Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

So What’s It Done For Us Lately?

38 Comments

Obama, in Cairo:

As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam – at places like Al-Azhar University – that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation.

So far, so good (though I’ve never seen much evidence that he’s really a “student of history”). But this next seems like a stretch:

And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.

Note that he provides no examples of this, and the world abounds with counterexamples to the proposition. For example, I always find it either amusing or appalling that African-Americans who embrace the religion don’t understand that it was Arab traders (Muslims) who sold their ancestors into slavery to the Europeans.

This next bit is even more amazing, though:

I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America’s story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President John Adams wrote, “The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.” And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, served in government, stood for civil rights, started businesses, taught at our Universities, excelled in our sports arenas, won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. And when the first Muslim-American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers – Thomas Jefferson – kept in his personal library.

Now, when I see the words “Islam has always been a part of America’s story,” and “Tripoli,” the Treaty of Tripoli is not the first thing that comes to mind. What comes to mind is the Marine Corps anthem, which talks about “the shores of Tripoli.” Because that was the first foreign war in which we engaged after gaining our independence and becoming a constitutional republic — a war against Muslims resulting from their continual piracy and kidnapping of American sailors. And of course, they didn’t restrict their kidnapping to ships at sea — many people (and many women and children) were plucked from the shores of Europe and the British Isles, and sold into slavery. By Muslims. They were equal-opportunity slavers, enslaving both blacks and whites. Perhaps this is what Obama meant by their promotion of “racial equality.”

Anyway, anyone familiar with the actual history of relations between the young United States and the Barbary Pirates would be astonished to read the above paragraph coming from a supposed “student of history.”

Now, I’m not saying that he should have peeled that particular scab off the old wound– just that it’s bizarre to talk about our early relations with Islam without mentioning it. It would have been better to simply avoid discussing that particular period in history at all.

I guess that this must be a result of studying history in the US public school system. Maybe he should have gotten vouchers.

And of course, there is nothing particularly Islamic about wearing a “hijab.” It’s a recent fashion (and part of the religion’s long-time subjugation of women). I hope that he doesn’t plan to have the US government defend the right to cover the face for driver’s license photos, or to not require Muslim nurses to wash their hands before and during surgery, as has occurred in the UK.

What is annoying about this speech (even ignoring the utter whitewashing of the history of Islam), is that he’s once again, or still (though more subtly this time) running against George Bush, with the implication that Bush was at war with Islam, regardless of the painstaking politically correct steps he took to avoid that impression, to the point of having the FBI coordinate and cooperate with the terrorist-sponsoring organization, CAIR. This speech was unnecessary, at least as far as healing our relations with Islam or the world. But it will help reinforce domestically the false history from this “student of history” that the war (when they’re willing to admit that we are at war) is all Bush’s fault.

I’ll probably talk about the section on Israel and the “Palestinians” in another post, when I find time.

[Update a while later]

It’s worth noting, as it is in comments, that the Treaty of Tripoli was one of several, and basically a negotiation of how much tribute should be paid by the US to the Barbary Coast for a guarantee of unhindered passage by American ships through the Mediterranean and near Atlantic, after the loss of protection by first the British and later the French navies. It was basically a formalized extortion racket, which eventually (and it didn’t take long) broke down and resulted in the young US raising a Navy and engaging in the Barbary Wars, to avoid further tribute. Again, it seems a tender issue to raise in a speech addressed to Muslims.

[Update early afternoon]

Andy McCarthy has similar thoughts.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Platitudes and naivete. Robert Spencer dissects. Of course “platitudes and naivete” is a pretty good description of any Obama speech, so it doesn’t really distinguish this one.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Obama Has Nominated A Puerto Rican Nationalist

25 Comments

…to the Supreme Court of the United States. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a Puerto Rican nationalist per se — I find it a perfectly respectable political position albeit a minority one on the island, and the US would probably be better off without the commonwealth, since it is a net sink for taxpayer dollars. But do we really want someone who couldn’t bring herself to call the US Congress and US Supreme Court the US Congress and US Supreme Court to be an associate justice on the latter? At the very least, this deserves some serious questions at the confirmation hearings.

