beast of the east
Active member
I To the best of my memory way back then I dont think a lot of people had a problem going to war in Afghanistan. ( I could be wrong on that but most people I know even people on the left had no problem with it and the people at least in the R&P forum here didnt. It was Bush going into Iraq that most of us had a major problem with and were against from day 1. There were a couple of supporters on this board of going into Iraq way back then but definitely not even close to the majorityI am actually surprised that I agree with much that is discussed, and wanted to give an additional perspective since a friend posted this article in facebook, and so I felt it was my duty to respond to it .. the link to the article is here:
How are you my brother, and thanks for posting this interesting article, one which I disagree with, and I will explain in detail why, because you are a well learned and open-minded person. So to start off, first, both you and I being brought up Muslim understand the lineage Islam draws up through Christianity to Judaism to Abraham in which Islam is the culmination of the message of God but we embrace all of it as part of our heritage. Second, both you and I know that there is a massive crisis in Islam, where Wahhabism has largely hijacked and perverted the Islamic narrative to something unrecognizable. Third, similarly Christianity is in a massive crisis as well in the US, the left/liberals have largely hijacked and perverted its narrative, and now when the term Christian is used it connotes white supremacy, racism, misogyny and xenophobia. But because true Islam stands for religious tolerance, we “resist” whenever any religion (especially our heritage) is being undermined. Fourth, since the Guardian newspaper is a bastion of left/liberals, which wants to form opinions instead of triggering free thought, I take anything they say with a huge pinch of salt. This is because like Christianity, Steve Bannon is also being smeared. One question is what does he mean by Judeo-Christian values (in fairness he should use Abrahamic religious values to better include true Muslims), and you can trace this back to the Declaration of Independence of the US which starts by saying:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator (note that the term Jehovah, Allah, God is not used) with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..."
The declaration of independence, the constitution, and the bill of rights (not to mention Islamic Jurisprudence – we are all equal in the eyes of Allah) are based on something called natural law, which is a philosophy that certain rights are inherent by virtue of human nature and can be understood universally through human reason.
That’s why Eisenhower in one of his addresses says ‘“all men are endowed by their Creator". In other words, our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is. With us of course it is the Judeo-Christian concept, but it must be a religion with all men [and women] created equal."
In the US it is vital to remember that the founding fathers separated church from state, but they did not separate the creator from state; they acknowledged that the creator as the source of rights, and, in fact, they were careful to place Biblical (Judeo-Christian) morality directly into the founding documents and laws, and into the values and culture precisely to help prevent a future of totalitarian or tyrannical rule in the US. The combination of keeping Judeo-Christian religious morality in the state, as opposed to the church itself, and setting up the laws based on reason and common sense has contributed to what is known as "American exceptionalism".
So basically what the history tells us is that the founding fathers were religious in a new way - Judeo-Christian - and they were the liberals of their day by reasoning that political and human rights come from a power higher than human government; but they were conservative to Judeo-Christian morality. There was and still is a connection between God and Liberty, but what is ironic is that the conservatives are now the champion of this most liberal founding principle; and further irony is that most conservatives are largely unaware of their connection with the liberal founding ideas.
Overall what Bannon (and most true Muslims) are asking - in the age of crony capitalism led inequality, terror, stripping of liberties, growing intolerance (to women, other religions in Wahhabism, and to conservative thought, Christianity in the West) – is what happened to our values of human decency. Why has massive, big government (that entrenched crony capitalism led immoral inequality undermining liberties) displaced our values of being equal in the eyes of our creator, etc.??? These religious divides aren’t natural or an accident so while us Muslims are trying to recapture our true narrative, Bannon has more narratives to confront … Sorry for the long post, but since we are living in an Orwellian-like Dystopia, propaganda is the hardest pill to swallow.
Extremely well written. Thanks for sharing it.
Thank you as well ... the space for free thought and liberty is literally almost snuffed out ... and I cannot believe how subtly and steadily Christianity became demonized, and (sickening, uninformed) love for us Muslims grew. Neither religion is monolith but has been propagandized into their respective pigeon holes, and battle lines are drawn, dividing both, because of fascist views ...
While I would say without question you have an impressive ability to think critically, recently at a wedding, I was superficially discussing what is going on in the world with another guest. He framed it very simply and perhaps accurately, when he stated this battle that is being waged is between good and evil.
