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The Founding Fathers Weren't Anti-Islam
The Founding Fathers were not nearly as anti-Muslim as many current American Christians.
As Ted Widmer writes at Boston.com:
The
Founders were way ahead of us. They thought hard about how to build a
country of many different faiths. And to advance that vision to the
fullest, they read the Koran, and studied Islam with a calm intelligence
that today’s over-hyped Americans can only begin to imagine. They
knew something that we do not. To a remarkable degree, the Koran is
not alien to American history — but inside it.No book states
the case more plainly than a single volume, tucked away deep within the
citadel of Copley Square — the Boston Public Library. The book known
as Adams 281.1 is a copy of the Koran, from the personal collection of
John Adams. There is nothing particularly ornate about this humble
book, one of a collection of 2,400 that belonged to the second
president. But it tells an important story, and reminds us how worldly
the Founders were, and how impervious to the fanaticisms that spring up
like dandelions whenever religion and politics are mixed. They, like
we, lived in a complicated and often hostile global environment,
dominated by religious strife, terror, and the bloodsport of competing
empires. Yet better than we, they saw the world as it is, and refused
the temptation to enlarge our enemies into Satanic monsters, or simply
pretend they didn’t exist.Reports of Korans in American
libraries go back at least to 1683, when an early settler of
Germantown, Pa., brought a German version to these shores. Despite its
foreign air, Adams’s Koran had a strong New England pedigree. The first
Koran published in the United States, it was printed in Springfield in
1806.Why would John Adams and a cluster of farmers in the
Connecticut valley have bought copies of the Koran in 1806?
Surprisingly, there was a long tradition of New Englanders reading in
the Islamic scripture. The legendary bluenose Cotton Mather had his
faults, but a lack of curiosity about the world was not one of them.
Mather paid scrupulous attention to the Ottoman Empire in his voracious
reading, and cited the Koran often in passing. True, much of it was in
his pinched voice — as far back as the 17th century, New England
sailors were being kidnapped by North African pirates, a source of
never ending vexation, and Mather denounced the pirates as “Mahometan
Turks, and Moors and Devils.” But he admired Arab and Ottoman learning,
and when Turks in Constantinople and Smyrna succeeded in inoculating
patients against smallpox, he led a public campaign to do the same in
Boston (a campaign for which he was much vilified by those who called
inoculation the “work of the Devil,” merely because of its Islamic
origin). It was one of his finer moments.This theory was
eloquently expressed around the time the Constitution was written. One
of its models was the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, which John Adams
had helped to create, and which, in the words of one of its drafters,
Theophilus Parsons, was designed to ensure “the most ample of liberty
of conscience” for “Deists, Mahometans, Jews and Christians.”As
the Founders deliberated over what types of people would ultimately
populate the strange new country they were creating, they cited Muslims
as an extreme of foreign-ness whom it would be important to protect in
the future. Perhaps, they daydreamed, a Muslim or a Catholic might
even be president someday? Like everything, they debated it. Some
disapproved, but Richard Henry Lee insisted that “true freedom embraces
the Mahometan and Gentoo [Hindu] as well as the Christian religion.”
George Washington went out of his way to praise Muslims on several
occasions, and suggested that he would welcome them at Mount Vernon if
they were willing to work. Benjamin Franklin argued that Muslims should
be able to preach to Christians if we insisted on the right to preach
to them. Near the end of his life, he impersonated a Muslim essayist,
to mock American hypocrisy over slavery.Thomas Jefferson,
especially, had a familiarity with Islam that borders on the
astonishing. Like Adams, he owned a Koran, a 1764 English edition that
he bought while studying law as a young man in Williamsburg, Va. Only
two years ago, that Koran became the center of a controversy, when the
first Muslim ever elected to Congress, Keith Ellison, a Democrat from
Minnesota, asked if he could place his hand on it while taking his oath
of office — a request that elicited tremendous screeches from the talk
radio extremists. Jefferson even tried to learn Arabic, and wrote his
Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom to protect “the Jew and the
Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of
every denomination.”Jefferson and Adams led many of our early
negotiations with the Islamic powers as the United States lurched into
existence. A favorable treaty was signed with Morocco, simply because
the Moroccans considered the Americans ahl-al-kitab, or “people of the
book,” similar to Muslims, who likewise eschewed the idolatry of
Europe’s ornate state religions.
