Saturday, August 21, 2010

General Petraeus Is A Religious Bigot

Pictured are General David Petraeus, architect of the Iraq surge and current commander in Afghanistan, and an obscure politician from Illinois. General Petraeus has a long, honorable and public record of service to America. The other guy showed up a couple of years ago and has no previous paper trail. The politician supports the building of a mosque at Ground Zero. The general is an anti-Muslim bigot according to some of the friends of the politician.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) appears to agree with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) that Gen. Petraeus is not only a mass murdering Crusader, but has even written an operations manual which is a manifestation of Islamophobia. The OIC has international connections, whereas CAIR is largely a home-grown group which is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation scam which used the money from sympathetic dupes to fund terrorism.

The OIC represents a Heinz (57 varieties) of Islamic nations and pseudo-nations with the express mission of finding anti-Muslim sentiment wherever it hides. Rather than admit that the Petraeus manual is a guide for how to conduct a war in what are incidentally Islamic territories, the organization focuses on it as being an alleged anti-Islamic diatribe. OIC intersperses portions of the manual in between totally unrelated descriptions of barbaric practices condemned in the West by other writers (such as honor killing, female genital mutilation, arranged child marriages, and opposition to the building of a mosque at Ground Zero). By doing so, the organization puts words in Petraeus's mouth and manual that are actually not there at all. Petraeus is discussing war tactics and strategy, the others are discussing Islam. If one of the unnamed writers goes over the top, Petraeus is now tarred with the same brush.

Most of the criticisms from the other writers is valid, some questionable, and some distorted. One story that OIC related came from a BBC broadcast which merely repeated the allegations of two burqaed women who claimed a London bus driver had demonstrated anti-Islamic bigotry. A naked allegation, never proved. Another concerned the story of the right-wing English Defence League members who conspired to bomb a London mosque. That one was totally disproven. But the OIC reported both stories as true, and threw a few pieces from Petraeus's manual in as if it were part of the fabric of the alleged anti-Muslim bigotry.

Gen. Petraeus is a very circumspect gentleman, and is also bound by the orders of two Presidents--Bush and Obama--not to identify Islam as a religion to be dealt with, nor as an integral part of the broad pattern of international terrorism and insurgency. In every public statement, spoken or written, he has scrupulously made it clear that America has enemies, not all of them are Muslims, but that some of our enemies are both jihadists and Muslims. He has emphasized time and again that we are not at war with any religion, and that includes Islam. I think that is overly-generous, but it certainly shows that he has not attacked Islam in any way except for pointing out some Islamic extremists. This is even more true of his operations manual.

But Petraeus has had to walk a very thin tightrope. He knows who the enemy is in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan, but it is the policy of the White House, much like CAIR and OIC, to pretend that religion and jihad have absolutely nothing to do with the war(s) America is fighting. In fact, Petraeus's manual identifies Muslims largely to the extent of how to avoid conflict with them when they are not directly involved in the fight. Dangerous caution, as far as I'm concerned, but hardly Islamophobic. Still, the two jihadist organizations (oops, human rights organizations) find the mere mention of Islam in the manual to be "Islamophobic," even when it's sole purpose is to soothe potential religious conflicts.

It strikes me that in the Middle East, "Islamophobia" is the word used to end all counter-arguments, logic and facts. It's much like the word "racism" in America. Petraeus wants to protect American lives and innocent Muslim civilian lives by use of his manual, but that's not good enough if he identifies a single bloodthirsty terrorist as a Muslim. Most Americans would find Petraeus's manual to be religion-neutral. But most Americans also think the Ground Zero mosque shouldn't be built for myriad reasons having nothing directly to do with religion. So when will the Appeaser-in-Chief realize that his top general in the Middle East has been declared an Islamophobe? Obama will then throw Petraeus under the bus with the rest of the people who make him look bad in the eyes of tyrants and dictators who happen to be, entirely incidentally of course, Muslims.

12 comments:

Joel Farnham said...

LawHawk,

Obama seems to always want to shoot himself in the foot.

Unknown said...

Joel: The only thing that keeps him from doing so is that he's too prissy to carry a gun. LOL

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, I think that is a little generous as well. During WWII, were we at war with the Nazis or just extremist Nazis? And in this case, its becoming very clear that large numbers of Islamic groups are participating in the anti-American jihad through funding, and by not standing up against these "extremists" OR their interpretations of law which continue to spur them.

With only a handful of exceptions, I have yet to hear any "reputable" Muslim condemn terrorism, condemn honor killings, condemn treating "infidels" differently. Instead, all they ever seem to be able to condemn are cartoonists and evil Americans who won't let them murder in peace.

