As the Democratic convention ended the stage was set for what would be the purest ideological referendum in years. Two flawed candidates stood at the forefront to rally troops to what both sides were terming the choice between two futures. On the right was Mitt Romney; no charisma, no details, no drama, no excitement. On the left was President Obama, no record, no competency, no success, no good excuses. In and of themselves, neither of these two men would seem to be the best choice for leader of the free world. Obama has already proven he’s not up to the job, and Romney has a long way to go to inspire people that he is. So the election was lining up to be less about the candidates, as much as the ideologies or futures they represent. Simply put, do people want to move more toward a government that does more, or one that does less?
Then came September 11, and the attacks on our embassies and consulates, our flag, and, saddest of all, some of our citizens. The laziness of the american media in attributing the unrest to some obscure video on YouTube would be laughable, were the situation less sobering. The video has been there six months, it’s a preposterously amateurish production by an Egyptian born Coptic Christian, and I suppose designed to lash out at the religion of those who have been massacring his fellow Copts in his homeland. This is hardly the only criticism of Islam or the Prophet on the internet! Clearly there is something more at work here, but the press acts like this one man’s careless spark created this apocalyptic forest fire. They are either naive, impossibly lazy and uncurious, or hopelessly biased with ulterior motives. If indeed this were the spark that lit the fire, it would be a minor infraction that led to a completely unbalanced reaction. A man in California insults your religion, so you sodomize and murder people related to him only because they and about 300 million other people come from the same country? Consider this allegory: A husband beats his wife. Her sister yells at him and calls his mother a whore. This infuriates the man, who has an anger management problem, and he responds by killing the sister’s cat, raping her daughter, and setting her neighbor’s house on fire. Should the wife’s family respond by apologizing for the sister’s insensitivity regarding the husband’s mother? Should this even be part of the conversation beyond a brief sidelight to show the extent of the husband’s madness? Likewise, careless insults that “hurt religious feelings” do not belong in the same conversation with rioting, rape, and murder. We now understand what these radicals call values. We can’t and won’t impose them on our own citizens. We will attempt to be sensitive to their “religious feelings”, we understand their values, but maybe it’s time we educate them regarding ours; like Freedom, Justice, and Defending the American way.
All this has muddied the water concerning the pure choice between two ideologies. When the world is falling apart new issues arise. Do we trust a new guy with the reins of the military, or is it safer to stick with the guy who has the experience, even though he might be part of the problem. People tend to stick with the current leader when the country is at peril, unless and until they become convinced that he is causing or prolonging the peril.
On balance, this helps Obama, at least in the short term. Is anyone talking about this week’s downgrade of the US credit rating, the second in our history and the second in Obama’s tenure? Our global competitiveness rating, #1 in 2008, has steadily declined to #7 in 2012. Is anyone discussing that? Is anyone even mentioning that the President again snubbed Benjamin Netanyahu, declining the Prime Minister’s invitation to meet during his visit to the US, citing scheduling difficulties… can’t postpone those fundraisers! He did have time for David Letterman, Beyonce, Jay-Z, and some local radio dude called “Pimp with a Limp”; priorities you know! Do you realize how big a deal this QE 3 Bernanke just announced is? But I’ll wager 90% of the country has never heard of it, much less even marginally understand its ramifications! No, all we hear about is how insulted Islam is over some stupid film, instead of laying the blame where it belongs, in the psychotic fanaticism that considers murder a sacrament, and the type of policy weakness that insinuates a moral equivalency between saying something stupid and the killing of the innocent.
In all this the President seems to get a pass with the mainstream media. There is an advantage to being the incumbent in a Presidential election, but there is also a responsibility. You are supposed to be the President first, and the candidate second. Romney does not have that onus. Obama’s first response to the crisis in the Arab nations should not have been political, even if Romney’s was. Yet the press dwells on Romney’s statement, not Obama’s. What other President would have gotten away with continuing to attend a fundraiser in Las Vegas while our flags and embassies were on fire? At least he didn’t go golfing! And where is the investigative reporting or analysis on how his policies in that part of the world seem to have resulted in more instability and ill-will than we have seen in generations? World War II should have taught us that appeasing or tolerating monstrous behavior only encourages a holocaust. It is the time for presidential action in the land of the pyramids, not the city of the Luxor. Supposedly the President’s genealogy includes links to the first American slave, and Brad Pitt… and even Sarah Palin, with roots across three continents. I wonder if anyone has looked for connections to Neville Chamberlain… or Nero.
Well written.
It is embarrassing to not only awakened Americans but also alert citizens in neighboring countries to believe for one second a youtube video (not an amateur movie) could be to blame for this apparent complete civil unrest literally across the globe! Does September 11 mean anything to anybody anymore? Could Jay Carney and a failed media create a short term memory loss of American citizens? A pathetic excuse from Washington DC for their failed foreign policies and attempts to excuse the “American arrogance” by past administrations. Although one can only hope this inexcusable behavior is not the ideology of the overwhelming majorities in the Muslim world, and if it is… God help us all!
As far as the golf game is concerned, as an avid golfer myself, the only reason he didn’t tee one up is this chaos would lead to multiple three puts. Can’t have that! That would be a clear sign of inexperience!
WOW!!!!!!! This piece is brilliant and I concur with all of it. There is so much to absorb and think about here. You have packed a wealth of information, understanding, and commentary in a very short space and it is brilliantly put together. What else can I say. I absolutely love the last two sentences.
