tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post2695642115228029110..comments2024-03-28T10:36:13.058-05:00Comments on Althouse: Let's take a serious look at Obama's reasons for not using the words "Islamist" and "Muslim" when he talks about al Qaeda and ISIS.Ann Althousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01630636239933008807noreply@blogger.comBlogger144125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-23422449233505425492015-02-20T04:46:41.949-06:002015-02-20T04:46:41.949-06:00I'm sorry, but I find it difficult to put &quo...I'm sorry, but I find it difficult to put "Obama" and "serious" in the same sentence without putting the words "is not" between them.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06626441790309181522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-48462675677498143892015-02-20T03:59:58.193-06:002015-02-20T03:59:58.193-06:00This comment has been removed by the author.JamesB.BKKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14327552035907688020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-3555944304231709632015-02-20T03:59:26.144-06:002015-02-20T03:59:26.144-06:00Let's see what happens in "liberal" ...Let's see what happens in "liberal" Muslim places. As one of the few "Islamic states" (per Mahathir) that permits large non-Muslim populations to remain (for now) consider Malaysia for example. Apostacy = gaol time, for now. Better than execution? Ok. Peaceful? Not at all. Proselytizing to Muslims = gaol. Criminalization of violations of religious requirements? You bet. Is this where one would hope the endgame is for "reform"? Indonesia might not be a good proxy. Its population was mostly headhunters before the Arabs got there and then was ruled by the Dutch.<br />http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/05/30/us-malaysia-religion-idUSSP21574920070530JamesB.BKKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14327552035907688020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-73885899317884723982015-02-19T19:14:06.889-06:002015-02-19T19:14:06.889-06:00Althouse doesn't say if she likes this Pragmat...Althouse doesn't say if she likes this Pragmatic Obama or not. C'mon Ann, let us know.JackWaynehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14711089367463277913noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-42585853378745443672015-02-19T18:40:22.392-06:002015-02-19T18:40:22.392-06:00He is a Muslim. Case closed.He is a Muslim. Case closed.Poetrymanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405842194336331770noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-60261575145766439582015-02-19T16:44:53.892-06:002015-02-19T16:44:53.892-06:00At the Summit he is telling his audience -- by mak...At the Summit he is telling his audience -- by making theological distinctions and by convening the Summit -- that he is their Caliph and they are his Sultans. And he is telling AQ, ISIS, Saud, Iran, etc., and even Muslim Brotherhood, his old sponsors, that they, too, have to bend the neck to him. No doubt in return he has promised US taxpayer subsidy of their mosques, missions and charities, i.e., their world-wide jihads ... so long as they recognize him as Supreme Global Caliph.David R. Grahamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16416692639208634879noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-11547578575495124342015-02-19T15:47:49.138-06:002015-02-19T15:47:49.138-06:00the more zero avoids stating that which is obvious...the more zero avoids stating that which is obvious to anyone who can see, the louder the obvious screams outjuniornaturelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16697650234869300402noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-44348167799774743162015-02-19T15:45:55.401-06:002015-02-19T15:45:55.401-06:00This comment has been removed by the author.juniornaturelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16697650234869300402noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-16879873321140265932015-02-19T15:24:33.572-06:002015-02-19T15:24:33.572-06:00"...either purposely lying, or he is dangerou..."...either purposely lying, or he is dangerously naive."