In what may be the most odious equivocation ever, Obama attempts to explain away Islamic extremism by throwing out the tautology that, hey, Christian states did bad things too - is the man an idiot? Does he think we're all idiots? Does he actually believe the nonsense he spouts? No reasonable and reasonably educated person denies the point Dear Leader is making - but once you've admitted that, absent countervailing forces, absolutist belief systems [which all religions are] tend towards bad behavior especially when tied to political ends, the next question to ask is, and it's the only question that matters in this context: why did the Christian West evolve out of this behavior while the Muslim world has not? As said before, the answer as far as I'm concerned is that Islam is an inherently political religion while Christianity, although often used for political purposes in the past, is not - there's a strong motivation in Islam to keep the system closed - to achieve that end requires a robust and repressive political/social component which by it's very nature will be extremist. Of course all religions share more or less in this motivation to 'purity' and dogma - problems arise when this motivation is necessarily tied to a political component, which is the case with Islam but was not with Christianity.
But of course Obama does not follow the logical consequences of his statement - he just throws out the absurd equivocation and moves on as if all problems have been quelled. Has a great nation ever been led by a more pathetic leader than this guy? I'm sure some Roman emperors fit the bill - but my god, this is just getting sad to watch. Think about it, if you're not willing to pursue the logical consequences of making such a statement [which should be the sole reason for making such a statement] then why make the statement? What on earth does he think he's accomplishing with it? The frightening thought is that it isn't just him spouting more empty rhetoric but rather that he does think it accomplishes something - as if he thinks there's no problem in the world that can't be solved by the first black/sort of black president apologizing for all the horrible things those evil white capitalists have done. I dunno - can he really be such a deluded left wing ideologue that he actually believes that statement in and of itself expresses some profound truth?
[of course having said all that it is legitimate to ask if there is a point to being honest about why the Muslim world is the way it is - reform is needed but we can't force it upon them - indeed, even if reform comes it will no doubt be accompanied by much upheaval - that may be what we're seeing with ISIS - still, I don't see how in any sound way you can strategically position yourself against a threat if you can't be honest regarding the true roots of the threat - the almost universal failure of Western leaders to understand the Arab Spring and foresee how it would play out is clear example of this - Obama's embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt another - Europe's indulging of Islamist thinking and the problems that has given rise to another - the myopic antipathy directed at Israel by both Europe and Obama another - Iran - one could go on. Even if one believes that the invasion of Iraq was the worst foreign policy decision ever - which the liberal elite en masse do believe - if you're being intellectually honest - which the liberal elite en masse seems incapable of doing - you still have to admit that it revealed something very important: our understanding of the Muslim world, on both the left and the right - but especially the left - falls far short of the clear thinking required to form a workable strategy against the threats rising out of it - and there may be no better manifestation of this failing than the singularly abysmal practice of foreign policy under Obama]
[as for me saying an inability to with honest objectivity analyze the threats against us will leave us incapable of forming a coherent strategic posture against those threats, this at Commentary fills the idea out with some nice sarcasm - and it's true, anyone surprised by how awful a president Obama is has not spent much time listening to the liberal academy arrogantly expound with utter delusion on foreign policy - I like how Mendel snarks that given his intellectual pedigree it's a wonder, bad as he is, that Obama isn't actually worse - I don't know if you could get worse - again, understanding the intellectual milieu Obama crawled out of none of this is surprising - these people live in a world of vainglorious concepts utterly detached from reality and held unsteadily aloft by one single conviction: a disgust for American power and the ignorant instruments - capitalism and the military - that deliver it - everything they do, think and say is twisted through that prism]
But of course Obama does not follow the logical consequences of his statement - he just throws out the absurd equivocation and moves on as if all problems have been quelled. Has a great nation ever been led by a more pathetic leader than this guy? I'm sure some Roman emperors fit the bill - but my god, this is just getting sad to watch. Think about it, if you're not willing to pursue the logical consequences of making such a statement [which should be the sole reason for making such a statement] then why make the statement? What on earth does he think he's accomplishing with it? The frightening thought is that it isn't just him spouting more empty rhetoric but rather that he does think it accomplishes something - as if he thinks there's no problem in the world that can't be solved by the first black/sort of black president apologizing for all the horrible things those evil white capitalists have done. I dunno - can he really be such a deluded left wing ideologue that he actually believes that statement in and of itself expresses some profound truth?
[of course having said all that it is legitimate to ask if there is a point to being honest about why the Muslim world is the way it is - reform is needed but we can't force it upon them - indeed, even if reform comes it will no doubt be accompanied by much upheaval - that may be what we're seeing with ISIS - still, I don't see how in any sound way you can strategically position yourself against a threat if you can't be honest regarding the true roots of the threat - the almost universal failure of Western leaders to understand the Arab Spring and foresee how it would play out is clear example of this - Obama's embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt another - Europe's indulging of Islamist thinking and the problems that has given rise to another - the myopic antipathy directed at Israel by both Europe and Obama another - Iran - one could go on. Even if one believes that the invasion of Iraq was the worst foreign policy decision ever - which the liberal elite en masse do believe - if you're being intellectually honest - which the liberal elite en masse seems incapable of doing - you still have to admit that it revealed something very important: our understanding of the Muslim world, on both the left and the right - but especially the left - falls far short of the clear thinking required to form a workable strategy against the threats rising out of it - and there may be no better manifestation of this failing than the singularly abysmal practice of foreign policy under Obama]
[as for me saying an inability to with honest objectivity analyze the threats against us will leave us incapable of forming a coherent strategic posture against those threats, this at Commentary fills the idea out with some nice sarcasm - and it's true, anyone surprised by how awful a president Obama is has not spent much time listening to the liberal academy arrogantly expound with utter delusion on foreign policy - I like how Mendel snarks that given his intellectual pedigree it's a wonder, bad as he is, that Obama isn't actually worse - I don't know if you could get worse - again, understanding the intellectual milieu Obama crawled out of none of this is surprising - these people live in a world of vainglorious concepts utterly detached from reality and held unsteadily aloft by one single conviction: a disgust for American power and the ignorant instruments - capitalism and the military - that deliver it - everything they do, think and say is twisted through that prism]
