“The GOP’s Obsession With Words”: Those Who Suggest Obama Doesn’t Use The Words They Prefer, ‘He’s Not One Of Us’
I am truly fascinated with the GOP’s obsession with words over actions. It actually goes back much further than the recent nonsense about what President Obama calls the members of ISIS.
Does anyone remember this?
Even people who acknowledge George Bush’s failings point to that as one of the great moments of his presidency. But by 2002, here’s what he said at a press conference.
Asked about the hunt for Bin Laden at a March, 2002 press conference, Bush said, “I truly am not that concerned about him. I am deeply concerned about Iraq.” “I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you,” Bush added.
By that time, President Bush wanted to invade Iraq and wasn’t that interested in the “people who knocked these buildings down.” That task was left to President Obama.
Ten years after 9/11 came the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi. Republicans immediately became obsessed with whether or not President Obama had called the perpetrators “terrorists.” It has never mattered much to them that – under this President’s leadership – the U.S. captured the mastermind of that attack.
And now, Republicans have convinced themselves that President Obama doesn’t take the threat from ISIS seriously because he won’t call them “Islamic terrorists.” Recently Peggy Noonan attempted to argue why that is important. She draws her case mostly from an article by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic titled: What ISIS Really Wants. But when Noonan is done quoting what Wood says about the religious beliefs of ISIS, she turns to what he has to say about how to defeat them.
A U.S. invasion and occupation, Mr. Wood argues, would be a propaganda victory for them, because they’ve long said the U.S. has always intended to embark on a modern-day crusade against Islam. And if a U.S. ground invasion launched and failed, it would be a disaster.
The best of bad options, Mr. Wood believes, is to “slowly bleed” ISIS through air strikes and proxy warfare. The Kurds and the Shiites cannot vanquish them, but they can “keep the Islamic State from fulfilling its duty to expand.” That would make it look less like “the conquering state of the Prophet Muhammed.” As time passed ISIS could “stagnate” and begin to sink. Word of its cruelties would spread; it could become another failed state.
Hmmm…that sounds exactly like President Obama’s “degrade and destroy” strategy.
Noonan simply ignores all that and – in the end – suggests that we should be respectful of ISIS.
It is, ironically, disrespectful not to name what they are, and what they are about.
Talk about PC madness!!!!
I have to admit that when I approach all of this from a logical standpoint, my head starts spinning. That’s when I know it’s time to leave the logic aside and go in search of root causes.
Of course part of this is fueled by those who want to suggest that because President Obama doesn’t use the words they prefer – he’s not one of us. That ignites the underlying racist fears of the GOP base.
But it also feeds into the desire for a “holy war” of Christianity vs Islam – the very same thing ISIS wants. That is exactly why President Obama’s words of caution at the National Prayer Breakfast were so important – and why his refusal to buy into this dangerous language is exactly the right call.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, March 1, 2015
“Vainly Trying To Rewrite History”: Deranged By Obama, Republicans Are Spouting Nonsense
Republicans had better divert some of their campaign cash toward finding a cure for Obama Derangement Syndrome. If they don’t, their nemesis will beat them in a third consecutive presidential contest — without, of course, actually being on the ballot.
GOP power brokers and potential candidates surely realize that President Obama is ineligible to run in 2016. Yet they seem unable to get over the fact that he won in 2008 and 2012. It’s as if they are more interested in vainly trying to rewrite history than attempting to lay out a vision for the future.
Obama Derangement Syndrome is characterized by feverish delirium. The Republican Party suffered an episode last week when former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani began speaking in tongues about Obama’s patriotism.
“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Giuliani said. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country.”