What are Muslims Like?
Some Muslims really are terrorists.
Some Christians are as well.
In
truth, the percentage of Muslim and Christian terrorists is very small
compared to the huge numbers of adherents of those faiths.
Just
like Christians range from abortion doctor killers to mystics, Muslims
range from jihadis to poets like Rumi (Sufism - the mystical branch of
Islam - is peaceful and contemplative).
As prominent Christian writer, psychiatrist and former army doctor M. Scott Peck wrote, all humans - no matter what religion might be dominant in their culture - go through 4 stages of development:
1st: Chaos (a heroin addict, for example, who robs to support his habit)
2nd:
Fundamentalism (clinging to dogma in order to fight off chaos;
believing the book - whether Bible, Koran or Bhagavad Gita - is THE
truth, and anyone who disagrees is evil)
3rd: Skepticism and questioning (feeling stable enough to question the dogma of the dominant religion and other institutions)
4th:
Maturity (keeping the skepticism and questioning, but also being open
to life's beauty, love and mystery; using both one's head and heart;
being passionate and dedicated to making the world a better place)
(These
4 steps are not necessarily the full and complete truth, but they
present one possible description which is useful for starting a
discussion on religion).
Ignore the clothes, the skin color and the accent, and what do we see?
A drug addict in Saudi Arabia, America or Israel will look fairly similar. Fundamentalist
Christians, Muslims and Jews all think the other guy is evil, and that
God wants them to wipe the other guy out. Skeptics look the same
everywhere. And people who integrate their head and their heart all are
operating out of the same basic dynamic.
We Helped Radicalize Islam
Moreover - in order to know our history and perhaps become a tad more humble in the process - it is important to recognize that we helped to create "radical Islam".
President Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has openly admitted that he created the Mujahadeen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. And it continued under President Reagan (here's a picture of President Reagan meeting with some of these folks).
As the Council on Foreign Relations writes:
The 9/11 Commission report (PDF)
released in 2004 said some of Pakistan's religious schools or
madrassas served as "incubators for violent extremism." Since then,
there has been much debate over madrassas and their connection to
militancy.
***
It was Pakistan's leading
role in the anti-Soviet campaign in neighboring Afghanistan during
this time that radicalized some of these madrassas. New madrassas
sprouted, funded and supported by Saudi Arabia and U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, where students were encouraged to join the Afghan resistance.
And see this.
And veteran journalist Robert Dreyfuss writes:
For
half a century the United States and many of its allies saw what I
call the “Islamic right” as convenient partners in the Cold War.
***
Today
it’s convenient to speak about a Clash of Civilizations. But ... in
the decades before 9/11, hard-core activists and organizations among
Muslim fundamentalists on the far right were often viewed as allies for
two reasons, because they were seen a fierce anti-communists and
because the opposed secular nationalists such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel
Nasser, Iran’s Mohammed Mossadegh.In the 1950s, the United
States had an opportunity to side with the nationalists, and indeed
many U.S. policymakers did suggest exactly that, as my book explains.