<br /><br />That describes every leftist, all the time. Brilliant!Delaynahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07443991439305465944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-59355598350863991042015-02-19T15:06:54.773-06:002015-02-19T15:06:54.773-06:00ISIS's media strategy is to flaunt its barbari...ISIS's media strategy is to flaunt its barbaric behavior and loudly announce to the world that the US and Europe do not have the stomach to stand up to them. That is the context in which the administration refusing to admit that the Islamic State of is Islamic of all things is occurring in. It comes off as a weak evasion regarding a foe that preys on and highlights weakness. <br /><br />All the word games aside, it reflects a larger absence of any coherent strategy. If you cannot admit the ideological/theological basis of ISIS's or al-Qaeda's appeal, you are stuck talking about nonsense like jobs as a strategy. You refuse to acknowledge what ISIS is and where it comes from. You try to work with groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. You insist that Hamas is part of the legitimate PA government and watch the all too predictable rockets red glare. You watch Iran run riot through the region. (Yemen the latest on the hit parade). And Libya descend into chaos. <br /><br />Maybe a bit of moral clarity and honesty is finally in order.ihaschhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12844121092730804458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-56936354566780227412015-02-19T14:32:49.602-06:002015-02-19T14:32:49.602-06:00Althouse: "I assume Obama is trying to stimul...Althouse: "I assume Obama is trying to stimulate Muslims to stand up to other Muslims: Look what these terrible people are saying about your religion. And the implication is: Your great religion is getting a bad name because of these people. In that light, Obama is stirring up Muslim fervor to go to war in the name of — over the name of — Islam."<br /><br />They are already at war. It's just that many of them have not openly chosen sides yet. Maybe he is trying to push them towards it.<br /><br />BTW, Kansas and Missouri were at war a long time before Fort Sumter. ken in txhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14345764031059905578noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-87196695650604672132015-02-19T14:29:10.355-06:002015-02-19T14:29:10.355-06:00Among the many humorous aspects of the linguistic ...Among the many humorous aspects of the linguistic dodge is that the administration itself uses the acronyms ISIL and ISIS.<br /><br />I suppose there is no I in ISIL or ISIS.Michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08258681007386089907noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-77414605055975758842015-02-19T14:23:58.617-06:002015-02-19T14:23:58.617-06:00This comment has been removed by the author.Phil Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08565902392066173320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-37466861312362347892015-02-19T14:22:23.150-06:002015-02-19T14:22:23.150-06:00Who would have suspected that Obama, of all people...Who would have suspected that Obama, of all people, would turn out to be such an expert on Islam! Not me!Phil Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08565902392066173320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-89437916040016255092015-02-19T13:54:20.700-06:002015-02-19T13:54:20.700-06:00Oh, more from Peter Bergen:
"Similarly, in h...Oh, more from Peter Bergen:<br /><br /><i>"Similarly, in his important 2004 book "Understanding Terror Networks," psychiatrist Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer, examined the backgrounds of 172 militants who were part of al Qaeda or a similar group. Just under half were professionals; two-thirds were either middle or upper class and had gone to college; indeed, several had doctorates.<br /><br />In a 2006 study, Swati Pandey and this author examined the educational background of 79 terrorists responsible for five of the worst anti-Western terrorist attacks of the modern era -- the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, the 9/11 attacks, the Bali nightclub bombings in 2002, and the London bombings on July 7, 2005.<br /><br />We found that more than half of the terrorists had attended college, making them as well-educated as the average American. Two of our sample had doctoral degrees, and two others had begun working toward their doctorates.<br /><br />None of them had attended a madrassa.<br /><br />Of course, large-scale insurgent groups such as ISIS and the Taliban recruit foot soldiers who join the cause to get a paycheck. But the people running these organizations are in it for ideological reasons."</i><br /><br />http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/19/opinion/bergen-terrorism-root-causes/index.htmlTiborehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07360541843865827271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-9622899376256662612015-02-19T13:45:19.174-06:002015-02-19T13:45:19.174-06:00"Sloanasaurus said...