This is obviously a nonsensical thing to say about a man who was elected president twice and has served as commander in chief for more than six years. Pressed to explain himself, Giuliani ranted and raved for several days about Obama’s upbringing, made demonstrably false claims about the president’s supposed denial of American exceptionalism, insisted that “I said exactly what I wanted to say” — and then finally issued a non-retraction retraction in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
“My blunt language suggesting that the president doesn’t love America notwithstanding, I didn’t intend to question President Obama’s motives or the content of his heart,” Giuliani wrote. But of course he did intend to question Obama’s motives, heart, patriotism and legitimacy, albeit in a self-destructive, laughingstock kind of way.
I speak as a sufferer from Bush Derangement Syndrome eight years ago who recovered by facing reality.
Giuliani can perhaps be dismissed; his future in presidential politics is as bleak as his past, which consists of one spectacularly unsuccessful run for the GOP nomination. But if he was speaking as the party’s id, surely Republicans who consider themselves in the mix for 2016 would play the role of superego and tamp down such baser instincts. Right?
Wrong. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — a guest at the dinner where Giuliani had his eruption — refused to repudiate the offending remarks. “The mayor can speak for himself,” he said. “I’m not going to comment on whether, what the president thinks or not. . . . I’ll tell you I love America, and I think there are plenty of people, Democrat, Republican, independent and everyone in between, who love this country.”
Walker, who is on a roll lately in terms of self-embarrassment, wasn’t finished. Asked if he believes Obama is a Christian, Walker responded, “I don’t know.” A spokeswoman later clarified that what the governor meant to say was yes, of course he knows the president is a Christian; Walker declined to respond because it was a “gotcha” question. Which it wouldn’t have been, if Walker had given that answer in the first place.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, another 2016 hopeful, volunteered that “the gist” of what Giuliani said “is true.” Later, Jindal went further and declared: “I hate to say this, but we have a president right now who is not qualified to be our commander in chief.”
It’s true that Generalissimo Jindal is a long shot to win the nomination. But most other potential GOP candidates were either silent or didn’t give a direct answer. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and former Florida governor Jeb Bush said it was a mistake to question Obama’s motives. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee offered no opinion. Former Texas governor Rick Perry said, “I think the president, in his mind, loves this country.”
Only Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) was bold enough to say there is “no doubt” that the president of the United States does, in fact, love the United States. Good for him.
Giuliani’s burst of nonsense is important because it speaks to the Republican Party’s mind-set. If the party is going to contend for the White House, it first has to fully acknowledge and accept that it lost the last two presidential elections. The nation voted twice for Obama and his policies. Deal with it.
Republicans need to abandon the fantasy that there’s some sort of grand deception underlying the Obama presidency. They’re only deceiving themselves.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 23, 2015
“Living In A House With No Mirrors”: Do Religious Conservatives Love Damned America?
Just read this brief passage and tell me if this sounds like someone who really “loves America:”
Our nation is ridiculed abroad and morally crumbling within. We are in trouble. We have turned our back on God.
This sentiment, expressed yesterday by the Rev. Franklin Graham, is very common among politicized conservative evangelicals. What makes it unusual is that he uttered it in the same breath as a defense of Rudy Guiliani for doubting that the president “loves America.”
If you’ve ever actually read Jeremiah Wright’s infamous “God Damn America!” sermon, it involves a judgement of this country no more striking than what people like Franklin Graham say every other day with their jeremiads about a baby-killing Holocaust and legitimized abominations to the Lord like same-sex marriage. They’re entitled to their opinion, and to the spiritually perilous and self-aggrandizing step of adopting the prophetic stance against their own country. But please, don’t tell me Franklin Graham is a “patriot.” Unless his words are meaningless, he’s telling us being “patriotic” in a wicked society represents disobedience to God.
So spare us the pieties about the president’s questionable “love for America,” Rev. Graham. You’re living in a house with no mirrors.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, February 25, 2015
“Church And State”: Mike Huckabee’s Christian Sharia Law
Mike Huckabee is known as a former governor, an author, a onetime Fox News host, and as a possible contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. And now we have a new way to describe Huckabee: Christian Wahhabist.
