My Thoughts On Obama’s “A New Beginning” Speech (June 4, 2009)

I forgot to set my DVR to record Obama’s speech to the Muslim world this morning.  I wish I had remembered to do so, because I prefer to see such speeches live to observe not only the actual delivery, but also to observe the audience’s reaction.

Thankfully, CNN.com posted a transcript of the speech shortly thereafter, which I promptly downloaded and read.  My first observation is this:  if this were a college speech course and Obama were a student in class, he would probably flunk the speech course for plagiarism.  It’s truly uncanny how much material his speech writers lifted from George Bush’s speech writers.  If I bothered to track down all the detailed records of such things, I could probably match a number of phrases verbatim with phrases snagged from speeches that Bush has given over the years.

What really sickens me is that Obama is going to be glorified for making the same comments that Bush was vilified for making.  I don’t understand it, but that’s how it will undoubtedly play out.  Maybe if George Bush had a Chia Pet designed after him, or a collectible plate made to honor him, his speeches would have somehow carried as much weight as Obama’s “groundbreaking” speech this morning.  I guess if you’ve got slick images and slick catch-phrases on your campaign posters, your words somehow carry more weight than the other guy’s, even if your words ARE the other guy’s.

That aside, as a whole, the speech itself was well done.  The messages contained within are mostly on the money.  Of course, there are a few statements about which I would like to make some comments.  I’ve selected the excerpts that stood out as “gotchas” in my mind, and will follow each with my comments:

“And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”

I guess this means that Obama’s gonna scold me for my scathing viewpoints on Islam contained within these blogs.  If Mr. Liberal sends his goons out to censor this blog, folks, then rest assured that Obama is a far greater threat to our civil liberties than George Bush ever was.

“Moreover, freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one’s religion.”

The problem I see with that statement is that it ignores the fact that Islam by its very nature does not really allow for freedom of religion.  With Islam, it IS the religion, and will tolerate no other.  Well, let me amend that.  If Muslims follow the Koran’s rules for “tolerating” peoples of other faiths, then you’ll find that people of other faiths must pay a fee called the jizya, which then entitles them “protection” by the Islamic state.  In our culture, we call that extortion.  Organized crime has used that tactic quite regularly here, offering “protection” to its subjects.  In Islam, this is expected.  This is the “holy” way to accept people of different religious beliefs.  When an outsider pays the jizya, he/she is known as a dhimmi.  A dhimmi would typically have fewer legal and social rights than a Muslim.  So much for convincing Muslims that freedom of religion is a must.  That notion is contrary to Islam.  And if you’re an agnostic, well, then you’re just considered an infidel or worse.  That likely will lead to more severe forms of punishment, up to and possibly including death.  Oh, who I am I kidding?  It would definitely mean death.  They’re good at the killing part.  OFF with your heads, non-believers!

“So let there be no doubt: Islam is a part of America.”

In my mind, Islam represents everything that America is NOT.  Islam is not part of America unless Islam learns to lighten the fuck up.

“Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.”

Well this is conveniently and blatantly ignorant of the facts.  I seem to recall that the United Nations tried for nearly 12 years to get Saddam to cooperate with his post Gulf War agreements and obligations, using diplomacy to do so all that time.  Saddam thumbed his nose at the world every step of the way.  It’s amazing how many Americans, including our own president, have forgotten that fact.  Obama implies here (and did so all through his election campaign) that no diplomacy was ever attempted prior to our 2003 invasion of Iraq.  That’s complete bullshit.  Saddam Hussein had plenty of chances to respond to diplomatic overtures up until March of 2003.  He essentially flipped us off repeatedly.  This is why we WENT to war against Iraq: because Saddam refused or rejected all attempts at diplomacy.  Obama is one ignorant ass if he doesn’t know this.  What the fuck is wrong with him?  I thought Obama was the intelligent one with the Harvard degree.  How is it that he doesn’t know this simple obvious fact?  Was he asleep all through the 90’s when Saddam was shooting surface-to-air missiles at our patrol aircraft in the no-fly zones?

“Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.”