But in the end, nationalists in the Third World were seen as wild cards
who couldn’t be counted on to join the global alliance against the
USSR. Instead, by the end of the 1950s,
rather than allying itself with the secular forces of progress in the
Middle East and the Arab world, the United States found itself in
league with Saudi Arabia’s Islamist legions. Choosing Saudi
Arabia over Nasser’s Egypt was probably the single biggest mistake the
United States has ever made in the Middle East.A second big
mistake ... occurred in the 1970s, when, at the height of the Cold War
and the struggle for control of the Middle East, the United States
either supported or acquiesced in the rapid growth of Islamic right in
countries from Egypt to Afghanistan. In Egypt, Anwar Sadat brought the
Muslim Brotherhood back to Egypt. In Syria, the United States, Israel,
and Jordan supported the Muslim Brotherhood in a civil war against
Syria. And ... Israel quietly backed Ahmed Yassin and the Muslim
Brotherhood in the West Bank and Gaza, leading to the establishment of
Hamas.Still another major mistake was the fantasy that Islam
would penetrate the USSR and unravel the Soviet Union in Asia. It led to
America’s support for the jihadists in Afghanistan. But ... America’s
alliance with the Afghan Islamists long predated the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in 1979 and had its roots in CIA activity in Afghanistan
in the 1960s and in the early and mid-1970s. The Afghan jihad spawned
civil war in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, gave rise to the Taliban,
and got Osama bin Laden started on building Al Qaeda.Would the
Islamic right have existed without U.S. support? Of course. This is not
a book for the conspiracy-minded. But there is no question that the
virulence of the movement that we now confront—and which confronts many
of the countries in the region, too, from Algeria to India and
beyond—would have been significantly less had the United States made
other choices during the Cold War.
And the chief of the visa section at the U.S.
consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (J. Michael Springmann, who is now
an attorney in private practice) says
that the CIA insisted that visas be issued to Afghanis so they could
travel to the U.S. to be trained in terrorism in the United States, and
then sent back to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.
In other words,
if the U.S. and our allies hadn't backed the radical violent Muslims
instead of more stable, peaceful groups in the Middle East, radical
Islam wouldn't have grown so large.
Stopping the Bad Guys
That's
not to say that we don't need to stop the handful of Muslim terrorists
that are threatening the U.S. (to give you an idea of numbers, there
may be less than 50 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan according to the CIA itself).
But war is not the way to protect America, and defeating Islam is the way to safety. And see this.
Specifically, according to top security analysts, the global war on terror is weakening, rather than strengthening, our national security, and making us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks:
For
those who still think that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are
necessary to fight terrorism, remember that a leading advisor to the
U.S. military - the very hawkish and pro-war Rand Corporation -
released a study in 2008 called "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida".
The report confirms that the war on terror is actually weakening national security.
As a press release about the study states:
"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."
Former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Senate that the war on terror is "a mythical historical narrative". And Newsweek has now admitted that the war on terror is wholly unnecessary.
(And no ... 9/11 did not "change everything".)
Beware of False Prophets
The neoconservatives who launched the wars in the Middle East may not even be people of faith themselves.
As I noted last year:
The godfather of the Neoconservative movement - Leo Strauss - taught
that religion should be used as a way to manipulate people to achieve
the aims of the leaders. But that the leaders themselves need not
believe in religion.As I have previously written:
Leo
Strauss is the father of the Neo-Conservative movement, including
many leaders of the current administration. Indeed, some of the main
neocon players were students of Strauss at the University of Chicago,
where he taught for many years. Strauss, born in Germany, was an admirer of Nazi philosophers and of Machiavelli.Strauss believed that "A
political order can be stable only if it is united by an external
threat . . . . Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external
threat exists then one has to be manufactured" (quote is by one of Strauss' main biographers).Therefore, it is unknown whether the [Neocons] who [launched the wars in the Middle East] actually believed that the brown-skinned people they wished to [destroy] were Satan-worshippers who needed either to be converted or destroyed.
More
likely, they just followed the old Straussian playbook in creating a
threat which didn't exist - Satanic Muslims who wanted to take over
the world - and using religion to rally the mid- and lower-level
participants in the ... program to carry out their orders.
Atheists Versus People of Faith
I want to address one more divisive issue related to religion, which I think disempowers those of us working for a better world.