For those unaware, Wahhabism is a sect of Islam, primarily practiced in Saudi Arabia, which follows a very conservative interpretation of the faith. Wahhabis demand that their religious principles be imposed as the law of their country. And Huckabee, in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN, made it clear that on certain social issues, he too believes that his religious beliefs should be the basis for the laws of the state.
But before we get to that issue, let me start with the reason Huckabee’s interview came to my attention. Huckabee stated that his continued opposition to same-sex marriage is based on the Bible, and that he can’t “evolve” on the issue “unless I get a new version of the scriptures.” He then added that it would be comparable to “asking a Muslim to serve up something that is offensive to him or to have dogs in his backyard.”
Being a Muslim who has offered many times before to be people’s “Muslim friend,” and to answer their questions the best I could about the faith, Huckabee’s dog comment immediately caused some friends to reach out on social media. “Are Muslims religiously prohibited from owning dogs?” they asked.
The simple answer: no. Nowhere in the Quran does such a prohibition appear. However, there are mentions of dogs in the Hadith, which are the sayings and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Many Muslims view the Hadith as second only to the Koran in terms of being authoritative. But it should be noted that not all Muslims follow the Hadith and there are questions about the veracity of some of its passages.
In any event, there are passages in the Hadith that suggest dogs are “unclean”—but scholars note that was meant literally because it referred to dogs in the desert some 1,400 years ago. Consequently, some Muslims avoid dogs. But other passages of the Hadith say that Muslims can own working dogs, such as for hunting, farming, etc. And yet another passage notes that the Prophet Muhammad stated that God had forgiven a prostitute of her sins after she offered water to a dog in need of drink on a hot summer day. So, clearly, dogs are described in different ways in Islamic texts.
Bottom line: Many Muslims I know, including my own family, own dogs as pets. There was even a “Good Muslims Love Dogs” day in Canada few years back to counter bigots who urged people to taunt Muslims with dogs.
And regarding Huckabee’s remark that Muslims should not be required to serve food they find objectionable, my father was a cook and prepared pork for people daily. This was not a problem. In fact, there would only be a problem if the pork jumped off the plate and jammed itself into his mouth.
So Huckabee was wrong, but it’s not a big deal because he was clearly not trying to demonize Muslims as dog haters. But what is a big deal is his ludicrous argument that Muslims being asked to serve pork is the same as his desire to impose laws that bar gay Americans from getting married because it violates his religious beliefs.
Marriage, as our courts have found many times in the past, is a “fundamental right.” And there’s absolutely no comparison between that important right and the serving or not serving of pork.
Huckabee then gave us another baffling comment during his CNN interview. While complaining about courts striking laws that banned gay marriage, he stated, that “we don’t change laws because some people in a black robe just decide” an issue.
Well, actually, that’s exactly what we do. Our nation’s Founding Fathers set up our system of government so that we have a separation of powers and the judicial branch would interpret the law. And if a law were found to be unconstitutional by the courts, it would be struck down. This is all pretty basic stuff.
Still not done, Huckabee then defended the prohibition on gay marriage in certain states by noting that sometimes 70 or 80 “percent of the state’s population have affirmed natural law marriage.” Translation: If a majority of people support discrimination, then the court should defer to the will of the people.
Well, in 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state laws that made it a crime to enter into an interracial marriage in the seminal case of Loving v. Virginia, 73 percent of Americans supported such laws. In fact, it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that a majority of Americans finally approved of interracial marriage. So, if we followed Huckabee’s logic to its end point, then interracial married couples, like President Obama’s parents, should have been criminally prosecuted through the 1990s.
To be honest, Huckabee’s Wahhabist tendencies are nothing new. When he last ran for president in 2008, he argued that we “should amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards.”
What would be the reaction if a Muslim candidate for president (or even dog catcher for that matter) argued that we should amend our Constitution to agree with the Quran? The right wing in this country would explode. It would be all the Breitbart.coms of the world would talk about. But many of those same right-wing people who fabricate the claim that Muslims in America want to impose Islamic law have no problem when a Christian politician tells us point blank he wants to impose what is, in essence, Christian Sharia law.