Not toward Jews, they don’t.  Islam is as bad as, if not worse than, the Nazis when it comes to anti-Semitism.  No tolerance there, my friends.  The news archives, hell the historical archives, are full of evidence to the contrary.

“Among some Muslims, there is a disturbing tendency to measure one’s own faith by the rejection of another’s.”

SOME Muslims?  I think that’s grossly understated.  While the extremist crowd may be this supposed “small minority” amongst the greater Muslim world, I think it’s safe to say that the rest who do not participate in jihadist warfare still sympathize with the cause, and often financially support such extremist movements.  More on that next…

“For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That is why I am committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.”

Zakat, as I learned today, is one of the pillars of Islam.  It is expected of Muslims to offer up a percentage of their wealth as a form of charity, or welfare, for the poor and deprived in Muslim nations.  On the surface, this sounds all fine and good.  Obama wants to help American Muslims more easily fulfill this obligation.

What Obama omitted is that the reason it’s been “difficult” for American Muslims to fulfill zakat is because we’ve learned the hard way over the years where that money is truly going:  to Hamas and Hezbollah, both terrorist organizations responsible for countless acts of bloodshed in Israel and beyond.  Hamas and Hezbollah both do perform charitable functions for the poor in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories – I’m not disputing that.  The problem is that both organizations also have military wings that commit all the atrocities that you and I see on the nightly news every day.  Since we cannot control how those umbrella organizations distribute their funds, it’s anybody’s guess how those “charitable” contributions are being utilized.  It’s just smarter on our part to freeze that money.  Sure, it causes the poor to suffer even more than they already do, but does it make sense to allow that money through so that it ends up in the hands of suicide bombers?  Those lines of cash flow were frozen for a reason.  Well, according to Obama’s statement above, he intends to resume the flow of money to those types of organizations.  Let’s hope he’s got a plan to follow that money.  I’m not betting on it…

“I know there are many – Muslim and non-Muslim – who question whether we can forge this new beginning. Some are eager to stoke the flames of division, and to stand in the way of progress. Some suggest that it isn’t worth the effort – that we are fated to disagree, and civilizations are doomed to clash. Many more are simply skeptical that real change can occur. There is so much fear, so much mistrust. But if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward. And I want to particularly say this to young people of every faith, in every country – you, more than anyone, have the ability to remake this world.”

Well there’s a statement I can almost get behind.  I used to be all in favor of moving forward and trying to live in peace with Islam.  Sadly, Islam is not in favor of moving forward and trying to live in peace with me.  Muslims are too anchored by centuries of old animosities and grudges, and after 9/11, they’ve given me a grudge to bear against them, a grudge that’s too big to simply dismiss.  Sure, I know that Al Qaeda supposedly doesn’t speak for all of Islam, but like I said earlier, walk into any number of Muslim homes throughout the Middle East, and you’re bound to see shrines and posters on the walls of their martyrdom heroes, the boys involved in jihad against the West.  The moderate majority may not all be strapping on suicide vests or hijacking aircraft, but most despise Israel and the United States just the same, and all the flowery talk in the world from Obama’s mouth isn’t going to change those opinions.  I hope I’m wrong, but Muslims around the world are very steeped in their traditions and beliefs, and many of them believe we are the devil.  All the kindness and tolerance we can muster is still likely to be insufficient to change the narrow minds of the Muslim world.

I hate to point fingers, but the Muslim world needs to step up and stamp out extremism on its part.  The more that we infidels have to do it, the more resentment we build on their side.  Since deep down I know that the “moderate” Muslim world will never muster the courage to stamp out their own extremism (because they quietly encourage it), it’s apparent to me that we need to stay the course and continue striking terrorist targets militarily.  If the Muslim world won’t address the problem within their own culture, then we will have to.  The risk of NOT doing so is that we will again face another catastrophe like 9/11 someday.  You can call that fearmongering if you want to -- it’s a nifty liberal panty waste catch phrase to throw at me.  Like I recently told a friend:  I call it awareness.  If you’ve become complacent just because we haven’t had a large scale terrorist attack since 9/11, then shame on you.  When the next one happens, it’s the complacent people that will be the first ones up in arms crying, “How could we have let this happen?  How did we not see this coming?”  Those are two sentences I heard repeated a LOT in the days following 9/11.  Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