Many
atheists believe that all religious people are pedophiles, idiots,
crackpots or charlatans, and many people of faith think that all
atheists are selfish, rootless, valueless and crude.
But let's look at the facts.
Initially, about two-thirds of American scientists believe in God if you count the social sciences. About 40%
of physical scientists believe in God, and that number has stayed
constant for almost 100 years. So atheists shouldn't assume that all
people of faith are idiots.
And the Bible says that you shall know them by their fruits, not by what they say. So believers shouldn't assume that all people who say they are Christians are good guys.
Some Christians are pedophiles, murderers and con men. But others are fighting hard for justice, truth and social justice.
Some
atheists are selfless, valueless hedonists. But others are tireless in
their struggle for liberty, have a passion for freedom which they are
willing to sacrifice their lives for, are selfless in their service and
their love for the smallest of us.
Making the other side the "bad guys" only adds to the ability of the powers-that-be to divide and conquer us.
The
left-right split is false, and hundreds of millions of Americans are
waking up to the fact that the whole Republicans-Versus-Democrats
things is a dog-and-pony show. They are waking up to the fact that
both parties serve the big banks, big pharma, military-industrial
complex, and the whole oligarchy.
These
Americans realize that it doesn't matter whether a politician wears a
red tie or a blue one: he or she either serves the big money boys or
the American people, and that the "team" he's on doesn't matter.
We also have to wake up to the false dichotomy about faith.
Just
as it is urgent that we recognize the left-versus-right split for the
game it is, we atheists have to tolerate religious folks ... and we
people of faith have to tolerate non-believers.I am lucky to call
some incredible atheists and some amazing believers my friends and
colleagues in the struggle for a better world. We may not see
everything exactly the same ... but it is a big tent.
Postscript: Granted,
there have always been some radical factions in Islam, just as there
have always been radical factions in Christianity and Judaism. But -
contrary to what fundamentalists would tell you - Muslims claim that
the Quran does not promote going out and killing non-Muslims.
While
there might be some stage 2 (using M. Scott Peck's system) Muslims
who believe the Quran commands them to kill the "other guys", just
as some stage 2 Christians or stage 2 Jews think that the Bible
commands them to kill Muslims (the Crusades, for example) or atheists or abortion doctors or others. And remember, governments often use tactics to make the other guy seem more violent.
But again, the problem isn't any
particular religion, it is the immaturity of a small handful of its
followers, and the misuse of religion by the powers-that-be to divide
and conquer us.
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I think you answered to the question And Christianity is? So the request of examples is self evident indeed.
So please provide examples.
In reference to Christianity being compatible with life? That's a fairly obtuse task, so why don't you just make this an easy dance, and give me the particulars you are thinking of, and I'll explain them.
+1
What GW implied is that killing an abortion doctor makes one morally equivalent to a 911 pinch-hitting pilot named muhammed. Interestingly, I haven't found any evidence that prior to the murder of Tiller, Scott Roeder spent a night out whoring, doing drugs, and getting wasted, in violation of his religion. I also don't recall that Roeder harmed anyone else during the murder, though he reportedly threatened anyone who followed him. It was a direct assassination. Hmmm.
In any case, the fact is that Tiller was violating Kansas law, and was essentially above the law due to his close relationship with Sebelius the Great and the rest of the kansas pols.
Terrorist vs terrorist? Just ignore the typical silly comparisons by silly men.
I would think that someone who murders the helpless unborn is a terrorist, yes.
US and Israeli bombs kill pregnant Muslim women.
How silly. They weren't targeted to be killed.
If the deaths of innocent people are a foreseeable result of prosecuting wars based on lies then how is that an excuse, babykiller?
Since none of that is true, I won't bother responding further. Don't try to hijack me again with your anti-Bush nonsense.
Oh, so you're one of those Bush worshipping socialists, huh? You should love Obama because he likes to kill innocent Muslims and bail out bankers too. Just your speed.
