraq and Afghanistan. Lamenting the “daily humiliation of occupation” of the Palestinians, while apparently entering secret agreements with the Israelis to expand their settlements.  Professing support for democracy, but tossing it aside as soon as its results aren’t to their liking.  The hypocrisy destroyed any resonance the words may have otherwise had.

It wasn’t always like that.  In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I remember being impressed by what Bush was saying, much as Obama’s words impress now.  Had Bush actually meant any of it, Obama would have a far less damaged American image to repair.

Obama’s reputation for honesty that Crowley mentioned is due in part to the fact that Obama is, for a politician, relatively honest.  For the most part, what he said in his speech is stuff he’s actually trying to do.  He is trying to close Guantanamo Bay down, (even if maintaining the “indefinite detention” part), stop torture, (even if not working too hard to hold anyone accountable for it), and even seems to have the utter gall to actually mean it when he says Israel should really freeze settlement building.

Is it enough?  Debatable.  However, it does at least hold the plausible promise of progress, and that is something I can appreciate.

Crusading In Afghanistan

By Steve Hynd

There will be people who see nothing wrong with the U.S. army becoming an army of evangelising Christian Soldiers. None of them should be allowed anywhere near a critical and  supposedly "population-centric COIN" operation.

Al-Jazeera became aware of the above video through the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, who have been aware of it since last fall. Jeremy Scahill at HuffPo has the rundown:

...US military forces in Afghanistan have been instructed by the military's top chaplain in the country to "hunt people for Jesus" as they spread Christianity to the overwhelmingly Muslim population. Soldiers also have imported bibles translated into Pashto and Dari, the two dominant languages of Afghanistan.

...In a video obtained by Al Jazeera and broadcast Monday, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility "to be witnesses for him."

"The special forces guys - they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down," he says.

"Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That's what we do, that's our business."

The translated Bibles appear to be the New Testament. According to Al Jazeera, US soldiers "had them specially printed and shipped to Afghanistan." On the tape, one soldier describes how his church in the US helped raise money for the bibles. Al Jazeera reports that "What these soldiers have been doing may well be in direct violation of the US Constitution, their professional codes and the regulations in place for all forces in Afghanistan." The US military officially forbids "proselytising of any religion, faith or practice."

But by describing the bibles as "gifts" the chaplain hints to troops, they can get around the regulations.

In the comments to Scahill's post,Chris Rodda of the MRFF writes:

I've posted quite a few pieces here [at HuffPo] about the proselytizing of Muslims by our military, but all the photographs, other videos, and even quotes from military officers admitting they're doing this have, for some reason, not been enough to convince most people that this is really going on, and how serious a problem it is. Maybe this video will wake people -- and our military leadership -- up.

Maybe it will serve as a wake-up call for those who believe that anything even close to "textbook" COIN operations can be done by the US military in Afghanistan. For Obama's vague plan to have any chance of success, so-called "hearts and minds" operations are essential. Fat chance of those working well if a band of zealot Christian Soldiers are tasked with them. As Scahill notes:

Trying to convert Muslims to any other faith is a crime in Afghanistan. The fact that the video footage is being broadcast on Al Jazeera guarantees that it will be seen throughout the Muslim world. It is likely to add more credence to the perception that the US is engaging in a war on Islam with neo-crusader forces invading Muslim lands.

Former Afghan prime minister Ahmed Shah Ahmedzai described the video as "very damaging for diplomatic relations between the two counties," while Sayed Aalam Uddin Asser, of the Islamic Front for Peace and Understanding in Kabul, told the network: "It's a national security issue ... our constitution says nothing can take place in Afghanistan against Islam.told Al-Jazeera "If people come and propaganda other religions which have no followers in Afghanistan [then] it creates problems for the people, for peace, for stability."

Yet more colonial White Man's Burden thinking, just like the other set of American interventionists in charge of US foreign policy.

Pirates - Blow back from the WOT?

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Pirates need a land base and the current crop of pirates have the lawless state of Somalia.  At Global Post Tom Fenton suggests that Somalia is lawless thanks to Bush's War on Terror.

The way to effectively reduce the risk of piracy, experts believe, is to increase security on land, and specifically to take away their safe haven in the failed state of Somalia. Somalia has become a haven for pirates because most of it is lawless. So how’s that the fault of the Bush administration?

[.....]

When the American-led coalition chased Al Qaeda fighters out of Afghanistan in late 2001, Pentagon planners feared they might establish new bases in Africa and began training African armies to handle the potential threat. Their worst fears were realized (or so they thought) when an alliance of Somali Islamists that called itself The Union of Islamic Courts chased the warlords out of much of the country and established a rough-and-ready Islamic brand of law and order.

