Does McCain Advocate Jihad Against "The Muslims"? [Update: Yes, He Does]

If there is one thing we don't need, it is a religious war between the world's two largest religions, which include half of the people on this planet. The last thing we need is to inflame the Middle East, where our policies (notice, not our "freedom" or "love" or "liberty" or even our culture) have made us a source of hatred, by taking the conflict from the level of conflicts over foreign policy to global religious crusade.

Yet that seems to be what the McCain campaign (just like Bush and most, if not all, Republicans) seems intent on doing:

One of John McCain's fellow POW's in Vietnam defended the war in Iraq [on an official campaign conference call], saying, "The Muslims have said either we kneel or they're going to kill us."

In a phone call with reporters arranged by the McCain campaign, Colonel Bud Day added: "I don't intend to kneel and I don't advocate to anybody that we kneel, and John doesn't advocate to anybody that we kneel."

So the guy makes it obvious that he is speaking for McCain (on a first name basis no less). And this just isn't any surrogate, he is a major McCain surrogate. The guy is mentioned on McCain's website at least 143 times. He was one of the Swiftboaters against Kerry. He was recently rolled out by the McCain campaign to attack Gen. Wes Clark. This guy speaks for McCain, he talks about foreign policy and military matters for McCain. And here is he saying that "the Muslims" are trying to kill us, and we are, ostensibly, left with no other choice but to kill them first.

As Ben Smith notes, this "seems to have cast McCain's foreign policy in stark, religious terms". It isn't that we are at war with a predominately Muslim country because we invaded it without reason. It isn't that al-Qaeda attacked us because we had military bases set up in Saudi Arabia, and give weapons to Israel, which they use to kill Palestinians. Those are the foreign policy issues Osama bin Laden himself cited when explaining his opposition to the United States. Notice, he didn't say it was a religious war between Islam and Christianity (because according to the Republicans we are a Christian theocracy), that can only be solved by over a billion people dying on one side or the other. His beef isn't with our culture (he may not like it, but it isn't in itself justification for terrorist attacks), it isn't with our religion, it is with our foreign policy. He has specific and very real policy goals.

So why the hell are the Republicans intent on making this about religion? Why do they want to turn this into a clash of civilizations? Why are they constantly making this a war against Islam, or "Islamofascists" (which not a single GOP operative can actually define)? What a sloppy, obtuse way to understand and develop a foreign policy. Seriously, are these people complete idiots? Can they not understand grownup problems like foreign policy and diplomacy? Does it have to be some idiotic, Manichean dichotomy inevitably resulting in some epic World War between major religions?

Talk about sloppy and ignorant. "The Muslims"? He does realize that we have allies in the region that are Muslim. We rely on military bases set up in Muslim countries. The Iraqis we supposedly went over there to "liberate" (well, after we supposedly went over there to protect ourselves from "WMDs") are Muslim. There are hundreds of thousands of Muslim Americans, are they trying to kill us? Must we kill them lest we be forced to "kneel"? There are two Muslim members of Congress, Keith Ellison and Andre Carson, are they trying to kill us? Should our "Christian" members of Congress lynch these two terrorists on the floor of the House? After all, they are with "the Muslims", so they must be trying to kill us. Right? That is how it works when we view the world through the oversimplified lens of an eight-year-old, or a Republican, right? We should have Christians fighting Muslims in the streets, and vice versa right? There are 55 countries in the world with majority-Muslim populations, so which should we wipe off the Earth first? Should it be Indonesia? They have the most Muslims, so obviously since we are "at war" with "the Muslims" that must mean they are trying to kill us the hardest, right?

I think you get the point, it is appalling, and insane, that Republicans go out of their way to frame real, life and death issues in the world in fairytale terms that only confuse the issues in the minds of Americans, while exacerbating the hatred or distrust of the United States in the Muslim world. Do we really want a prospective next president surrounding himself with maniacs who want to make our foreign policy into a new Crusade? Do we really want to go there? Do we really want our next president to view foreign policy through the lens of religious war? Does that make us any better than those fringe extremists who believe in jihad? Because that is essentially what these people are trying to make this into, a Christian jihad against all Muslims, fueled by fanatics, American fanatics.

Now I won't even go into the bigotry and racism these comments were wrapped in, I'll just wait for McCain to denounce and reject his surrogate's comments, and end his role in his campaign. I'll wait for McCain to apologize to Muslims, or at the very least the hundreds of thousands of Muslim Americans, and the two Muslim US Representatives who were undoubtedly offended by the McCain campaign accusing them of wanting to kill "us". I'll wait for McCain to make it clear that our foreign policy in the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia isn't framed in terms of an "us or them" religious war between the United States and the world's 1.5+ billion Muslims. That is what I expect from the McCain campaign, because with the tense relationship we have with the Middle East, there is no room for these beliefs to be tolerated, and there is no room for further worsening our standing in the Middle East.

And McCain can apologize for his "I hate the gooks, I will hate them as long as I live" comments while he is at it.

Update: McCain's campaign definitely isn't denouncing or rejecting the comments, in fact they seem to agree, unsurprisingly. A McCain spokesperson responded with this:

"The threat we face is from radical Islamic extremism."

Yes, it has nothing to do with our foreign policy, or leaders or ideologues of various countries, or globalization, or poverty, it is apparently all about their religion. Their problem with us has nothing to do with their religious faith, which shares its origins and many beliefs with Christianity, it is about our foreign policy. Am I surprised that McCain shares the fanatical and completely ignorant beliefs of his surrogate and the vast majority of the Republican Party? Of course not.

Update (9/2): Of course McCain picks a fellow Christian jihadist as his running mate. This is Sarah Palin's take on foreign policy:

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

Yes, the war in Iraq has been commanded by god. This is apparently a holy war, Christians against Muslims. Super duper. Now I see why the ultra-conservative religious right loves Palin, she is crazy too!