If you decide to start loving liberty some day, drop me a line.
Sorry, not falling for this political correctness propaganda. Islam is intolerant and often violent towards non-Muslims. Islam does not tolerate Muslims leaving their faith. Islam treats women like crap. Yes, there are some Muslims that live fairly secular lives, but the overwhelming majority fit the above categorization. The media shelters us from the harsh realities of Islam...such as the bride who fled her arranged marriage having her nose chopped off. Where is the outcry or protection?
Ever read the old Testament (really read it, and think about what you just read), or the Talmud, WW1 and 2 soldier's training manuals, or any other old religious text? Tribes propagandize their point-of-view, vilify the "others". Has been going on for 10000 years, written, verbal, or otherwise....
Delta,
Had a long convo with a Muslim, and a follower of Isalm.
Very civil discourse, I told him I have ZERO against Muslims, except for the Rads, and the SILENCE from the (His so called True follower of Islam)Bros & Sisters,not coming to the fore and making a stand for their Majority......
Bottom line, he said was FEAR of the Rads that kept the Majority silent.(speak out, and death awaits them also).
Either way, Islam is not a religion of Peace,Christians get bashed constantly, and 99% of the time for doing nothing violent.
The one's that do violent things are really not Christians, as they are not following the Faith delivered to the saints.
LOL WTF is wrong with America today - the founding fathers knew that freedom isn't free. Regardless of Islam being a repressive religion or not it is the RIGHT to practice whatever religion you believe in that matters here. Maybe Adams read the Koran and thought man these people are fucked up and repressive BUT a GREAT country will protect the idea of free thought and that my friends is the entire point - as soon as the government determines what you can think or what religions you can believe in then you have lost your freedom. I guess that says alot about 2010 Amerika.
UO,
It's not that they do not have the RIGHT, we are 100% agreed on that.
Where the line is drawn is when Honor Killings start, and advocay groups start showing up and getting vocal wanting the RIGHT to practice their LAWS, in lieu of ours.
No other ethnic group I am aware of has ever come to this country, to change it, into where they escaped from, unless there's an ulterior motive.
Want any examples check out the UK,France, and Austrailia.........
Your,My RIGHTS stop at each others faces.
People come here to assimilate, and to be Americans and follow the laws of this land.
If not, pls do not come, because we will not tolerate you.As well should be the case.
As for the Founders reading the Koran, they were intellectual giants, their learning and understanding was I am sure to expand their knowledge
Without knowing history, and the people who made it, the outcomes, and systems, beliefs, etc....one could not be a well rounded individual then, nor now.
Well, where I live I have the left and right "coasties" escaping their former oppression in Portland, Seattle, NY, Cali, etc, moving here to big (cheap) land and freedom, only to re-create the hell they came from with HOA's, etc.
Maybe its a human trait, to escape oppression only to re-create it when you have the chance to be the "creator" of said oppression...
Just a thought
Agreed on that part - hell I think the fact that we have signs and schools having to accomodate Spanish BS too. Move here and become an AMERICAN - learn the laws, language and constitution.
Yes, the heart and truth of the matter at hand.
Just a little research proves you 100% correct.
Fundamental Islam is assaults women's rights at all points ... education, freedom of expression, martial rights, divorce, etc. ... and since this represents 50% of all people, their repression reaches pretty far.
There is not freedom of religion to the Islamic Fundamentalist ... Saudi Arabia executes those to preach a different way. Freedom of Speech; same story.
Islamic Fundamentalists would reject all fundamental rights granted in the Bill of Rights by our Founders:
1 Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.
2 Right to keep and bear arms in order to maintain a well regulated militia.
3 No quartering of soldiers.
4 Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.