In our post-9/11 world, there should be no excuse for not doing all we can to eradicate terrorists wherever they are.  If that can be done through Obama’s precious diplomacy, then more power to him.  The realist inside of me knows better, and knows that militarily stamping out terrorists is the better option.  12 years of diplomacy with Iraq did nothing to sort out their insolent behavior.  There comes a point where endless efforts at diplomacy, with no progress made, have to be deemed futile.  It has been said that war is nothing more than a failure of diplomacy.  But folks, sometimes diplomacy simply fails.  Military intervention finally removed Saddam from power, and slowly…EVER so slowly, Iraq is working its way back from the brink.  Unless things take a drastic turn for the worse, I foresee that in the future we will not have to continually butt heads with Iraq at the United Nations like we did all through the 90’s.  And it was military intervention that got us there.

As far as Obama’s speech today, I commend him for trying, but he didn’t say anything today that wasn’t already said by previous administrations, INCLUDING the Bush Administration.  And all of those ideas and suggestions fell on deaf ears in the Muslim world.  I don’t expect it to be any different this time around.

Chumming The Waters

Well, prepare yourself for the media shark frenzy, everyone.  Mark my words, the liberal panty wastes are gonna swoop in on this little development.  No sooner did I spout off about how little I care about the human rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees, when I learn that one of them went and committed suicide.  I suppose he figured he was tired of waiting for his fourteen virgins in paradise, so he stepped up the timetable.  31 year-old Mohammed Ahmad Abdallah Salih (a.k.a. Al Hanashi) was found dead during a routine check by guards.  That’s really too bad – I was really hoping that he and I could have a nice game of chess over tea and crumpets.

On a quick tangent, did you ever notice how all of these terrorists have names as long as one of my blogs?  And even when you’ve gotten to the end of their ACTUAL name, there’s always the “alias” that inevitably follows.  I suppose if I were going to introduce myself to a group of Muslims, in order to “fit in”, I’d introduce myself as Maximilian Bartholemew Rufus Xavier Sasparilla Vanguard, a.k.a. WonderBoy.  And that’s still a lot shorter than most Islamic names I’ve seen in print.  I can’t imagine how in the hell they address each other in the Middle East when having a conversation.  I have a theory on this:  the reason that there’s never any successful or meaningful dialogue amongst warring parties in the Middle East is because they spend all their time introducing themselves to each other.  Here, we say, “Jim, this is Ed.  Ed, this is Jim.  Let’s get down to brass tacks and hash this out.”  In the Middle East, they spend the first fifteen minutes announcing their names, and the rest of the time yipping and yapping “Allah be praised,” “by the word of Allah,” or “by the blessing of Allah.”  By the time they’re ready to begin conversing, they’re all so annoyed and pissed off at each other that they end up wanting to kill one another.  Okay, so it’s a lame theory, but it was worth a shot…

Anyway, so now we have a dead detainee at Gitmo.  I can already hear the crybabies coming down hard on the concept of Gitmo, and how the institution is an atrocity by its very name, as if the words “Guantanamo Bay” themselves somehow motivated Al Hanashi to kill himself.  I could really care less about his motivation(s) for suicide.  We must keep in mind, folks, that most of these guys are suicidal to start with.  There have been dozens of reported suicide attempts at Gitmo since its inception, with around four successes prior to Hanashi’s.  Is that our fault?  Frankly, no.  These guys chose a path in life, and that path is death.  They chose to embrace an ideology that involves murder, oppression, intimidation, and coercion.  Nearly any one of these assholes would murder you or me in an instant.  And they would have done so long before they ever became a guest at Gitmo, so it’s a weak argument to say that their experiences at Gitmo have “created” the monsters that they are.  These monsters were created in the madrassas and terrorist training camps found in the barren wastelands of Afghanistan and Pakistan.  They were monsters long before we ever came upon them.  If they’re suicidal, it’s because they were trained to be so.

