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Navigating the Absurd Things Said about Islam and Terror

June 29 2016

Donald Trump has taunted both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for avoiding the term “radical Islam” in describing the motivations for Islamic terrorism; meanwhile, the president has defended his policy, claiming that using a particular term won’t “accomplish” anything. Michael Totten points to the deficiencies of both positions:

Trump says that [President Obama’s stance, and his rhetoric on this subject in general, stem from] political correctness and that it’s killing us, but [the president’s stance in fact stems from] something else. It’s diplomatic correctness. . . .

[During the 2006] Anbar Awakening . . . in Iraq, . . . every tribal leader in the western Anbar province aligned himself with American soldiers and Marines against al-Qaeda. . . . [Much of Anbar is] painfully, even brutally, backward. Not every Muslim who lives there is a fanatic, but virtually none can be described as liberal or cosmopolitan with a straight face. Then there is Saudi Arabia. . . .

So, yes, we have fanatical as well as moderate and liberal Muslim allies, and Obama, like George W. Bush before him, is reluctant to alienate them. . . . [But] people don’t like or trust leaders who appear disconnected from reality. And Obama is far more worried about this than he needs to be. All he needs to do is be honest and reasonable. . . .

Middle Easterners are among the least politically correct people in the entire world. . . . And they know damn well that Islamic State is Islamic. We’re not earning any points with our allies in the Muslim world by denying this, nor would we alienate any of them by acknowledging it.

The United States government surely would alienate our friends and allies over there if we had a bombastic bigoted blowhard in the White House, but calling the Islamic State “Islamic” isn’t even in the same time zone as bigoted or bombastic.

Read more at World Affairs Journal

More about: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, ISIS, Politics & Current Affairs, Radical Islam, Terrorism

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic