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.

Flip-Flop McCain And Where's The Media?

It looks like John McCain's propensity for flip-flopping is finally being noticed by some in the MSM, it took them long enough. It still probably won't go anywhere, but it is good that someone at least noticed it, so the idea is out there now. Check it out here.

Of course the media doesn't much care about the issues or even important campaign developments, because they are still working overtime to try to sensationalize and hype up some non-issue to smear Obama with. Like CNN right now keeps hyping up a story about an overcautious Obama volunteer who told two women wearing Muslim headscarfs that they couldn't sit behind Obama because they were afraid of the Republicans taking advantage of it. Only CNN isn't saying it was a volunteer, they are leaving that part out and making it sound like it was straight from the official Obama campaign, even though Obama's campaign firmly denounced it:

It is offensive and counter to Obama's commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run. We sincerely apologize for this behavior.

And then Obama called the two women to apologize personally, and they forgave him. Yet still the sensationalized story aimed at creating a nonexistent controversy surrounding Obama, even though he had NOTHING to do with it. If anything the story should be why these volunteers had to worry so much about the GOP trying to use two people among a mass of people sitting behind Obama to attack Obama with "Obama is a Muslim" smears. The fact that they were that worried about something like that happening should tell us that there is a big problem with the GOP, and bigotry in this country. Yes, they were wrong to do what they did, and they overreacted, but they weren't doing it because they hate Muslims, they were worried for Obama because they know how pathetic and shameless the GOP is. Why don't they report on that story?

It's because they love John McCain, and they don't want to say anything bad about him. So instead of reporting on his nonstop flip-flops (with the single exception of the above example) or his support for disastrous policies or his belief that we should be pursuing immoral and unconstitutional policies. No, of course we can't report on that, because the media isn't concerned with informing people, it is concerned with cheap attacks that get ratings. Disgusting.

Is "He's a Muslim" a More Socially Acceptable Way of Saying "He's a N****R?" (Repost)

[I'm going to repost this only because it is short, and I think it is a thought provoking question, which is the kind of question I'm all about:]

Is "He's a Muslim" a More Socially Acceptable Way of Saying "He's a N****R?"
by DHinMI, Daily Kos

I heard yesterday of a focus group done in Charlottesville, VA—home of the University of Virginia, thus not a particularly isolated locale—in which several of the undecided voters claimed to believe that Barack Obama is Muslim.  We've all seen and heard the examples.  We can joke that you've got to be thick to simultaneously believe he's a Muslim and decry his choice of church--Christian Church—-but it's out there, this belief that Barack Obama is a Muslim.  One can imagine the thinking: "his name, I mean, it sounds Muslim, his father was from somewhere over there, where they're Muslims, I saw that photo of him in that garb, and there are all those emails that say he's Muslim, so..."

In America, maligning Muslims is still too easily ignored.  In most circles people know it's not socially acceptable to express anti-Semitism, or racism, or increasingly even homophobia.  But too many people still find it acceptable to malign all of Islam and every Muslim.

For the moment, let's set aside the problem of anti-Muslim bigotry.  The question I have is how many people who claim he's Muslim and offer that up as a reason why they are uncomfortable with Obama's candidacy.  How many of the people insinuating that they won't vote for Obama because he's a Muslim are simply substituting opposition to his supposed religion for opposition to him based on his race?

I assume the Obama campaign has done extensive research to get an idea of who thinks he's Muslim.  Some of these folks are just ill-informed.  The video "A Man From Hope" shown at the 1992 Democratic convention was in response to research that revealed that a sizable group of voters believed that Bill Clinton came from a privileged background.  Eventually folks figured out he didn't, and it helped burnish his populist credentials.  Some people are educable, and a good campaign educates.

The people today expressing apprehension toward Obama because "he's a Muslim" include many who will vote for him in the fall.  We need to figure out how to reach them, and in a way that doesn't validate anti-Muslim bigotry.

But for others, who are saying they won't vote for Obama because he's Muslim when they really won't vote for him because he's black, we just need to write them off as people who probably don't vote for Democrats in any circumstances, and who won't vote for Obama because they're racists.

[Or look at it this way, do you think a white person with a weird name and a Muslim step-father s/he's had barely anything to do with be plagued by this repeated question of "Is s/he a Muslim?" even after attending a Christian church for over 20 years? We already know white people aren't held to the same standard concerning crazy pastors who say outrageous things.]

Happy Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week! (So Soon?)

[Right before Halloween last year, David Horowitz, rabid anti-intellectual neoconservative scumbag, declared that it was Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. I was of course depressed that such a week only came once per year, but apparently it comes many times a year, because it is here yet again! I really would have liked some warning, as I haven't had time to run up to the attic to get down my decorations yet! I'm very embarrassed, I don't want to be the only house on the street unadorned with bigoted and misogynistic propaganda! For those scratching your heads wondering what this magical time(s) of year is all about, here is a quick breakdown from The Nation, circa last October's IFAW, enjoy:]

It's Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week!
by Barbara Ehrenreich, The Nation

I've never been able to explain Halloween to the kids, with its odd thematic confluence of pumpkins, candy and death. But Halloween is a piece of pumpkin cake compared to Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, which commences today. In this special week, organized by conservative pundit David Horowitz, we have a veritable witches' brew of Cheney-style anti-jihadism mixed in with old-fashioned, right-wing anti-feminism and a sour dash of anti-Semitism.

A major purpose of this week is to wake up academic women to the threat posed by militant jihadism. According to the Week's website, feminists and particularly the women's studies professors among them, have developed a masochistic fondness for Islamic fundamentalists. Hence, as anti-Islamo-Fascist speakers fan out to the nation's campuses this week, students are urged to stage "sit-ins in Women's Studies Departments and campus Women's Centers to protest their silence about the oppression of women in Islam."

Leaving aside the obvious quibbles about feminist pro-jihadism and the term "Islamo-Fascism," which seems largely designed to give jihadism a nice familiar World War II ring, the klaxons didn't go off for me until I skimmed down the list of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week speakers and found, incredibly enough, Ann Coulter, whom I last caught on TV pining for the repeal of women's suffrage. "If we took away women's right to vote," she said wistfully, "We'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream; it's a personal fantasy of mine."

Coulter is not the only speaker on the list who may have a credibility problem when it comes to opposing oppression of women in Islam or anywhere else. Another participant in the week's events is former Senator Rick Santorum, whose book, It Takes a Family blamed "radical feminism" for pushing women into the workforce and thus destroying the American family. A 2005 column on that book in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, began with: "Women of America, I hope you look good in a burqa. If Senator Rick Santorum,R-PA, has his way, we will all be wearing the burqas discarded by our recently liberated sisters in Afghanistan..." (This was the before the Taliban re-emerged.)

Not quite in the burqa-promoting league, but close, is another official speaker for the week, Christina Hoff Sommers, who has made her name attacking feminism for exaggerating the problem of domestic violence and eliminating opportunities for boys. These are the people who are going to save us from purdah?

Another disagreeable feature of jihadism--anti-Semitism--is also represented on the list of speakers for Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week, again by the multi-faceted Coulter. Just last week on CNBC, she referred to America as a "Christian nation." Asked where this left the Jews (not to mention the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans and atheists), she said they could be "perfected" by converting to Christianity.

You might imagine that this view of Jews as "imperfect" would bother Horowitz, who is famously alert to any hint of anti-Semitism on the left. But no, he defends Coulter, writing that "If you don't accompany this belief by burning Jews who refuse to become perfected at the stake why would any Jew have a problem?" Sure, David and if that's the threshold for intolerance, Osama bin Laden could probably win an award for humanitarianism.

Maybe none of this should be surprising. When Mel Gibson, who is not known to be a member of the Hollywood left, unleashed a drunken anti-Semitic tirade on his arresting officers, Horowitz also rose to his defense, arguing that ensuing outrage reflected a "hatred"--not of anti-Semites but of Christians.

As for the anti-feminism of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week: This fits in neatly with the thesis of Susan Faludi's brilliant new book, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America. She shows that, in the wake of an attack by the ultra-misogynist Al Qaeda, Americans perversely engaged in an anti-feminist campaign of their own, calling for an immediate restoration of traditional gender roles. Coulter was part of that backlash, opining in 2002 that "feminists hate guns because guns remind them of men."

Before you put on your costumes to celebrate Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week, let me set the record straight. American feminists do not condone, defend, or ignore jihadist misogyny. In fact, we were warning about it well before Washington turned against the Taliban and have been consistently appalled by the gender dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Iran.

But if the facts don't fit in with Islamo-Fascist Awareness, they have to go. For example, in a May '07 column in The Weekly Standard Christina Hoff Sommers listed me as one of the "feckless" feminists who refuse "to pass judgment on non-Western cultures." What? If Sommers had even done ten minutes of research she would have noticed, among other things, a column I wrote in the New York Times in 2004 stating that Islamic fundamentalism aims to push one-half of the Muslim world--the female half--"down to a status only slightly above that of domestic animals."

Yes, feminists tend to hate war and sometimes even guns and this may be why Horowitz and company hate us. They should know, though, that we especially hate a war that seems calculated to inflame Islamic fundamentalism worldwide. If many Muslim women around the world willingly don head scarves today, it's in part because our war in Iraq has, tragically, pushed them to value religious solidarity above their feminist instincts.

Or maybe I'm missing the point of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week. Maybe it's really an effort to show that our own American anti-feminists (and anti-Semites) are just as nasty as the ones on the other side. If so, good job, guys! No need to continue with the trick-or-treating, you've already made your point.

[Update: Please come by and celebrate at DailyKos!]

Obama Wins Another: Democrats Abroad Primary

I've actually been waiting for this one for over a week, but it is official, Obama has won another primary: the world. Okay, so not the entire world, just Democrats all over the world, although he would definitely win if the people of the the world could choose. In fact there is a great article at Salon today pointing out the obvious, but virtually unspoken truth that Obama holds the absolute best potential to heal (or begin to heal) the world's antipathy toward the United States, especially in Muslim countries. How the world views the United States is in fact our greatest national security challenge. Despite those like Bush or Hillary, who would rather use the fear of terrorism as a political tool, coupled with strong arm militarism, the truth is all of these issues have their roots in the global perceptions of the United States, and Obama offers the best chance to repair this divide. This for me is reason #4559 why Obama would make the best president. Anyway, read the article.

Update: No doubt Hillary will spin this loss in two ways:

1. Refuse to acknowledge any vote took place*, and
   
2. Democrats overseas don't matter because...Bill didn't win them when he ran because they didn't even have a Democrats Abroad primary back then.
   

Update #2: It is apparently a pretty good day for Obama. He also picked up a big endorsement from Change To Win, a powerful group of labor unions (also opening up the possibility that the United Farm Workers Union might ditch Hillary for Obama), the Mayor of Cleveland, two superdelegates from New Jersey (including one who had previously supported Hillary), one superdelegate from Massachusetts, and the Democratic Party's youngest superdelegate, despite the Clintons sending Chelsea Clinton to woo him (damnit, they would have made such a cute couple too!) (too bad David Shuster didn't save his infamous "pimping out" comment for this occasion, I bet he is really kicking himself now). Oh calm down Hillary, I jest, I jest.

No, but really, they have pretty much been willing to say and do anything to win up to this point (including dropping $5 million of their own cash), so how desperate will they get? Just putting that out there...

*Turns out she opted for option 1, and the media dutifully followed suit.