So again we come to the argument that Guantanamo Bay “must be closed”.  Why?  For what purpose?  The argument I keep hearing from “legalize my pot” liberals is that we must do so to improve our standing in the court of world opinion.  But here’s the thing:  if we do not intend to free the detainees, but simply relocate them, then what have we truly accomplished?  We’ve simply dispersed the true gripe that the “court of world opinion” has with Guantanamo Bay:  that these men are supposedly innocent and should be set free.  I don’t see what difference it makes whether these prisoners are detained at Gitmo, or whether they’re detained somewhere else.  As long as these men are still detained, we are never going to improve our standing in the court of world opinion.  The nations doing the most complaining are the ones that hate us anyway, and probably always will.  We can’t appease everyone.  We need to do what’s right, here.  And what’s right is to keep these animals from killing anyone else.  It’s already been proven that when we set these bastards free, they end up right back on the same battlefields from which they were captured.  And why were some of these guys set free?  Because the liberal lefties and their ACLU lawyers insisted that they be freed.  Why would they want them freed so badly?  Well, the argument has been that these men were never given fair trials.  Now mind you, most of these guys were plucked right off the smoldering battlefields of Afghanistan, with AK-47s and grenades still in hand, but why should that matter to the ACLU?  Let’s not forget the folks that back the ACLU.  I’m talking about such gentlemen as Mullah Louis Farrakhan and the “good” Reverend Al Sharpton, as well as everyone’s favorite media opportunist, Jesse Jackson.  You see, it’s all about the civil rights of the detainees, so they say.  Apparently it’s more important to worry about the civil rights of people who’d kill us all in a heartbeat than it is to step back and look at the situation in its proper perspective.

You know, I wonder how badly the ACLU would fight for me and my civil rights if I were a vicious mass murderer?  I’ll venture a wild guess and say that as long as I were only killing white people, the ACLU probably could care less.  I doubt I’d have Jesse or Reverend Al calling news conferences and staging protests for me to have my precious civil rights protected.  And I’m sure that the fact that I am white would have “nothing” to do with their blissful ignorance of my plight.  But you see, the dark-skinned fellows in Guantanamo, well, they deserve to have their civil rights protected.  Never mind that they’d behead you or me without hesitation, or strap on a C4-packed suicide belt loaded with nails, glass, and ball bearings, and detonate it on a bus or train or playground.  Never mind that if given access to a nuke, they’d take out millions without even giving it a second thought.  Their rights must be protected, or we look like “bad people.”  Excuse me, but, umm, aren’t the guys with the murderous intent the bad guys here?  By locking them up, we just want to keep them from doing any more harm.  Doesn’t that make us the protectors?  The defenders of freedom?  How is it so terrible to try and protect human life?  If that means locking up some really nasty people to do it, then what the fuck is the problem?  If it makes us unpopular, then LET US BE UNPOPULAR.  This isn’t a popularity contest, this is life and death.  Fuck world opinion.  What has any of these nations ever done for us?  We send billions of dollars in aid to all of these nations, trying to “buy” their respect.  And when we lock up terrorists, we’re demonized for it?  Cut off the money, and let ‘em keep complaining.  If they hate Americans, they hate Americans.  All the money and appeasement in the world is never going to change that.  When we keep reaching out to other nations of the world with money, we end up with one obvious result:  debt.  The other result is that these nations never figure out how to become self-sufficient.  Wanna fix this economy?  Let’s keep some liquid capital here and make it work for us.  It’s not doing much to help Pakistan, is it?

Gitmo should stay open, period.  And I think it should stay open in blatant DEFIANCE of all those people and all those nations who are so quick to accuse the U.S. of being such horrible “captors of the innocent.”  These detainees get three square “culturally sensitive” meals a day, the right to wear their religious garments, the right to a Koran, and a prayer mat to pray on five times a day.  Hell, we’ve even put up signs pointing East so that these arrogant killers can face Mecca when praying for our demise.  I’m sure Gitmo isn’t a beautiful resort, but prison isn’t supposed to be.  That’s why it’s called prison.