But what Obama calls th...<i>"Sloanasaurus said...<br />But what Obama calls the fighters in ISIS is not the real problem. The real problem is the made up excuses he comes up with to explain why ISIS is fighting. These include ideas such as they have no jobs, or they live in poverty."</i><br /><br />Not just ISIS; I think he's stated this to be the case in general with terrorism. And that's bad, especially coming from him, because there is no association there to begin with. <br /><br />The 9/11 terrorists stand as a good example. Most of them were college educated - in fact, that's how some of them met. And heck, Mohamed Atta is actually a published scholar in the field of Urban Planning (yeah, the joke about "Urban Planning" is there for the taking, but he's honestly, truly published in that field). Also, consider that al-Zawahiri is a surgeon, with all the college and medical school training plus hospital work that implies.<br /><br />Yes, there are poor, uneducated terrorists who come from marginal societies that offer no opportunities. But, there are many educated, not poor to honestly well-off terrorists who've come from places where there is work and genuine opportunity available. <br /><br />And let's remember that many of these current ISIS fighters are travelers from other nations themselves. That doesn't mean they're rich, nor does it say anything about their education at all, but it sure as heck doesn't mean they're destitute. Not if they can afford to travel.<br /><br />Asserting that poverty and opportunity is the "root cause" is just that: Assertion. The real root cause is belief and a desire to belong. It's a shibboleth that needs to be discarded amongst the governing professionals in the west, because if the mindset persists, they will continue to fail to understand the problem ISIS and other radical Islamicists represent.Tiborehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07360541843865827271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-27510068674375751742015-02-19T13:44:01.161-06:002015-02-19T13:44:01.161-06:00Obama is very subtle and crafty in the way he fram...<i>Obama is very subtle and crafty in the way he frames his statements.</i><br /><br />Obama doesn't <b>do</b> "subtle and crafty."Big Mikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15831645119853118904noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-25502764764416373472015-02-19T12:55:13.075-06:002015-02-19T12:55:13.075-06:00I think there is some benefit to the strategy of n...I think there is some benefit to the strategy of not referring to ISIS as "Islamic" if you want to lessen the chance that naïve people will start throwing all muslims into the same bucket. <br /><br />But what Obama calls the fighters in ISIS is not the real problem. The real problem is the made up excuses he comes up with to explain why ISIS is fighting. These include ideas such as they have no jobs, or they live in poverty. If Obama creates policies to fight these made up rationalizations then we are in a world of trouble. ONe could imagine Obama trying to create jobs programs for ISIS fighters rather than dropping more bombs. After that fails, ISIS is much bigger and stronger than before. If we drop bombs on them, then at least we will be killing them while discovering whether it is a working policy or not.<br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />Sloanasaurushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15787488302564761993noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-1493941331378431072015-02-19T12:53:42.938-06:002015-02-19T12:53:42.938-06:00Aren't these excesses just a result of our mis...Aren't these excesses just a result of our misunderstanding of "Muslim Liberation Theology?"HoodlumDoodlumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17591221162603652473noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-11013929329292654232015-02-19T12:34:57.246-06:002015-02-19T12:34:57.246-06:00@SGT Ted:
"Our NOT dealing with radical Isla...@SGT Ted:<br /><br />"Our NOT dealing with radical Islamic terrorism in the 70s, 80s and 90s, thinking we could keep it isolated overseas, directly led to the 9/11 attacks, because the enemy thought us too complacent and cowardly to wage open warfare against them."<br /><br />Well, we spent a good part of the 80s, through proxies in the Pakistani ISI, which is a rat's nest of Taliban sympathizers, funding the recruitment, with Islamist rhetoric, of foreign fighters into Afghanistan to bog down the Soviets. In the 90s, Bill Clinton dropped bombs in Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He signed an executive order to have bin Laden assassinated. The CIA had an entire team working on bin Laden from the mid-90s on. The governments of Saudi Arabia and Sudan had expelled bin Laden. That's not law enforcement, and it isn't ignoring. Terrorist training camps weren't needed to pull off 9/11. How would invading Afghanistan and Iraq earlier than we did have had any impact on 9/11? How would the United States acting tough have deterred suicide bombers? <br /><br />@Ralph Hyatt:<br /><br />"Well, Italy is pretty worried about that Libya issue since its less than two hundred miles across the Mediterranean to Southern Italy, they already have a refugee problem, and it would be pretty easy to slip some ISIL fighters in with the refugees."