The Somali people were for the most part relieved to have a functioning government after years of anarchy, but the Bush administration was not pleased. It believed the new government was harboring terrorists linked to the bombing of two American embassies in Africa in 1998.

Washington had no appetite for going back into Somalia, particularly with the ghosts of Black Hawk Down. So the CIA poured money into a clumsy attempt to create an alternative government out of a collection of mutually hostile warlords.

When that plan floundered, the Pentagon tried Plan B. It organized an invasion of Somalia by that country’s traditional enemies, the Ethiopians, in 2006. Americans provided intelligence, aviation, naval support and a few special forces, but the fighting was done by Ethiopians. The invasion inflicted utter devastation on the capital, Mogadishu, and toppled the new Islamic government that was making progress stabilizing the country.

That plan failed, too. It precipitated a new round of civil war in Somalia and has left the country in the grip of a humanitarian crisis that, according to the United Nations, rivals Darfur. The Ethiopians have withdrawn, and with the exception of Somaliland (a separatist region in the north) Somalia has no effective government.

Isn't it amazing how many of our problems are the result of blow back from out own misguided policy.  The US created and armed what would later morph into al-Qaeda to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.  We are now fighting that very same group in the very same country.  When we helped overthrow a government in Somalia we thought might be a threat we created a lawless state where pirates thrive.

Of course Victor Davis Hanson thinks the solution is bombing the hell out of the Somali coast line.  The NRO crew thinks bombs are the answer to everything.  Who really cares if a few non-white women and children get killed in the process.

Update

This from the Global Post's Tristan McConnel:

A debate is raging over whether pirate cash might help fund Islamic extremists, known as al-Shabaab, who control large parts of Somalia and have links to Al Qaeda. But so far pirates have shown more interest in money than ideology.

The fact that Somali imams have forbidden piracy and that attacks plummeted during the brief reign of the Islamic Courts Union in 2006 suggests that far from funding Islamists, the Islamists might be the answer to stopping piracy.

Radical Islam; 'The veil is not the same as the suicide belt'

by Jay McDonough

There were a couple comments to yesterday's post on President Obama's (and, for that matter, General Petraeus' and Secretary Robert Gates') suggestion that a potential solution to the conflict in Afghanistan might involve negotiations with the more moderate elements of the Taliban. 

One commenter, after recounting attrocities committed by radical Islamic elements, including stoning, beheadings and terrorism said "There is no room on the planet for such cultures."

The statement is pretty clearly rhetorical because, sadly, there is room for the folks that would commit those acts.  The fact is, they exist and there are Muslims who are sympathetic to their goals.  But unless a distinction is made between the radical Muslims who resort to or condone the attrocities, it's also painting with a mighty broad brush.  Islam is now the second most popular religion in the world (recently passing Catholicism as the singe largest denomination) and to assert the entire culture has no place in the world because a subset of that culture is violent is as short sighted as asserting Christianity is dangerous because some deranged guy went into a St. Louis church today and killed a pastor.  Or that Catholicism is inherantly evil because Irish Republican Army members murdered six in Northern Ireland last night. 

In an essay in Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria calls for a more nuanced American policy towards Muslim nations and makes an even finer distinction between the violent and the radical components in Islam.  Zarkaria argues the Bush Administrations policies lumping together Muslim fundamentalists from Northern Africa to Eastern Europe to the Middle East to Indonesia created a strong feeling among Muslims that the U.S. was engaged in a "battle of civilizations" with Islam.  Furthermore, U.S. support for secular despots that have opposed domestic reform only solidified that perception.

Also very interesting are Zarkaria's examples of fundamentalist Muslim elements successfully gaining control, be it Nigeria or Southern Iraq, and either working with American forces or tempering their fundamentalism over time in order to stay in power.

The point is it's complicated.  Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world and the faith of nearly a quarter of the world.  And arguing Islamic culture as a whole has no place in the world is counterproductive to U.S. interests and a continuation of thesame overly simplified thinking that's provided terrorists the fodder to enlist Muslims into their murderous ranks.

The veil is not the same as the suicide belt. We can better pursue our values if we recognize the local and cultural context, and appreciate that people want to find their own balance between freedom and order, liberty and license. In the end, time is on our side. Bin Ladenism has already lost ground in almost every Muslim country. Radical Islam will follow the same path. Wherever it is tried—in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in parts of Nigeria and Pakistan—people weary of its charms very quickly. The truth is that all Islamists, violent or not, lack answers to the problems of the modern world. They do not have a world view that can satisfy the aspirations of modern men and women. We do. That's the most powerful weapon of all.

Dutch "Ban The Koran" MP Prosecuted For Hate Speech

By Cernig

Never mind the first day of the Obama administration. The news most exciting the ire of the American ultra-right is that Dutch MP Geert Wilders is to be prosecuted for hate speech.

