Facing a changing demographic and a population slightly more educated about Republican fear campaigns has forced the GOP to try to go “over the top” on fear mongering.
It is now apparently the mainstream Republican position that it was NOT …. NOT ….19 fanatics guided by Osama Bin Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohammed who flew planes into to World Trade center….but all of Islam.
Every single Muslim in the world attacked New York on September 11th.
All 1.6 billion Muslims flew those planes.
The Global War on Terror, as it turns out, is not a war of the 99.99% percent of the civilized, thinking people of the world versus the .01% of radical murdering terrorists who happen to claim they are true Muslims.
As it turns out, (now that an election is near) it is a Holy War of Christians vs Muslims.
Privately of course, the Republicans have always believed that this is just a replay of the Crusades, as George Bush indicated ten days after the attack.
“This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.”— George W Bush, using a loaded term which recalls the Christians’ Medieval wars against Muslims in the so-called Holy Land, after stepping off the presidential helicopter on Sunday, September 16, 2001, quoted from Jonathan Lyons, “Bush enters Mideast’s rhetorical minefield ” (Reuters: September 21, 2001). Bush later apologized for this remark.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Bush’s use of the term “crusade” to describe his fight against terrorism has ignited fears in the Muslim world that U.S. military action is little more than an excuse to unleash holy war. What’s more, say experts on the world of Islam, Bush’s unscripted remarks last weekend could play into the hands of the very Islamic militants the president blames for the twin attacks on New York and Washington that left more than 6,500 dead or missing.
“This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while,” Bush said on Sunday after stepping off the presidential helicopter. On Tuesday, the White House said Bush regretted use of the term. But apparently aware of the rhetorical minefields ahead, the president also used his address to the nation on Thursday to try to allay any such concerns, telling the Muslims of the world: “We respect your faith … The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying in effect to hijack Islam itself.”
But by then, a nervous Muslim world was abuzz with warnings from politicians and newspaper commentators of a renewed military threat emerging from the West. “They (the United States) want to open a battle against Islam,” Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of the militant Muslim movement Hamas, told Reuters in the Gaza Strip earlier in the week. “Using the word ‘crusade’ casts the matter in theological terms, as a case of our religion against theirs,” said George Saliba, a scholar of medieval Islamic history at Columbia University in New York. “It says, I will recruit God to my side. This is a dead end and has never produced a positive result.”
I suppose the Republicans think that since nine years have passed, the world will now ignore or forgive them for declaring jihad on all of the 1.6 billion Muslims of the world.
George Bush, for political reasons, apologized and walked back his honest opinion, shared by his base the Fundamentalist Christians, (another .01% of the world’s population) that this was a “Clash of Civilizations,” a Holy War. It was the right thing to do. Not only is it morally and factually wrong to blame all of Islam for the actions of a few murderers that claimed to be Muslims, it is incredibly stupid and can only have the effect of building hatred for America among Muslims, thus creating MORE terrorism.
But now, with an election looming, the gloves are off, the masks are down, the charade of tolerance has ended.
The deep thinkers of the Republican Party, given a choice between not having a really juicy Campaign of Fear with which to terrorize the American Voter and attack the Democrats as being Soft on Human Beings that Look Different…..
….or declaring Holy War on One Quarter of the Worlds Population….
….have of course made the only choice possible to fine upstanding old white Christian men who get diapered by prostitutes, cheat on their wives with their staff, get caught playing footsie in airport bathrooms, lie us into wars for profit, support torture, and who have been repeatedly proven wrong on every single political, economic, and national security issue.
I am quite sure that if you asked them why, they would state the simple (very simple) truth that they have only declared Holy War on One Quarter of the Worlds Population…. in order to Keep America Safe.
Not to find a nice juicy wedge issue to try to win a mid term election.
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might say that it is wrong and irresponsible to blame ALL Republicans for the ridiculous positions of a few, to which I reply…..
Yup.
…maybe a thorough reconsideration of bipartisanship might be an idea, eh?
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The wonderfully acerbic and powerfully honest Mary Scott O’Connor:
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She wrote that as part of a comment in the cross-post (over at My Left Wing) of my Docudharma Essay re: Milquetoast Harry (down the page a bit from her).
Indeed. Are any of us shocked? Talk about kabuki! Everybody had their roles written for them, hell, in about 1989, and it plays out the same way, again and again and again . . .
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according to Chris Hayes originated from the slimy underbelly of the right wing blog Pamella Geller’s Atlas Shrugs and then worked it’s way upwards to the Democratic Senate Majority Leader. Seems to me that both parties are whipping this dead horse. Look at any poll and it’s not Islamoterrorist’s that people are afraid of or riled up about . It’s the economy stupid. Obama came out and did the right thing stood up for the first amendment but the next day he weighted in on the wrong side of the culture war, redux. The ‘war’ we won and then immediately set up again, flaming the embers of the burnt out lunatics who we defeated. Our better angels who were appealed to, are now called left of the left and are incrementally fading in favor of hate and fear. Kinda handy as the wars against EVIL need some good old fashioned hatred of other to get them back in favor.
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1/2 the world’s population is women (well, somewhat more than 1/2, I think).
Caucasians make up but a fraction of the world’s population. Regarding that, seems the GOP’s taking it’s marching orders from “Stormfront” or “Aryan Nation” or some other such group, worried sick over the shrinking number of Nordic’s as a percentage of the world’s population.
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