<br /><br />Some good reasons for Italy to be worried, and they should probably take some steps to protect themselves. Italy's problems aren't America's problems. J. Farmerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09118902560282089997noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-11441040451227137822015-02-19T12:23:29.746-06:002015-02-19T12:23:29.746-06:00Stalin did not make any fine distinctions between ...Stalin did not make any fine distinctions between Germans and Nazis. For that matter, he did not make any fine distinctions between the Volga Germans and Nazis. He had the Volga Germans loaded onto box cars and shipped east. About one third of them died in the resettlement program......Whle it's true that FDR did round up the Japanese indiscriminately, he was more nuanced in his treatment of white foreigners. The Romanians were put into internment camps, but the Italians were not. Roosevelt famously said that the Italians were "a bunch of opera lovers" and, perhaps more significantly, they were part of the New Deal coalition.......I suppose at this late date you could get Obama to criticize Stalin for his treatment of minorities, but, it simply wasn't an issue back then and not much of an issue now. FDR's internment of the Japanese is criticized but mostly because the blame can be laid to white racism. The fact that it was otherwise administered in a politically preferential way is ignored......We all have prejudices but the prejudices of the left are more enlightened and will lead us to the sunlit,upland fields.Williamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07837540030934495651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-27644488268158552682015-02-19T12:05:30.995-06:002015-02-19T12:05:30.995-06:00"His intent is exactly the opposite: by decla...<i>"His intent is exactly the opposite: by declaring Al Qaeda, ISIS, and such groups to be heretics--which is what he's doing--he's asserting that "true" Muslims would never support or participate in such acts of violence as these groups."</i><br /><br />An assertion entirely at odds with his administrations actions.<br /><br />Less than twenty four hours before Obama declared ISIL to be not-Islamic his own State Department spokesperson declared Kony/the Lord's Resistance Army to be unequivocally Christian.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-70324261979488131202015-02-19T12:02:02.133-06:002015-02-19T12:02:02.133-06:00Robert Cook sez: "His intent is exactly the o...Robert Cook sez: "His intent is exactly the opposite: by declaring Al Qaeda, ISIS, and such groups to be heretics--which is what he's doing"<br /><br />And that's ridiculous.<br /><br />An American President--especially a non-Muslim President--has no right to tell Muslims what is and isn't "true" Islam.<br /><br />How would we feel if Obama said that Presbyterianism wasn't "true" Christianity, or Reform Judaism wasn't "true" Judaism?<br /><br />The question of what is and isn't "true Islam" is up to the MUSLIMS, not to Obama.<br /><br />He's not a cleric and he's not a theologian and he's not an expert on Islam and he should just SHUT UP on such matters.sinz52https://www.blogger.com/profile/09870817085229690168noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-64569567931322971742015-02-19T11:51:09.406-06:002015-02-19T11:51:09.406-06:00Because Hussein Obama is a M_U_S_L_I_M
Jeez, why ...Because Hussein Obama is a M_U_S_L_I_M<br /><br />Jeez, why can't you just say it.<br />According to him the most beautiful sound is the Muslim call to prayer. He was a Muslim in his youth, so he is either now a Muslim, or he is an apostate. When did he renounce his Muslim faith?<br />"I will stand with the Muslims..."<br /><br />Get a clue and quit trying to be "nuanced" like that silly Usurper administration bitch Herf.<br /><br />Obama is not a "child of our own". He was born British, raised in Indonesia as a Muslim, sat at the knee of virulent anti-Americans and Communists.<br /><br />Just stop it. The normalcy bias and Cognitive Dissonance is just ridiculous.Mickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17690387841961933861noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-61518812651981120992015-02-19T11:42:38.194-06:002015-02-19T11:42:38.194-06:00"And it will be true no matter what anyone sa...<i>"And it will be true no matter what anyone says."</i><br /><br />Well...ummm...I guess that settles that!Robert Cookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06951286299515983901noreply@blogger.com