The Religion of Peace

Who says that terrorism, or even the threat of it, is not effective. The radical fundamental Islamists of the world need only express dissatisfaction to send the “leaders” of the west stumbling over each other to get in front of the camera to condemn whatever offense irritated the Islamists this time, hoping to avoid the wrath of the world’s terrorists.

When Baptist minister Terry Jones, Dove World Outreach Center, Gainesville, FL threatened to burn Korans in public on 11 Sept, American politicians came out of the woodwork to condemn the idea of burning the muslim holy book. President Obama himself has weighed in on this “crisis,” saying, "I just hope he understands that what he's proposing to do is completely contrary to our values," Obama said in an ABC interview. He called the plan a "recruitment bonanza for Al Qaeda." Mr. Obama did not elaborate on what might we might do to reduce Al Qaeda recruitment, but it’s good to know that he at least considers increasing recruitment a bad thing. President Obama earlier called the plan a "stunt" and urged the pastor to abandon it.

Other American leaders, from Secretary of State (for now) Hillary Clinton to Defense Secretary Gates to General David Petraeus have rushed to the microphones to condemned Reverend Jones’ threatened Koran burning. Presidential Press Secretary, the hapless dimwit Robert Gibbs, called Reverend Jones’ plan a “monumentally terrible idea.”

While American leaders hustle to the microphones to attempt to mollify the “Muslim World,” Old friend Imam Rauf is still planning to erect his 9/11 Victory Mosque near the site of the former World Trade Center. Responding to public outrage and demands that he move the planned mosque (though not abandon it), he has essentially threatened that attempts to move the mosque away from the Ground Zero site will incite Muslim violence against the United States. "The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack," he said. “If you don't do this right, anger will explode in the Muslim world," Imam Rauf predicted that the reaction could be more furious than the eruption of violence following the 2005 publication of Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, Fox News reported.

There you have it. If they don’t get their way, they will riot, burn cars, behead journalists, stone women, detonate bombs in crowded places, hijack airplanes, bomb airplanes, fly airplanes into buildings, attack Olympic athletes. You can fill in the blank with whatever form or radical Muslim violence most fits your taste.

Until today, while dealing with violent Muslim “religious” fundamentalists has been difficult and sometimes deadly, we have been dealing with a group that is confined to the use of conventional weapons. They do not even have access to aircraft that they have not first hijacked. But the whole game will change the instant Iran becomes a nuclear power.

While we can wince and feel uneasy about the horrific violence perpetrated by Muslims all over the world in the name of the Religion of Peace, we have been relatively safe from, if offended by, that violence. But what happens when the Iranians, and by extension their allies in the “Muslim World” have nuclear weapons, what will the reaction of American politicians be when they are offended by some Baptist minister? Will we see our President further pressuring Israel to greater and greater concessions to the Palestinians? Will we see him agreeing to a “limited establishment of Shari’a Law in Dearborn, Michigan, to satisfy the demands of the “Muslim World”?

The Muslim World understands one thing: strength. They understood that when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, Los Reyes Catolicos, crushed the Caliphate of Cordova in January, 1492 and cast the Moors from Spain. They understood that when Israeli tanks rolled up to the Suez Canal in June, 1967, and they understood it when U.S. armed forces streamed into Baghdad in 2003. But what the Muslim World understands better than anything else is weakness. Every time they threaten violence and see western leaders cower before their threats, they are convinced they have a winning hand. That, more than anything else, serves to increase al-Qaeda recruitment.

Human Rights and the United States

The Obama Administration, through its diplomatic surrogates in the Clinton State Department, has recently released a report to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights as part of that organization’s Universal Periodic Review. In that report, the Obama Administration pats itself on the back for restoring American virtue, badly stained by the Bush Administration. The report admits flaws in the human rights record of the United States, like the fact that one of its constituent states, Arizona, actually writes laws intended to protect itself from unlawful invasion by illegal democrat voters from Mexico. The report also admits that the United States actually detains illegal combatants captured on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan in the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Good lord, where will it stop?

What the State Department report does not mention is why a great nation like the United States would even consider contributing any information, let alone a report, to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. While the Commission’s name intones a concern for Human Rights around the world, the actions of the Commission’s member states indicates something quite different. Interestingly, the U.S. State Department also publishes “Country Reports,” (http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/) outlining the conditions that may be expected in various nations of the world, even those who make up the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. A quick trip through the pages of the State Department’s Country Reports on some of the nations on the UN Commission members makes for interesting reading.

The African nation of Angola, a member of the UN Human Rights Commission, is a nation governed by the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) since 1979, and is characterized by a “tight, centralized control” by that government. The State Department report indicates that while there are no reports of politically motivated killings, police use of excessive force resulted in at least two deaths in 2009 and as many as 23 in 2008, along with reports of routine police torture and killing of prisoners in custody. Other highlights mentioned in the State Department’s Country Reports on UN Commission members include:

Burkina-Faso: Corrupt security forces, which “continued to abuse prisoners with impunity, including frequent threats, beatings and torture to extract confessions.” Prison condition in the country were “harsh and life-threatening.”

China: “severe cultural and religious repression of ethnic minorities” is commonplace, and “extra-judicial killings, executions without due process, torture, forced confessions and forced labor are routine.

Saudi Arabia: ruled by Islamic Shari’a Law and characterized by "routine disappearances, torture and physical abuse, there is no freedom of speech, assembly, association, movement, or religion" in this nation that condones violence against women and children.

With a membership like the nations listed above, among many others, what possible motivation could the Obama Administration have for condescending to even submit a report on human rights in the United States? Why would that thought even occur to any American, let alone someone living in the White House?

The answer is that the Obama Administration has long held and often expressed the belief that the United States of America is a deeply flawed nation in need of “change” that only a person of Mr Obama's towering intellect and goodness can affect. Mr Obama does not believe in American exceptionalism and sees our country as equivalent to the likes of Burkina-Faso or China or Lybia. In short, Mr Obama and his administration hold a deep loathing of America and a contempt for the American people.

It would have been nice to know how Mr Obama regarded this country before the presidential election of 2008. And we might have known these unpleasant facts if there had been a working, honest press at work in the country instead of a deeply corrupt, derelict media devoted to the election of a man who was completely unqualified and ill-equipped to govern a great nation.