If someone has spoken out consistently in favor of smothering free speech and wants to ban religious books he hates - and moreover has made lurid movies and speeches describing an entire multi-billion member religious group he hates as inescapably violent Nazis - is it also stifling free speech to call him to account for all that?

Especially if he's a serving politician in his nation's parliament?

Maybe so.

For others, their hate allows no error. The real Nazis felt the same way as they carried out their pogroms and holocaust against another religious group.

Advice From The American Conservative

By Ron Beasley

As I discussed below Sarah Palin is a bit weak on foreign policy.  Well the editors of The American Conservative have some advice for her - specifically who not to listen too.

Now you’re the latest object of their attention, and you’re probably finding the program a bit confusing. They tell you that the U.S. is fighting “World War IV,” a struggle against “Islamofascism.” We can win, they say, as long as we’re prepared to bomb Iran and build up the national-security establishment at home, just like Reagan did.

Trouble is, your tutors also believe we’re still engaged in “World War III,” the Cold War with Russia. So maybe the Gipper didn’t win that one after all. In fact, neoconservatives like Norman Podhoretz chided Reagan for appeasing Moscow. And when terrorists struck the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, Reagan, instead of “staying the course,” withdrew our troops. Your Beltway suitors prescribe the opposite of Reagan’s strategy.

And as they would have it, we’re not only waging World Wars III and IV, we’re still fighting World War II. At least, that’s the way it sounds when Robert Kagan opens a Washington Post op-ed by likening Russia’s conflict with Georgia to Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. 

But Russia is not Germany, Georgia is no innocent Czechoslovakia, and Vladimir Putin is not Adolf Hitler—no matter what your guru Randy Scheunemann says. (He probably forgot to tell you that he used to lobby for the government of Georgia.)

Here’s a hint: don’t believe everything you read in the papers, especially if the byline is Kristol or Krauthammer. Russia is not an expansionist, ideological empire. It’s a traditional, semi-authoritarian great power intent on preserving its influence in its own backyard and its prestige on the world stage. That’s why Russia intercedes in the domestic disputes of unruly states on its periphery. Putin balks at Poland hosting our antimissile systems for the same reason we would bristle at Cuba or Mexico receiving Chinese antitank missiles.

With more validity, some of the people whispering in your ear tell you that Moscow wants to corner the European markets for oil and natural gas. And what nefarious end does Putin have in mind? Raising prices and reinforcing Moscow’s political clout, not with nuclear blackmail but with good, old-fashioned economic power. We have plenty of that ourselves (or at least we used to). Putin, far from being a totalitarian ideologue, is an economic nationalist, as the leaders of great powers traditionally have been.

Then there’s the Middle East, where only American arms (and lives) can prevent little Israel from being swept into the sea by Muslim hordes. Surely that’s what AIPAC told you that night you left Phyllis cooling her heels. But again, it isn’t true. Israel has nuclear weapons, for one thing, and can outfight her neighbors even without resort to atom bombs. Israel’s problem isn’t external threat so much as internal security and demographics. When the Jewish state was founded, tens of thousands of Palestinians—Christians as well as Muslims—lost their homes. Palestine was no wide-open Alaskan frontier: when the newcomers moved in, Arabs were moved out, often by force. Terrorism didn’t come to the region with Hamas or Hezbollah; decades earlier groups like the Stern Gang and Irgun used violence to clear the way for Israel’s creation. Nor was Palestinian Authority leader Yassar Arafat the first terrorist to lead a state in the Holy Land. Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir had unclean hands as well.

Since Sarah is not going to be Vice President I think she should forward the letter to Barack Obama and Joe Biden.  There is some great advice for them there too.

The New Crusaders

By Ron Beasley

Cernig touched on this below but I think it deserves a little more attention.

Iraqis claim Marines are pushing Christianity in Fallujah

FALLUJAH, Iraq — At the western entrance to the Iraqi city of Fallujah Tuesday, Muamar Anad handed his residence badge to the U.S. Marines guarding the city. They checked to be sure that he was a city resident, and when they were done, Anad said, a Marine slipped a coin out of his pocket and put it in his hand.

Out of fear, he accepted it, Anad said. When he was inside the city, the college student said, he looked at one side of the coin. "Where will you spend eternity?" it asked.

He flipped it over, and on the other side it read, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16."

"They are trying to convert us to Christianity," said Anad, a Sunni Muslim like most residents of this city in Anbar province. At home, he told his story, and his relatives echoed their disapproval: They'd been given the coins, too, he said.

The vast majority of the Iraqis already hate the American occupiers and this is like throwing gasoline on the fire.  Anything that further alienates the Iraqi population threatens the lives of US troops even more than they are threatened now.  The military says it will investigate but I'm sure the investigation will be like all the others and concentrate on some enlisted men. But it wouldn't have happened without the knowledge and help of a high ranking officer or two.  If they were to find that officer I would bet you would find someone with ties to some Christian Taliban group in the US.

