What do young Jewish adults in Israel and the U.S. think of Barack Obama's speech in Cairo? Max Blumenthal got an earful of offensive language, much of it hateful toward Obama. Who looks moderate now?
Obama gave a terrific speech (here's the video). In the first ten minutes, he detailed the many connections between Islam and the United States (yes, Rep. Keith Ellison did take his oath of office using a Koran once owned by Thomas Jefferson). The first condition for progress of any type is to plainly state where we are, and Obama's speech did a great job of this. Yes, our many misunderstandings, driven by irresponsible media frenzy, occlude plain facts, several of them highly embarrassing to the U.S. For instance,
For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is in fact a tumultuous history between us. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.
That, then, is how we can repair the damage: by establishing trust by stating the facts. Only after speaking frankly can tone matter. Obama's tone was impressive, based on the many applause interruptions. But good tone is nothing without admitting undeniable facts. Only then can we move forward. By traveling to Cairo to make his speech, Obama has made a dramatic statement that America is no longer framing its diplomatic strategies through the use of crude stereotypes. I don't know whether the audience entirely trusts America, but this was a huge step in the right direction.Why did George W. Bush invade Iraq? Clive Hamilton confirms one of my suspicions at Alternet:
In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France's President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated. . . President Bush's reason for launching the war in Iraq was, for him, fundamentally religious. He was driven by his belief that the attack on Saddam's Iraq was the fulfilment of a Biblical prophesy in which he had been chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord.
I'm truly disgusted to learn of newest evidence for the religious underpinnings for Donald Rumsfeld's (and George Bush's) thought process. GQ has revealed that Rumsfeld authored an entire series of Bible/war memos, "Top Secret Briefings," to get Bush fired up that he was on God's side in a Manichean struggle.
This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine.
For those who say that religion is good, that is sometimes true. Many people have been inspired by religion to channel their natural empathy into acts of kindness. To those who say religion is dangerous, that is also sometimes true, as witnessed by America's religious war waged in Iraq. Thanks to the Bush Administration's application of religion, 100,000 people are dead, tens of thousands of Americans wounded, and millions of Iraqis who have lost their homes. I would say, as a general rule that we should always discourage violence in the name of religion. Religion is too often a potent mind-altering trip. Too often, it causes people to unplug their pre-frontal cortices, so that their base instincts, especially their xenophobia, rise's to the top. Religion is too often used to concoct needless imaginary lines between and among groups of people, resulting in growing distrust, which too often ripens into seething hate. Bottom line: Thanks to Rumsfeld's (and Bush's) embrace of what we now know (better than ever) to be religious violence, our "secular" government was able to conclude that their religious ends justified their military means, and that any lie, any torture, and any amount of collateral damage was justified. All of this in the name of God.And now for a romantic interlude in the otherwise dangerous realm of Afghan social morays vis-a-vis the Taliban. A young couple whose families disapproved of their union ran off to get married. Married, mind. Not live together outside wedlock or anything so dramatic, but married. The result? They were shot outside their mosque after a tribunal of mullahs condemned them. Here is the story. It is difficult seeing this to remember that this sort of thing is really not consistent with mainstream Islam. But, just as with certain splinter groups of so-called christian sects, the Qu'ran is continually used to justify the persecution of women. Yes, women. Even though the young man was also killed, it is fairly clear that the main issue the Taliban and other groups like it embrace is the control of women. They bar them from school, they bar them from conversation, they bar them from public view, they bar them. All, it seems, they want from women is to be sex slaves for the males selected to possess them and anything---anything---that threatens that is condemned and, as usual, the women pay the price overwhelmingly. There are other issues covered by strict Sharia Law, but we hear little about that, probably because a lot of it is also covered by more tolerant, liberal interpretations of the law. The dividing line is over the women. It is over giving women a voice, a choice, any freedom at all to say no, and defenders of this who deny that it is a mysoginist pathology seem either to not Get It or are lacking any comprehension that women are people. To be clear, as I stated, christian groups do this, too. Maybe they don't kill them in the street, but that's only because in the West, the police really will arrest them for that. To paraphrase James Carville, "It's all about the women, stupid." There is no compromising on this, as far as I'm concerned. To allow this is to make all of us a little less human.