If a Christian group had done what al Qaeda and their dozens of friends had done, the Christian world would be up in arms -- condemning, rooting them out, and supporting efforts to stop them. Even non-Christians, like the Europeans, would be out there holding mass rallies and demanded and end. The would support all kinds of limits on innocent Christians and churches, and they would be demanded as much government-violence as possible to stop those people.

But somehow, since it's Muslims, we can't do that.

Unknown said...

Andrew: I couldn't agree more. Moderate Muslims in American today are somewhat parallel to German citizens in 1930s Germany as the Nazis rose to power. "First they came for the Jews, and I said nothing, because I wasn't a Jew . . ."

Burke told us that all that was necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. If there really are moderate Muslims in America, where are their voices? "Moderate Muslims" who were strangely quiet about their views after 9-11 are somehow now speaking out loudly in favor of the Ground Zero mosque. If this much effort had been put into condemning the 9-11 attacks, I might be a lot less suspicious of Islam in America.

Unknown said...

One other thing I've forgotten to mention over time that really irritates me to the n'th degree. The Ground Zero adherents who are so horrified by "Islamophobia" and proclaim that their First Amendment rights are being trampled on forget a juicy tidbit from the first Gulf War. While they're busy demanding their right to build a monument to the Religion of Peace next to the proof that it is anything but, remember who first screamed for our help to stop Saddam Hussein.

It was Saudi Arabia, and the plea went something like this: "America, help, come save us! Oh, and by the way, don't even think of allowing your troops to celebrate Christmas." How's that for tolerance? My ability to bend over backwards to accommodate anything Islamic ended that day. I'll agree to defend their right to worship in their own way, which is something they won't grant us. But I'll be damned if I'll cooperate in their desire to humiliate us.

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, It's rather hard to forget the images of Palestinian and Egyptians cheering in the streets on 9/11. It's also rather hard to forget that there almost no Muslims rushing to condemn 9/11. Instead, they all ran out to justify the acts by saying we brought it on ourselves, and to whine that they were going to face anti-Muslim anger now.

Unknown said...

Andrew: And I also remember that just like the black protests against Schindler's List, CNN showed the mobs celebrating violence right after the occurrences, but quickly deleting those from their later reports lest they be called racist. But that's another issue entirely.

In addition to your very accurate comment, I also remind people that Rauf, the chief supporter of the Ground Zero mosque and Obama goodwill ambassador to Jihadistan on the taxpayers' dollar stated within mere days after 9-11 that America was a contributing cause to the mass murder at Ground Zero and "created al Qaeda." I'll tolerate that the same way I'll tolerate a home-invasion burglary.

Joel Farnham said...

LawHawk,

You know this argument about how WE caused 9-11 is the same argument that rapists used to use.

She was asking for it by the way she was dressed.

Total BS, but the 'rapist' believes it.

Unknown said...

Joel: Blame the victim is as old as the hills. The rapists have been doing it since time immemorial. But I hadn't really thought of the analogy until you brought it up. If we hadn't dressed up in such magnificent buildings and expressed our will to succeed and produce worldwide wealth so publicly, they never would have murdered 3,000 people.

StanH said...

You cannot defeat an enemy if you can’t name it. This too me was a giant mistake on “W’s” part. It was important to point out that we are going after Muslim terrorist, jihadist, wherever they may be…and a tale, tale sign, happens to be the cult of Islam. I believe this politically correct crap is what stopped “W” from thumping Iran, taking out their nukes years ago…no invasion necessary.

Tennessee Jed said...

Hawk - nice post. just got the puppy to bed. I think it is clear there are many Muslims who, if not fanatics themselves, inwardly root for the jihadists. I suspect there are many Muslims who do not, and I agree with the need to hear their voices. I suspect many who stay silent are afraid for their own safety, lest they have a fatwah issued calling for their death. It takes courage to stand tall, and most are not up to the task.

Unknown said...

Stan: There is considerable truth in what you say. We had no problem going after Nazis by design and Germans who hadn't stopped them. We went after Tojo's imperialist war machine by design and Japanese who hadn't stopped them. But we had no trouble identifying the enemy. Everyone with an IQ above room temperature knows who the current enemy is, but political correctness keeps us from identifying them. Political correctness and cultural sensitivities are going to cost far more lives than they will save, and Western civilization could disappear from the face of the earth while we're carefully not offending anyone.

"Terror" is something we want to stop, but terror is not a real entity. It's something that is done by people whose religion we dare not name. Petraeus named that enemy, but was extremely cautious in the way he did it. His reward for cultural sensitivity is to be labeled an Islamophobe.

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