On Tuesday, Egypt's chief prosecutor issued arrest warrants against eight US citizens. Their purported crimes relate either to their reported involvement in the production of the Internet movie critical of Islam that has received so much attention over the past ten days, or other alleged anti-Islamic activities. One of the US citizens indicted is a woman who converted from Islam to Christianity.
According to the News Agency that Dare Not be Named, Egypt's general prosecution issued a statement announcing that the eight US citizens have been indicted on charges of insulting and publicly attacking Islam, spreading false information, and harming Egyptian national unity.
The statement stipulated that they could face the death penalty if convicted.
The AP write-up of the story quoted Mamdouh Ismail, a Salafist attorney who praised the prosecution's move. He claimed it would deter others from exercising their right to free expression in regards to Islam. As he put it, the prosecutions will "set a deterrent for them and anyone else who may fall into this." That is, they will deter others from saying anything critical about Islam.
This desire to intimidate free people into silence on Islam is clearly the goal the heads of the Moslem Brüderbund seek to achieve through their protests of the anti-Islamic movie. This was the message of Moslem Brüderbund chief Yussuf Qaradawi. Three days after the anti-American assaults began on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 jihadist attacks on America, Qaradawi gave a sermon on Qatar television, translated by MEMRI.
Qaradawi struck a moderate tone. He called on his followers to stop rioting against the US. Rather than attack the US, Qaradawi urged his Moslem audience to insist that the US place prohibitions on the free speech rights of American citizens by outlawing criticism of Islam -- just as the Europeans have done in recent years in the face of Islamic terror and intimidation.
In his words, "We say to the US: You must take a strong stance and try to confront this extremism like the Europeans do. This [anti-Islamic film] is not art. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech. This is nothing but curses and insults. Does the freedom to curse and insult constitute freedom of speech?"
Both the actions of the Egyptian prosecution and Qaradawi's sermon prove incontrovertibly that the two policies the US has adopted since Sept. 11, 2001 to contend with Moslem hatred for the US have failed. The neoconservative policy of supporting the democratization of Moslem societies adopted by President Barack Obama
Why can't I just eat my waffle? ...
's predecessor George W. Bush has failed. And the appeasement policy adopted by Obama has also failed.
Bush's democratization policy claimed that the reason the Moslem world had become a hotbed for anti-Americanism and terror was because the Moslem world was not governed by democratic regimes. Once the peoples of the Moslem world were allowed to be free, and to freely elect their governments, the neoconservatives proclaimed, they would abandon their hatred of America.
As a consequence of this belief, when the anti-regime protests against the authoritarian Mubarak regime began in January 2011, the neoconservatives were outspoken supporters of the overthrow of then president Hosni Mubarak
...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011...
despite the fact that he had been the US's key ally in the Arab world for three decades. They supported the political process that brought the Moslem Brüderbund to power. They supported the process despite the fact that Qaradawi is the most influential holy man in Egypt. They supported it despite the fact that just days after Mubarak was ousted from power, Qaradawi arrived at Tahrir Square and before an audience of two million followers, he called for the invasion of Israel and the conquest of Jerusalem.
In the event, the Egyptian people voted for Qaradawi's Moslem Brüderbund and for the Salafist Party. The distinction between the two parties is that Qaradawi and the Moslem Brüderbund are willing to resort to both violent and non-violent ways to dominate the world in the name of Islam. The Salafists
...Salafists are ostentatiously devout Moslems who figure the ostentation of their piety gives them the right to tell others how to do it and to kill those who don't listen to them...
abjure non-violence. So while Qaradawi called for the riots to end in order to convince the Americans to criminalize criticism of Islam, his Salafist counterparts called for the murder of everyone involved in producing the anti-Islamic film.
For instance, Salafist holy man Ahmad Fouad Ashoush issued a fatwa on Islamic websites last weekend calling for American and European Moslems to murder those involved with the movie. His religious ruling was translated by the SITE Intelligence Group on Monday.
Ashoush wrote, "Those bastards who did this film are belligerent disbelievers. I issue a fatwa and call on the Moslem youth in America and Europe to do this duty, which is to kill the director, the producer and the actors and everyone who helped and promoted the film.
"So, hurry, hurry, O Moslem youth in America and Europe, and teach those filthy lowly ones a lesson that all the monkeys and pigs in America and Europe will understand. May Allah guide you and grant you success."
These are the voices of democratic Egypt. The government, which has indicted American citizens on capital charges for exercising their most fundamental right as Americans, is a loyal representative of the sentiments of the Egyptian people who freely elected it. The Salafist preacher is a loyal representative of the segment of the Egyptian people that made the Salafist party the second largest party in the Egyptian parliament. Qaradawi's call for the abolition of freedom of speech in America -- as has happened in Europe -- to ban all criticism of Islam is subscribed to by millions and millions of Moslems worldwide who consider him one of the leading Sunni Moslem holy mans in the world.
Free elections in Egypt have empowered the Egyptian people to use the organs of governance to advance their hatred of America. Their hatred has been empowered, and legitimized, not diminished, as the neoconservatives had hoped.