You are right, it would be naive to explain the ongoing uproar in the Muslim world as a result of that pathetic YouTube video alone. It is much more than that, it is the result of years, if not decades, of oppression by Western nations, first of all the United States, through their aggressive, self-serving foreign policies. The “presidential action in the land of the pyramids” you are calling for will not only make the situation worse, it is precisely this attitude that is at the root of the problem. The presidential actions of George W. Bush turned Iraq and large parts of the Middle East into a haven for religious extremists and a breeding ground for terrorists. Unfortunately, President Obama chose to continue his predecessor’s failed policies. Why would Americans feel the need to educate people who live in sovereign countries thousands of miles away at all? Instead of trying to force our own values on others we should start living them ourselves. Elections in countries whose governments were recently overthrown by the Arab Spring revolutions teach us that not everybody wants to live in a Western-style democracy such as ours. We must stop thinking that our values are somehow better than those of others. Our own arrogance is a larger part of the problem than we might think.
This said, we must indeed be careful not to inadvertently justify the violence carried out by religious extremists with our lack of sensitivity to their religious feelings. There is no excuse for such violent acts against innocent people but at the same time we should make an effort to understand the underlying cause. Changing our own ways to prevent future violence does not mean that we are caving in to the extremists. Don’t we make such an effort in our own society where we foster an environment of respect and tolerance in order to prevent violence from occurring, even though there is no justification for such violence in the first place? And talking about the media, the religion of Islam has been vilified ever since the September 11 attacks and beyond. I don’t think that we need to worry about the mainstream media being biased in favor of the Muslim world. If you ask me, we should rather be concerned about the lack of coverage of Christian extremism around the world. Anders Breivik, who called himself a Christian crusader and slaughtered 77 people in one of the largest religiously motivated crimes in recent history just over a year ago, has already been forgotten. Anti-abortion violence carried out by Christian extremists in the United States and abroad, resulting in destruction and death, is met with indifference at best by the mainstream media. Such atrocious acts, too, shape what people around the world perceive as our “values”.
@tsc444: My reference to Neville Chamberlain may have caused you to believe that I was advocating direct intervention in Egypt. While I believe there may be times that this is warranted; i.e. World War II, the situation in Iran, or certainly the holocaust that occurred in Rwanda; I would generally side with our forefathers in opting for the avoidance of foreign entanglements. The Bush Doctrine was a reaction to an attack on our nation, but is hardly an ongoing strategy for avoiding all conflict in the future. We need to acknowledge that everyone will not be our friend, but if they choose not to be our friends, neither should they be the recipients of the benefits of our friendship. If a nation like Sudan does not permit us to protect our diplomats in their country, then we should remove our diplomats… and possibly our foreign aid. On the other hand we need to take care not to interpret the actions of protestors to necessarily be indicative of the nation as a whole; we would not want other countries to judge us by the Occupy Wall Street crowd, or the Westboro Baptist Church demonstrations. The presidential inaction I referred to insinuates a maintaining of the status quo you clearly abhor.
You will need to do better to find examples of moral equivalency with “Christian extremists”. Breivik was diagnosed with mental health issues from early childhood on, and one can hardly attribute that to some movement within Christianity any more than his connection to the hip hop culture could be used to implicate that portion of society. Anti-abortion violence, unless it is so ignored by the media that I am unaware of it, always seems to be fully covered, and at the same time universally condemned by pro-life groups. Generally these acts are committed by lone unstable individuals, not organized groups with an agenda, advanced weaponry, and governmental collusion. Mainstream media’s bias is not in the direction of the Muslim world, but when they seemingly intentionally miss the real story in favor of one that reflects more kindly on our current political posture, one needs to question whether a bias in some direction exists, or if they are just that incompetent.
Yeah, that’s what “I” was trying to say! Thanks!
Kevin, Breivik was declared sane and well aware of what he was doing. On the other hand, if those responsible for the recent attacks on foreign consulates and embassies underwent psychological evaluation, I’m sure the doctors would be able to come up with mental health issues of some sort. As a matter of fact, anyone committing such horrendous crimes in the name of God must have a screw loose, I don’t care which religion they adhere to. Being a Christian myself, I am convinced that violence has no place in the teachings of Christ but it has no place in Islam either. The recent attacks were condemned by the OIC and countless smaller organizations around the world. We must be careful not to apply double standards when it comes to religious extremism. Also, there are Christian terrorist groups with an agenda, weapons and government support. Take, for example, the various KKK organizations still operating in the U.S. and abroad or Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.
@tsc444: The LRA and the KKK are far better examples of “Christian” groups analogous to the Islamist extremist terrorist organizations behind attacks on the US. On the other hand, the infamy surrounding both these groups hardly supports your contention that there is some sort of double standard concerning the acceptance of violence based on the nominal religious orientation of the group. The “Kony 2012” video received intense exposure and support. While the KKK was initially geared toward the persecution of black and white republicans, it being essentially the militant arm of the Democratic party during Reconstruction, one could hardly claim it has support of either party today nor does it receive sympathetic press or public support due to its “Christian” overtones. I agree with you that terrorist acts have no place in civilized religion, and that our response to terrorist organizations should be independent of their religious affiliation… that includes Islam.
Loved the back and forth exchanges in response to a particularly informative and well-written blog. Wonderful to hear responses by thinking people. There is still much hope for our republic, since many seem to be standing up for the things they truly believe.