A high school acquaintance of mine recently put up the argument that Obama doesn’t intend to release the detainees.  My friend pointed out that, “…we’re just looking for the right place to put them.”  I shot back, “but we’ve already got a good place to put them:  Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.”  Besides, aren’t most of our domestic prisons already full?  Yet another reason to keep Gitmo open.  Do we really trust other nations to keep these guys locked up?

In other related news…

I also read today that a new audio tape of Al Qaeda’s #2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri (no nickname was given), was released to the press.  Apparently old man Ayman has criticized Obama’s planned visit to Egypt this week, where Obama will attempt to appease, capitulate, and reach out to the Muslim world.

One of the more interesting tidbits from Zawahiri’s tirade was when he sarcastically claimed that Obama’s message came through to Muslims when, “…his administration continued to reject the appliance of the Geneva Conventions regarding Muslim prisoners in the crusade war against Islam that they call the war on terror."  This is obviously a direct reference to Guantanamo Bay, and/or possibly Abu Ghraib in Iraq.  He’s implying that we failed to observe the Geneva Conventions with regard to our detainees.  This is the same argument all of the Gitmo detractors have been using all along, this silly notion that we “can’t be a beacon of hope for freedom, democracy, and human rights” in the world when we don’t observe the Geneva Conventions ourselves.

Okay, that’s a cute argument, but I always love to counter it with another one.  When, in all of our experiences with the Taliban, Al Qaeda, or the insurgents in Iraq, have ANY of THEM ever observed the Geneva Conventions?  And why on God’s green earth would we ever let Al Qaeda attempt to use the Geneva Conventions as an argument against us?  It’s completely ludicrous.  We’re not lopping off heads, chopping off limbs, throwing acid into people’s faces, etc.  We got some water up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s nose.  Was that a nice thing to do?  Nope.  Was it anything CLOSE to the kinds of torture that Al Qaeda is responsible for?  Nope.  It’s all a matter of perspective, people, and I think those who keep harping on Gitmo’s closure have completely lost all perspective.  Al Qaeda horrifically tortures victims just for fun.  We harshly interrogated detainees to extract valuable intelligence to further our fight against terrorism.  KEEP IT IN PERSPECTIVE, people.  It’s night and day when you step back, take a deep breath, and look at the circumstances.  Learn to ignore the hype and the rhetoric, and look at the facts.

Let’s do some comparisons.  The Taliban takes random hostages, tortures them, uses them as human shields, beheads them, etc.  We take enemy combatants as prisoners, and try to extract information that we can use to save lives.  Al Qaeda suicide bombs public marketplaces or buildings to inflict as many innocent casualties as possible just to make “good press” for their cause.  We strategically precision bomb targets based on the best intelligence we can get so that we can surgically remove vicious killers from the earth a few at a time.  The Taliban and Al Qaeda do not observe the Geneva Conventions when they dress in civilian clothing and hide amongst the civilian population, making them impossible to detect.  Our soldiers proudly and bravely wear the uniform of our nation, often times at their own peril because they become obvious targets.

Why am I going through the exercise of making these obvious comparisons?  Again, it’s all about keeping it in perspective.  For whatever “horror” waterboarding may be, it doesn’t hold a candle to the horrors that our enemies have inflicted upon us.  We are nowhere near sinking to their level, so quit making the pathetic argument that “we’re no better than they are.”  What an insult to our armed forces.  We have rules of engagement, the enemy does not.  We’re fighting this war with one hand tied behind our backs, and the people looking to tie back the other hand are all of the liberal crybabies that have no fucking clue what it takes to defeat our enemies in this war, a war that we never asked for.

I’ve about had it with all of the political bullshit with regard to “torture”, “enhanced interrogation techniques”, and Guantanamo Bay’s impending closure.  Leave Gitmo open, leave the detainees there to rot, and everyone please stop whining about their fucking civil rights.  They don’t even know what civil rights are, and wouldn’t respect them even if they did.  Keep it in perspective.