The behavior of the Egyptian government, Qaradawi and the Salafists also makes clear that Obama's policy of appeasing the Moslem world has failed completely. Whereas Bush believed the source of Moslem hatred was their political oppression at the hands of their regimes, Obama has blamed their rage and hatred on America's supposed misdeeds.
By changing the way America treats the Moslem world, Obama believes he can end their hatred of America. To this end, Obama has reached out to the most anti-American forces and regimes in the region and spurned pro-American regimes and political forces.
When Obama's policies are recognized as driven by appeasement, the seeming inconsistency of his war against Libya's Muammar Qadaffy
...a proud Arab institution for 42 years, now among the dear departed, though not the dearest...
on the one hand, and his passivity in the face of the anti-regime uprising in Iran in 2009 and the Syrian uprising against the Assad regime today makes sense. Qadaffy was not a threat to the US, so he was unworthy of protection. The mullahs in Iran and Assad are foes of the US. So they deserve protection. Obama has assiduously courted the Moslem Brüderbund from the outset of his presidency.
The official and unofficial Egyptian exploitation of the Internet film as a means to intimidate and attack the US into disavowing its core principles are proof that Obama's theory of the source of Moslem rage is wrong. They do not hate America because of what the US government does. They hate America because of what America is. And it is because of this that since September 11, the rationale for Obama's foreign policy has disintegrated.
Rather than accept this basic truth and defend the American way of life, Obama has doubled down in the only way now available to him. He, his administration, his campaign and his supporters in the media have responded to the collapse of the foundations of his foreign policy by resorting to the sort of actions they accused George W. Bush, his administration and supporters of taking. They have responded with a campaign of political oppression and nativist bigotry directed against their political opponents.
Late last Friday night, law enforcement officers descended on the home of the Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man who made the film that the Moslems of the newly free Arab lands find so offensive. Nakoula was questioned by federal authorities and later released. His arrest was photographed. The image of a dozen officers arresting an unarmed man for making a movie was broadcast worldwide within moments.
Beyond persecuting an independent filmmaker, the White House requested that YouTube block access to it. YouTube -- owned by Google
...contributed $814,540 to the 2008 Obama campaign...
-- has so far rejected the White House's request.
The B.O. regime's abetment of bigoted nativism to silence criticism of its substantively indefensible foreign policy was on prominent display last Sunday. Obama's campaign endorsed an anti-Semitic screed published by New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
columnist Maureen Dowd.
In her column, titled, "Neocons slither back," Dowd wrote that Republican Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees Willard Mitt Romney
...former governor of Massachussetts, currently the Publican nominee for president. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney has a record as a successful businessman, heading Bain Capital, and he rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics from the midst of bribery and mismanagement scandals. More to the point, he isn't President B.O...
and Paul Ryan
...U.S. Representative for Wisconsin's 1st congressional district, serving since 1999. He is a member of the Republican Party. He proposed an alternative to President B.O.'s 2011 budget and made himself the target of both Democrat and Republican verbal pies...
are mere puppets controlled by "neocon puppet master, Dan Senor."
Neocon is a popular code for Jewish. It was so identified by Dowd's Times' colleague David Brooks several years ago.
Dowd said that "the neocons captured" Bush after the September 11 attacks and "Now, amid contagious Arab rage sparked on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, they have captured another would-be Republican president and vice president, both jejeune about the world."
One telling aspect of Dowd's assault on Senor as a neoconservative is that he and his boss in the Bush administration Paul Bremer were the nemeses of the neoconservatives at the Pentagon. The only thing Senor has in common with the likes of Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith is that all three men are Jews.
Moreover, Dowd drew a distinction between supposed "neocons" like Senor, and non-Jewish US leaders Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney who merely "abetted" the neocons.
So Senor doesn't share the same ideological worldview as Feith and Wolfowitz but he's a neocon. And Cheney and Rumseld do share the same worldview as Feith and Wolfowitz. And they are not neocons.
The Times' public editor Andrew Rosenthal dismissed claims that Dowd's column was anti-Semitic arguing it couldn't be since she never said a word about Jews.
The Obama campaign linked to Dowd's column on its Twitter account with the message, "Why Romney and Ryan's foreign policy sounds 'ominously familiar.'"
Obama's campaign's willingness to direct the public to anti-Semitic screeds against his political opponents is consistent with the administration's general strategy for defending policies. That strategy involves responding to criticism not with substantive defense of his policies, but with ad hominem attacks against his critics.
His failed economic policies' critics are attacked as "Wall Street fat cats."
His failed foreign policies' critics are demonized as ominous neocon puppet masters.
There is a difference between appeasing parties who have been harmed by your actions and appeasing parties who wish your destruction. In the 1970s the US appeased the Philippines by transferring illusory sovereignty over the Clark Air Force Base to the Philippine government. America was still America and the US and the Philippines became friends.
To appease a party that hates your way of life, you must change your way of life. The only way America can appease the Moslem world is for America to cease to be America. |
...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans...
Qadaffy's
International Criminal Court
