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Some Thought On Last Night’s Presidential Address
I don’t normally watch presidential addresses. I try to tune out any time a politician is flapping their gums, especially on television. However, if I’m going to write about this kind of thing, I guess I have a responsibility to watch them.
I have a few thoughts, in no particular order:
- I couldn’t help but think of Rush Limbaugh’s compliment of Obama that he says nothing better than anybody else. Obama has lost his sparkle, so he didn’t do it that well. But he said a whole lot of nothing.
- He announced he’d be bombing Syria and arming Syrian opposition forces. You know, the stuff he wanted to do a year ago, but got shouted down on by the public.
- He claims the authority, but it’d be nice if Congress agreed with him.
- He got kind of far afield. It’s not 2012. He’s doesn’t need to brag about how well he thinks the auto industry is doing.
- And somehow this is about Ebola too?
- And the plan is to do this by arming Syrian opposition (aka: God knows who) and using airstrikes? To me, that sounds like a recipe for dragging this out for a decade. But who knows, maybe Obama has the magic touch.
- There’s a few episodes of 30 Rock where Queen Latifah play a Congresswoman named Bookman. Bookman goes off on these riffs where she just starts talking about the flag and the troops “and the flag troops” and says a whole lot of nothing in a preacher voice. Mrs. Cole, after hearing President Obama’s speech tonight, mocked it by making reference to that. It was a fair shot. He’s bombing Syria and arming Syrian rebels. That’s it. But he went on for 15 minutes about it and said nothing else.
- Barack Obama continues to look like hell.
That’s it. Those are my raw thoughts in no particular order. He gave no details. It was all fluff.
Thank you, President Obama, for reminding me why I don’t watch these things.
Published in General
Replacing dictators with terrorists and authoritarian regimes with more repressive, authoritarian theocratic regimes. I’m not seeing the improvement either.
Does this undo the comment comparing the KKK as Christians to ISIS as Muslims?
Me either.
Here’s a fun little anecdote, from a Muslim source:
“When the Moslems settled in the island, they found no other inhabitants there, than vinedressers. They made them prisoners. After that they took one of the vinedressers, slaughtered him, cut him in pieces, and boiled him, while the rest of his companions looked on. They had also boiled meat in other cauldrons. When the meat was cooked, they threw away the flesh of that man which they had boiled; no one knowing that it was thrown away: and they ate the meat which theh had boiled, while the rest of the vinedressers were spectators. These did not doubt but that the Moslems ate the flesh of their companion; the rest being afterwards sent away informed the people of Andalus that the Moslems feed on human flesh, acquainting them with what had been done to the vinedresser.”
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/conqspain.asp
Certainly put a damper on the whole democracy is a good thing meme didn’t it?
Tuck- I did not claim that the early Islamic conquest or anything other than wars of aggression or that Islam was spread primarily by means of peaceful persuasion. My claim was that the early Islamic conquests, unlike the modern jihadi movement, did not exhibit institutionalized brutality beyond that found in other contemporaneous forms of warfare. There were atrocities, no doubt, but they were not institutionalized policy the way they are in the Islamic State.
Yes, but your claim has no evidence to support it. All we know is that in 100 years, and area the size of Russia flipped from Greek and Latin to Arab.
To posit that this happened without a bit of blood getting spilled is a bit of a stretch. Especially given that institutionalized brutality of the sort that ISIS enjoys was par for the course even for the “good guys” back then.
OK, so we have little documentation on the early Islamic atrocities, because neither the Arabs nor their victims (the survivors of Justinian’s plague) were keeping records. So let’s go for some more recent history:
“Dr. Lambert explained how those brigands, like today’s Somalis, usually kept their hostages alive. It wasn’t out of any enlightened sense of humanity. It was simply good business. They only hanged captives from giant hooks or carved them into little pieces if they resisted….
“The pirates’ way of doing business was described this way at the time: “When they sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth, which usually struck such terror in the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.” The quote is from Thomas Jefferson, then America’s ambassador to France, after he and John Adams, the envoy in London, got the description from Tripoli’s envoy to Britain in 1786.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/weekinreview/12gettleman.html?ref=weekinreview&_r=0
Here’s another good bit:
““Think of six men chained to a bench, naked as when they were born, one foot on the stretcher, the other on the bench in front, holding an immensely heavy oar [fifteen feet long], bending forwards to the stern with arms at full reach to clear the backs of the rowers in front, who bend likewise; and then having got forward, shoving up the oar’s end to let the blade catch the water, then throwing their bodies back on the groaning bench. A galley oar sometimes pulls thus for ten, twelve, or even twenty hours without a moment’s rest. The boatswain…puts a piece of bread steeped in wine in the wretched rower’s mouth to stop fainting, and then the captain shouts the order to redouble the lash. If a slave falls exhausted upon his oar (which often chances) he is flogged till he is taken for dead, and then pitched unceremoniously into the sea.”
“…If you’d like to read more about slavery in the Barbary States, I recommend these books:
Captured by Pirates. Fern Canyon Press, 1996.
Clissold, Stephen. The Barbary Slaves. P. Elek, 1977.
Cruelties of the Algerine Pirates. 1816.