5 Right to due process of law, freedom from self-incrimination, double jeopardy.
6 Rights of accused persons, e.g., right to a speedy and public trial.
7 Right of trial by jury in civil cases.
8 Freedom from excessive bail, cruel and unusual punishments.
9 Other rights of the people.
10 Powers reserved to the states.
What is truly amazing is the ones who would scream bloody murder if any of the above rights were breached in their own life, put Islam and Judo Christian values on a par. Unbelievable!
Is it not dangerous tactics to point out women's conditions when in the Western world, women's conditions were raised not by rebalancing husband-wife parts but by worsening the conditions of other women?
This undubiously works but while bettering of conditions through rebalancing can potentially work everywhere, improving women's conditions at the expense of other women leaves unambiguously some women at the door.
How is it to promise something that cannot be hold?
The media shelters us from the harsh realities of...
Drunk israeli settler brags how jews killed Jesushttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irIXIy6hNc8
Thanks for the video, Crockett.
George, once again you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt your complete and utter ignorance. You're an absolute ankle-biting imbecile and I really wish you'd stop disgracing this otherwise fine website with such blatant nonsense.
Try actually reading the Koran someday (with all of its insistence on jihad, its seething hatred of Jews, and its insistence on never making peace with non-Muslims aka "infidels"), the hadiths that describe the life of Mohammed (a man who personally beheaded over 80 Jews of the Quraysh tribe and ordered multiple assassinations of those who criticized Islam), and the text describing Islamic sharia law (especially "Reliance of the Traveller").
EVERYTHING about Islam (and sharia law in particular) goes completely against the Constitution.
Islam is about submission; the Constitution is about freedom.
Islam is about threatening and murdering those who criticize Islam; the First Amendment guarantees a freedom of speech totally at odds with what's described in all core Islamic texts.
While you're at it, try reading the Pew poll that found that 30-40% of Muslims worldwide agree with the worldview of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. With 1.5 billion Muslims around the world, that's over 500 MILLION people who are resolved never to be at peace with declared atheists such as yourself.
Yes, that's over 500 MILLION pro-jihadi, anti-Western Muslims. Hardly a "sideshow."
Then, once you've done that very basic homework (which you really should have done before posting such a profoundly ignorant article), watch the following videos:
An Alarming video every Westerner should see
British Islamists Call For Death of Pope Benedicthttp://www.tangle.com/view_video?viewkey=0861ff3eabea1ceb73e4
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8d3_1285202586
Well said for an agent of hate and polarization. On which shoulder would you like your swastika attached?
GW should try living in a muslim nation; by law muslim women cannot marry non-muslims. Muslims cannot drink, gamble. There are many restrictions on them. Non-muslims cannot even visit Mecca, practice thei religion freely, the list is endless.
GW should really change his name, he knows nothing about the real George Washington.
ITG,
Love it, get junked to hell for telling the truth.
As for Fundamentlist Christians, do you even know WHAT that is?.
Most illiterates think a Born Again Christian is different from a Christian.
Newsflash, IF your really a Christian you are a Born Again one.If your not, your not even a Christian...........
The term christian defines the status of ones relationship with jews and muslims. A christian is a not-jew and a not-muslim. The term born-again defines the status of ones relationship with God. Within this context, one can be a christian yet not be born again. (And conceivably, one could be a not-christian, yet be born again.) That is why there are two different terms. At the core, they each refer to a different relationship dynamic.
Or try terrorist Israel, where jews cannot marry Gentiles and be recognized as such, and drinking is allowed along with white slave prostitutes from Eastern Europe.
DUMP ISRAEL!
We live in the US. Those methods work fine for people in those nations, and are not our problem other than our responsibility for supporting such oppressive regimes. Got that??? WE CREATE THIS SHIT. We directly support this opppression.