The good news: Our First Amendment prohibits the establishment of any religion in our country, be it Christianity or Islam or anything else. That doesn’t mean people like Huckabee—just like Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia—won’t continue to advocate for their religious beliefs to be the law of the land. But in the United States at least, our laws must be based on public policy considerations and the Constitution, not passages of religious text.
And thank God for that.
By: Dean Obeidallah, The Daily Beast, February 1, 2015
“Useful Idiots”: Why The Violent Extremists Welcome Attacks On Islam
Whenever an act of horrific terror enrages the West, a predictable second act ensues. Furious commentators and activists on the right erupt with blanket denunciations of Islam, Muslims, and their supposed plots to enslave us all under Shari’a law, urging that we ban the religion, stigmatize its faithful, and restore the Judeo-Christian exclusivity of America. Sometimes a few even seek retribution in attacks on mosques, individual Muslims, and anyone unfortunate enough to “look Muslim.”
Violent or merely loud , these are the “useful idiots,” whose divisive blundering underscores the propaganda of al Qaeda, ISIS, and imitators around the world. They represent precisely the opposite of what we must do and say if we are to defeat Islamist extremism in all its manifestations.
Look behind the delusional murderers who actually carry out such crimes as the massacres at Charlie Hebdo and the Paris kosher market: What is the strategic objective of those who deploy them? Not a military victory over the French army, nor even an atmosphere of fear in Paris. They seek to provoke a harsh crackdown on innocent Muslims, especially the young and unemployed, along with expressions of bigotry and discrimination – to highlight the simmering communal conflicts they hope to inflame into a “war of civilizations.”
So the extremists can only be grateful when anti-Muslim propaganda, repeated constantly in right-wing publications and broadcasts, casts them as the defenders of Islam, rather than its defilers. Every time Islam is publicly defined as a religion of violence, the jihadis gain prestige. Their appeals become more persuasive to oppressed young Muslims – especially if no alternative is apparent.
Yet the narrative of endless conflict and implacable distrust is not only untrue – as we saw last week when Parisians of all faiths and none rallied together – but deeply destructive to traditional democratic values and strategically stupid.
Yes, we must protect the right to commit free speech, including speech that is offensive to religions and even to ethnic groups, without fear of violent responses. We must also protect the rights of religious and ethnic minorities — including the right to protest peacefully against offensive speech. That requires swift action against those who will conspire to maim, murder, and terrorize – and the capacity whenever possible to neutralize those criminals before they act.
But Americans will need to do much more than surround ourselves with police, armies, and intelligence services if we ever hope to overcome our extremist enemies. Effective counterterrorism demands a contrasting narrative of coexistence, respect, fairness, and opportunity.
The elements of that political arsenal exist already — in the stories of Ahmed Merabet, the Muslim policeman who died heroically in Paris, and Lassana Bathily, the young Muslim employee who led Jews in the kosher market to safety; in the undeniable fact that the extremists murder hundreds of innocent civilians, overwhelmingly Muslim, every week; and in the secure, prosperous existence that millions of ordinary Muslim families have enjoyed in this country for decades, despite outbursts of prejudice and harassment.
We ought to note with pride that Muslims serve in the U.S. military and every branch of government, including two members of Congress, because the Constitution specifically bans any religious test for public office. (Certain figures on the religious right may need to be reminded too.) Muslims should know that their holy days are routinely celebrated in the White House by presidents of both parties — even as all religions are subject to disbelief, criticism, and even jeering satire in a free society.
The consensus among ordinary Muslims is well known to public opinion pollsters: By large majorities, here and abroad, they fear and disdain the violent extremists who have defamed their religion. Let’s at least stop trying to change their minds.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, The National Memo, January 15, 2015
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