Lane-Poole, Stanley. Story of the Barbary Corsairs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896.
Pellow, Thomas. History of the Long Captivity and Adventures of Thomas Pellow, in South
Barbary. Garland, 1973.
Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England.
Columbia University Press, 2001. [Includes the accounts of John Fox (1598), Richard
Hasleton (1595), John Rawlins (1622), Joseph Pitts (1704), Parliamentary Ordinance
(1643)]
Wheelan, Joseph. Jefferson’s War: America’s First War on Terror, 1801-1805. Carroll &
Graf, 2003.
White Slaves, African Masters. University of Chicago Press, 1999.
http://www.cindyvallar.com/BCcaptives.html
Tuck- I’ll provide a more comprehensive response tomorrow, but I confess I’m at a loss as to why you think books on the Barbary States are terribly relevant to the Islamic conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries.
I’m not sure who the “we” in this comment is that doesn’t know anything more about the Islamic conquests than this, but if you want to learn more, I’d highly recommend In The Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland. You’ll discover that there were some terrible moments, but nothing as unpleasant as ISIS.
As an example, of the spectrum; charging the jizya at 6% is obnoxious. Charging a jizya at impossibly high rates was often described by Iraqis as Al Qaida’s most obviously heretical act. ISIS not offering any level of jizya as an option, but just killing minorities, is clearly the worst of all.
Similarly, their claim to the theological category of Caliphate so tenuous as to appear clearly non-Islamic. In other words, I’d defend Fred’s claim that calling them non-Islamic is similar to calling the KKK non-Christian; you can justify most of the Klan’s actions with biblical quotes, and most Klansmen believed in the Trinity, Incarnation, and Crucifixion, but their foolish beliefs were prominent enough to lead association with Christianity to be obnoxious.
Different people have different complaints. I think it’s terrible that he didn’t do more of this earlier, and it totally seems possible that he won’t do much now, but it also seems possible to me that he’ll do enough now to mitigate some of the disaster that inaction has caused.
ISIS was born in Iraq, but it grew in the Syrian Civil War. In that conflict, the moderate rebels, the FSA and company, have been fighting Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Assad, and have been warning since 2011 that they cannot continue without support. Over that time, some parts gave up and defected, as the FSA leadership had been saying they would. Before defection they avoided engaging in hostilities, even under tremendous pressure. Had they been supplied, there is every reason to believe that they would have continued in that line, just as the commitment of those who have stuck it out and continue to risk ISIS (and Assad) practicing their atrocities on both themselves and their families has been amply demonstrated.
The Iraqi government is pretty supportive of freedom, and many of them are people who were involved in the 1990s rebellions against Saddam. The FSA, similarly, have demonstrated their commitment to pluralism by maintaining a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional, leadership. If we want a world where people act responsibly, we need to reward responsible action, because there are other forces out there that do not want this. If we take the approach of simply letting them fight it out, the survivors will not tend to be the most reasonable or peaceable people.
Actually, in my head, James, I defended you. I thought “Well, James would say we shoulda been there a year ago.” Probably more. But I did think of you.
I know libertarians support the idea of individual liberty. The U.S. Constitution embodies it as well, as a result of principles derived from the Declaration of Independence. Actions to eradicate organizations such as ISIS then can be looked at from at least two viewpoints by Americans who support individual liberty. We need not spend much time looking backward to arrive at an understanding that Islamic culture, guided predominantly by Islam, is the root of the terrorism confronting western culture, and coupled with governments existing under primarily Islamic influence, is the force behind gross violations of anyone’s understanding of what it means to believe in individual liberty. So we have atrocities to confront, some government sanctioned, some not. I don’t have any idea if President Obama and his administration can be effective in eliminating ISIS, but the need is there for that and more.
Or he’s really an atheist and, as my atheist Obama-voting friends would say, he called himself a Christian in order to get elected in a country where a significant majority self-identify as Christian. You have to break a few eggs and all that…
So I’d be interested in your explication of what exactly ISIS is doing which is fundamentally different from Saudi Arabia? If you’re going to make the argument that the Saudis are also “clearly non-Islamic”.
ISIS beheads people. So too the Saudis.
ISIS (according to you) drives minorities out or kills them, rather than allowing them to pay jizya, and live in peace. So too the Saudis. (The non-Muslim citizenry of SA is zero, btw.)
More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Saudi_Arabia
That says, without attribution: “Some parts of modern Saudi Arabia (such as Najran) were predominantly Christian until the 7th to 10th century, when most Christians were expelled or converted to Islam.”
They do have attribution for this: “Saudi Arabia allows Christians to enter the country as foreign workers for temporary work, but does not allow them to practice their faith openly. Because of that Christians generally only worship in secret within private homes. Items and articles belonging to religions other than Islam are prohibited. These include Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, items with religious symbols, and others.”
According to Wikipedia, a jizya rate of 6% is pretty generous: it cites rates up to 80%. Per annum. Of course the jizya is not available inside SA, as free practice of non-Muslim religions is illegal.
The typical treatment of people who refuse to pay jizya sounds like ISIS’ behavior:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya
Many Muslim countries in the Middle East has been driving out their non-Muslim populations, under inspiration from Wahhabi teachings financed by SA…