But it's all fine so long as we get to drive Ford Extinctions with gas at $3/gallon, and it does not terribly inconvenience us...right?
and the jokes on us, cause 3 bucks wont last
ITG = Troll / fuckstick
Here's a little about Christian terrorists:
The Crusade Continues in Iraq U.S. Military Officially Endorses Crusade Torture is a Form of TerrorismHere's a little about the real George Washington:
Torture Is Not a Partisan Issue . . . George Washington - Who Was Neither a Democrat or Republican - Forbid All TortureI know the new Trijicon sights do not have the inscription - no big deal on that one.
You can't tell the difference between some general shooting his mouth off and sharia law, a system that is in place in many nations, and has existed for a thousand years? Really? You should just stop blogging if you can't tell black from white, GW.
GW, do you ever have an original thought? Your blog barely attains the level of a news aggregator. But even if it was more rigorous, your logic is - in almost every article - horribly awry.
Inscribing bible verses on rifle sites DNE endorsement of crusade. In spite of the breathless article title, your logic fizzles because there is no logic to it. Not the least of which, you never answered the obvious question of why the crusades happened? It takes on a whole new light when you step back and look at the big picture.
The second article is basically a regurgitation of the first, complete with advocacy of your viewpoint. I guess you could also say by that line of unreason that printing money with "In God We Trust" advocates a crusade, as any muslim would know it's not the same God. Your argument is just plain silly.
As for torture is a form of terrorism, it's just more advocacy of making a point and then rounding up references to try to support it. It doesn't meet the rigor of journalism, except modern journalism. I agree with the whole article in regards to torture and how it shouldn't be used. But the entire country disagrees with itself on whether dripping water down the nose of a terrorist, or putting a wiggly worm in his cell, constitutes torture. Then we had the whole accusation of punching some recent terrorist capture in the face or stomach by one of the GIs. Huh? Sounds more like a sucker punch to me, and well-deserved, too - probably the only justice the scumbag gets, in the end. We've gone from accusations of blowing up children in vietnam for fun, to accusations of providing discomfort to a detainee in even the slightest manner, if even by not being accommodating enough. Thanks ACLU !
Go back and read the antiquities referred to by the expert you cited in your own article, and you'll find that when he talks about torture, it's always things like ripping arms and legs off a detainee, or hanging them headfirst into a tank filled with pirhannas, or as happened to early Christians, coating them with pitch and using them for human torches to light the palace. The terrorists must be pleased to have bound their enemy up with so little effort.
In fact, in your own article, pay attention to "agonizing methods of execution". Yup, you wrote it, and your weak-minded followers drank it up, at least guaging by the comments your zombies left in your articles. Your argument only works on people who have any lack of serious thought on what constitutes torture.
speaking of semantics and reality, so when do you volunteer for the water test? If you're gonna talk the talk...
you'd make an interesting defense attorney Edmon. Counsel, what do you have to say to the prosecutors recommendation of an exceptional sentence due to the physical and mental torture this defendant imposed on the 14 year old muslim boy in his three months of captivity. Well your honor, the early christians had it much worse...
you are a victim of the very propaganda machine you claim to fight
All snark aside, if you can't see that there is a material difference between punching a prisoner in the nose - if it's even true - and what the west's own soldiers endure under torture by backwards countries, then my work here is done. Last I checked, there is no serious effort by those other countries to investigate reports of torture. Why should they, when their own government regularly tortures and executes their own citizens, with no protections?
Yet the focus is on the west - which appears to be policing itself into oblivion. Every prisoner of war knows all he has to do is slam his own face into a wall and blame it on his captors, and at the very least he can cause months of trouble and great legal expense for them. At least the west gives its pow's the benefit of the doubt. At least the west investigates. Of course, that's no match for lofty armchairing by the media, as if it even believed in a higher law of behaviour. They expect the west to behave like angels, and say nothing of the feast of evil by the non-western world. When was the last time you read an article condemning the barbarism of islamic society? It's not exactly nightly news.