There are forces at play that want to further divide, to keep intelligent people of opposing views from civil discourse that finds common ground. In doing so, the seeds of hatred are purveyed, and out of that hatred s-called leaders seek to seize and hold power by inciting their base against the opposition party or group. Classically, this is how civilized groups of people have committed atrocities against masses of people, frequently based on ideological differences when racial or religious differences fail to generate discord.
Well said. We have never in the history of this planet experienced this astonishing level of income equality. A handful of rich, powerful people have established an ideological hegemony over the planet and they are almost impossible to counter. The only weapon of the weak, and I mean only, that they overlooked ... was the vote. So I hold out some hope but the heavy war waged war by brain-washed followers on the current administration leaves me pessimistic. Fascism on this side is also propagated by an extremely powerful group equally and heavily waged by an equally brainwashed cadre. It wouldn’t be surprising if both sides on top are in cahoots (without turning this into a conspiracy theory). I don't know if you remember a Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et. al. who abducted Daniel Pearl outside Hotel Metropole in Karachi (literally half a mile away from my then office where I was working with a non-governmental organization on helping the poorest of the poor to raise their incomes), and who was caught later in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The vast silent majority was horrified knowing that Danny was Jewish, and that they knew it wouldn’t end well. But they had been pummeled themselves with severe domestic terrorism and fear, and with it the resistance. But the fascism of these people (and while I generally don't pay much attention to WPost) is profoundly captured in the article below, and reflects the horrifying crisis in the religion. So while the discourse on both Christians and Muslims has become monolith, and while Bannon separates jihadi islamic fascism from Islam, I think there is a need to drop Islamic in the first one, and call it jihadi fascism:
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When John McCain ran for President, he was excoriated by the left for tesponding that if we have to be at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for 100 years, so be it. That response was to a question as to how long we should be engaged in combat in those two countries. I always felt his response would have been better communicated by a simple "one more day than our enemy wishes to engage us."
It's fascinating then to read that KSM's explanation the jihadists knew that the resolve of the soft underbelly of America would have no tolerance for war and simply want to quit. It calls to mind Pope Paul VI, who i believe said that the opposite of war isn't peace, it's justice.
I respect your comments about classifying terrorists as jihadists and not Muslim jihadists, since their ideology has little to fo with religion and casts too wide a net over Islam as a whole. Jidlhadists are as much an enemy of Islam even as they operate under the veil of its faith. By turning Christians and jews against all of Islam, they hope that apocalyptic jihad will ensue.
The only way to defeat isis and other jihadi terrorists, is resolve. Interesting to me at least that KSMs expressed surprise at GWB attacking with ferocity in part vindicates Bush's actions as perhaps heroic in the context of history.
After Hussein was deposed who were we fighting in Iraq?
The worst part of our selves.
Well if this was a quiz for a college sociology class, you would be graded as correct. My answer is that for nearly the entire war, we fought alongside Iraqi troops in decimating Al-Qaeda, securing 18 of 22 provinces at the time Bush left office. They had free elections, and also had a ratified constitution. All we had to do was provide security forces until transfer to Iraqi forces could be smoothly contained. Obama sent Joe Biden to negotiate the transfer, and he failed. We withdrew our troops and ISIS then occupied the vacuum created by the lack of adequate security. As far as I'm concerned, if we wiped out terrorists on Iraqi soil as fast as they could sign up, the spirit of ISIS could have been broken and with vigilance, terrorism quelled.
So this is the generally accepted outcome if we had ensured complete transfer of power to Iraqi forces. I can agree that this would have been a better decision than pulling our troops out before the job was done. However, I would suggest we might also be in a better place had we never went to Iraq. We all know the decision making factor was "weapons of mass destruction".
The WMD discussion framed as a lie perpetrated by Bush puzzles me. Bill Clinton believed during his admin that Iraq was developing WMDs. Hussein thumbed his nose at 17 UN resolutions demanding that weapons inspectors be let in. Finally, Hussein's own son in law, who had fled Iraq, claimed that Hussein had a mobile lab working on the creation of wmd's. Hussein lured him back to Iraq with the pretense of reconciliation, then murdered him. We do know that Hussein did use poison gas in Kuwait. So while WMDs may not have existed in Iraq, Hussein deliberately wanted the world to believe he had them and The world community believed this. Bush was not alone there.
We do know that Iraq was a sponsor of terrorism so i believe that eventually the war in Iraq will be framed by history as the US response to 9-11 and our first derious salvo on the war against terror as a response to 9-11. I would also agree that between the bush and subsequent Obama actions it served to conytibute to destabilizing he region along with the deposal of khadafi in libya