Political Commentary

Thoughts On Tiananmen Square

3 Comments

…on the twentieth anniversary:

George Orwell said, “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” He’s all too right. Last century, an estimated 262 million people were murdered by their own government . That doesn’t include the hundreds of millions more killed by opposing governments during war.

Today ought to be a day to celebrate and promote human liberty, and to remember the abuses governments have heaped upon their subjects over the centuries.

So go find your own metaphor for the government tank pictured above.

Then put yourself in front of it.

You know, I can’t think of a single corporation that could claim even a tiny fraction of such a death toll.

[Update a few minutes later]

Sadly predictable behavior by the left — using the anniversary of Chinese government brutality against those seeking liberty, to smear Walmart.

Media Criticism, Space

“Hate” Speech

38 Comments

Mark Whittington seems to suffer from an almost autistic inability to properly gauge the emotions of others — the same malady as many self-described liberals seem to suffer, when they describe as “hate speech” or “racist” words with which they simply disagree. He often irrationally refers to my posts as “rants,” or “seething,” or “filled with rage,” though in each and every case I was perfectly calm when composing them, and no one else ever sees the supposed anger. And when called on it, he can never justify it, or point to the exact words that he finds so rage filled (and indeed, ignores requests to do so, usually simply repeating the slander).

Here’s an example (not of me, this time, fortunately):

Some interesting words of wisdom from Mike Griffin along with, sadly, words of hate in the comments section.

Well, I read those comments (only two of them at the time of this posting — I can’t speak for what might appear there in the future), and I saw nothing “hateful” about them. They simply pointed out inconsistencies in the former administrator’s words, and between words and deeds. One need not “hate” someone to point out flaws in their arguments. I wonder why Mark views the world in such emotional extremes?

[Thursday morning update]

Amazing. He’s still at it.

Mind, there are a few things about which one can criticize Dr. Griffin’s tenure at NASA, mainly by using 20 20 hindsight. But really, some of the posts I have read makes one wonder if he drinks the blood of virgins and eats the flesh of the young, so filled with rage they are.

Note that (as always) he can’t point to any particular “rage-filled” post or comment, and show us the “hateful” words. Just like his imaginary friends at the “Internet Rocketeers Club,” we are simply supposed to accept that such things exist in reality, and not just in Mark’s mind.

And of course, there, as he did here, he says that I accused him of being a liberal, once again indicating his apparent inability to comprehend written English. And no, Mark, there is nothing “hateful” about pointing out either that, or your apparent inability to properly gauge others’ emotional states. It is purely an unemotional, clinical observation.

[Bumped]

History, Social Commentary, Space, Space History

Well, He Meant “…A Man…”

1 Comment

…but he didn’t quite say it:

Riley and Olsson…concluded that Commander Armstrong and his family members do pronounce the word “a” in a discernible way.

And based on broadcasts from Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from the surface of the Moon, it is clear that the word “a” was easily transmitted to Earth without being obliterated.

But their analysis of the intonation of the phrase strongly suggests Commander Armstrong had intended to say “a man”. There is a rising pitch in the word “man” and a falling pitch when he says “mankind”.

According to Mr Olsson: “This indicates that he’s doing what we all do in our speech, he was contrasting using speech – indicating that he knows the difference between man and mankind and that he meant man as in ‘a man’ not ‘humanity’.”

I think it’s safe to say that this has been analyzed to death at this point. It’s only been forty years.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

You Don’t Say

3 Comments

Lee Smith says that Obama is playing to Iran’s strength:

It is a given that anything Obama says or does will be an improvement over the Bush administration’s inept efforts at Muslim outreach. And yet it is worth recalling that the Bush administration also sought to appeal directly to Muslims. Bush’s freedom agenda, after all, was intended to give Muslims a democratic voice in their own governance. Nonetheless, Paul Wolfowitz, Bush’s one-time point man for Middle East democracy, is one among many across the political spectrum who are concerned that by choosing an authoritarian police state for his podium, Obama may be signaling that the United States is ditching democracy promotion. But the real problem is that Obama has not learned from Bush’s errors. In seeking to speak to the Muslim masses over the heads of their rulers, Obama, as columnist David Goldman (who usually writes under the name Spengler) explains, is undermining an important U.S. ally on his home turf.

Note that (for the trolls) I don’t claim that he’s a traitor. But he’s frighteningly naive. It’s Jimmy Carter II.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!