On Being Spineless

Sam Harris has an essay over at The Huffington Post about how we in the West have turned into a bunch of cowardly, spineless jellyfish because we don’t offer more and greater platforms to those who attack Islam, generally don't go out of our way to attack Islam ourselves, and even occasionally go to the great lengths of actually criticizing people who do attack Islam.

I’ll leave aside the debate over whether or not it’s truly necessary to distribute and promote material you disagree with in order to defend “Free Speech”, but Harris does offer a comparison in his essay that to me encapsulates the reason I dislike so much of what he talks about in the rest of it.

A point of comparison: The controversy of over Fitna was immediately followed by ubiquitous media coverage of a scandal involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). In Texas, police raided an FLDS compound and took hundreds of women and underage girls into custody to spare them the continued, sacramental predations of their menfolk. While mainstream Mormonism is now granted the deference accorded to all major religions in the United States, its fundamentalist branch, with its commitment to polygamy, spousal abuse, forced marriage, child brides (and, therefore, child rape) is often portrayed in the press as a depraved cult. But one could easily argue that Islam, considered both in the aggregate and in terms of its most negative instances, is far more despicable than fundamentalist Mormonism. [emp. added]

The problem with his little comparison is that he's comparing a tree to a leaf. He isn't comparing Mormonism to Islam, but taking the FLDS, "depraved cult" and comparing it to Islam “in the aggregate”, so that he can say that all Muslims are worse than the most extremist Mormons.

The difference is stark and shows the double-standard that Harris and others like him hold for Muslims. No one ever asks that every Mormon of every stripe publicly condemn and reject and disavow the FLDS sect. The FLDS are portrayed as a “depraved cult”, and the mere fact that other Mormons aren’t members of said cult is generally enough for most everyone to give them a pass. Just for a moment, do a quick bit of research and see how far off the FLDS sect is from “traditional” Mormonism in many of those abhorrent practices.

Polygamy is certainly still a tenet with some strength in the more “mainstream” Mormon flock, enough for HBO to do a comedy series on it. How much discussion is there over how close other Mormons may be in their beliefs to those in the compound? Why not a discussion about Mormons “in the aggregate”? How about some calls for a Mormon "Reformation"?

When the FLDS branch, or abortion clinic bombers, or some other deranged Christians do something nasty, regardless whether or not they can find all sorts of justifications for their acts in their holy books, they are treated as deranged individuals or groups, rather than as representative of their faith. Muslims aren’t so lucky.

Whenever a Muslim does something, even if they don’t use any religious justification for their actions, it is treated as an example of the entire faith and everybody who follows it. Occasionally it is more subtle, but it is the difference between saying someone of religion X did some nasty thing, and saying someone did some nasty thing because of religion X. Muslims always seem to fall into the latter category.

Go back, if you really want to, to all those stories about the FLDS compound, and wonder for a moment if the media didn’t bother using the acronym, but instead always referred to the group solely as Mormons, or at most, fundamentalist Mormons? Talked about how their Mormon beliefs justified such practices? How “traditional” Mormon belief allowed such things? How everything they did was because they were Mormons?

How long do you think it would be before the rest of the Mormon community got a little upset over the coverage?

No faith, no group, does terribly well if it gets painted as though its most extreme members are representative of the whole. Hell, as an atheist I don’t like being lumped in with guys like Harris or a cretin like Chris Hitchens, even if by definition I happen to share at least some of their views to varying degrees. They don’t answer to me and their views are their own.

The Mormons at the compound in Texas are responsible for their own acts, regardless of what the Mormon community as a whole believes or supports, and the same goes for any other people belonging to any other overall grouping.

Harris, though, doesn’t see it that way. The only people he seems willing to criticize as individuals are those who don’t feel it’s right to demonize an entire faith because some of those who purportedly follow it are really, really bad, (particularly Muslims who seem oddly unwilling to demonize their own faith).

The lesson we should draw from the Fitna controversy is that we need more criticism of Islam, not less. Let it come down in such torrents that not even the most deluded Islamist could conceive of containing it

Islam. Not Islamists, not jihadists, not Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, not particular practices or certain activities, no qualifiers or quibbling. Go out and bash Islam, plain and simple.

But really, as Harris tells us, he’s not the bigot here.

if anyone in this debate can be credibly accused of racism, it is the western apologists and "multiculturalists" who deem Arabs and Muslims too immature to shoulder the responsibilities of civil discourse.

Note to Harris: Denouncing the entire Islamic faith is not a form of responsible civil discourse. When you figure that out, I’m sure you’ll find that there are plenty of Arabs and Muslims capable and willing to partake in such discussions.

Cross-posted from Northman's Fury