Shouldn't the west be equally hostile to all forms of oppression? But they aren't, and that's the problem. And that's where your reply falls short. It's not about who is worse, it's about the resistance to even finding out what society is better, and why. I'm not at loggerheads with prosecuting western methods - maybe they are bad, wrong, and/or evil. I am at loggerheads with the continuous entropy of the world due to unreasonable expectations of what constitutes a slight against humanity. And when in doubt, I'll put that nonsense at the very bottom of the to-do list. While the west is busy prosecuting their own for bloodying a nose or dropping a koran, thousands are being brutally tortured and executed for the crime ------- of being alive. Is that justice? Of course not.
It's despicable.
You have it backwards. The west is not "policing itself into oblivion" the west is marching there full speed because it's not policing itself. Invading a country on completely criminal and false pretense is a far cry from dropping the Koran. Killing /displacing a million civillians is a sick joke compared to your bloody nose. Raising, protecting, and colluding with an international criminal "banking" system that is destroying the world economy dwarfs the theft of any third world tyrant. Scale and perspective. We can not truly "help" the world until we get our own criminal house in order.
Dude, you don't need a freakin journalism degree to see that torturing people is terrible and terrifying, and it's only a semantic stones throw away from being terrorism.
I guess that 'enhanced interrogation' apologists will split any hair to come out on top. Sadists enjoy torture. Balanced people are appalled by it.
What if I'm feeling just a "little off" in the morning?
No, but perhaps you do need a journalism degree to determine that waterboarding is torture.
I don't give a care about how close things are semantically, I care about their relationship in reality. And that's the problem here, is that some are calling it torture and running with it, and it's ridiculous. Is punching someone in the face torture? Then I guess I should go to jail. I'll probably see a lot of ZH'ers there. Calling any of that torture is the leftist equivalent of dubbing Lucas racist for creating a "dark side" instead of a white side.
Man up, rodeo.
"Man up, rodeo."
I accept your challenge. We'll set up 2 water-boarding tables. If you last longer than I do, I'll admit that you're right, and we shouldn't be such pansies about torture (which I think is essentially what you're saying).
Punching somebody in the face isn't torture, it's slavery, if you want to get all philosophical on the subject (which I do)...
Jeez, with ethics like these, who needs evil in the world?
Funny one. Actually, cruelty was the criterion.
Great -- so we prove you totally and utterly wrong, and rather than responding to that, all you can do is change the subject to your stupid rants on "Christian terrorists."
How about replying to the points that were actually raised? Must you use every single opportunity to pollute the Internet with your ill-informed propaganda?
do me a favor and return to the status of "missing"...please...? Evolutionary dead-ends exist for a reason, ya know...
{edit} --I have slipped in my chosen quest of being as positive as possible and not be dragged into my very real ability to be a very sarcastic, judgemental SOB...my apologies. I will try harder going forward...
For the points to be true, there have to be rooted in reality.
Other than that, it is merely propaganda.
Words on paper are words on paper. All of them can coexist.
Freedom of speech is an illusion. The only freedom that is allowed everywhere is speaking innocuous words or reflecting the thought of the (political) majority.
This said, then the Constitution is also an evidence that the Founding Fathers were anti Christianity. Or in what does it differ?
Amen to that!
Really, there is proof that the Founding Fathers WERE thoroughly anti-Islam ... It's called the Constitution.
Anyone who has actually bothered to read both the Constitution and the Koran understands this.
"George Washington" is apparently too busy writing to actually take the time to read these texts.
They were generally anti-religion. They recognized that all religion, as a creation of man, did not necessarily equate to God, and could be abused by power, becoming a means to an oppresive end.
-exactly, ex-frakking-actly...doesn't matter the creed, I have worked with, lived with all faiths, Chistian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Atheist and so forth...ALL have the possibilty of human-induced power plays, oppression... ALL have beauty, true spirituality expressed...doesn't matter....its what we humans DO with our good books wisdoms, and probably the founders of this country were more than aware of this.
Hey, look! The Founder Fathers are calling you a liar!