Here’s another example showing how Islam just can’t get along with those different, in any context.

Keep in mind that Islam was/is involved in the Bosnia mess, in Chechnya, in the Pakistan/India disbute, in the violence in the Phillipines and so on and so forth. The mess in the Sudan is a case where the Arab government in Khartoum (best city name, ever) is persecuting native Africans. Persecuting to the point of sending gunships into neighboring Chad to slaughter refugees.

No, Islam doesn’t have a monopoly on nasty stuff going on around the globe. My point is only that nasty stuff is ubiquitous where Islam comes in contact with “other”. The Rwanda mess, for example, did not involve Islam. And, no, I can’t blame violence in Northern Ireland on Islam. There’s no Guinness drinking Paddy Bin-O’Brien spewing Koranic verses while blowing up British soldiers. Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus are unfortunately all capable of being nasty and evil.

The one differing thing about the other Western faiths (dunno enough about Eastern faiths, though I invite BigHominid to comment) is that the West has the ability of critical self examination. Take America for instance. We air our dirty laundry in public. It can be messy, but it also results in our struggle to fix that which is wrong with us. We strive constantly to be better, to match our vision of what America should be or can become. Can anyone conceive of an Arab looking at Arab society and saying “you know what is wrong with us?”

I’ve debated the nature of this over AIM with BigHominid. We can come up with many reasons why this is so. The fact that Muhammed was both Prophet, Ruler, and conquering General set the precedent for linking militarism to the faith when others are concerned. The extreme tribal nature of Arab society is another contributer. Throw in the dictatorial nature of all Arab governments, and you have a society that thrives on conflict on its borders… even within it’s borders.

The one thing that 9/11 proved to me is that in the modern world, borders aren’t necessarily lines on a map. A border now can exist in the mind. The terrorists saw the US as a threat to their way of life in some way, so they struck. It didn’t matter that we’re on the other side of the world, they still hit us, and hit us hard. The reflexive should be true. It shouldn’t matter to us that they are on the other side of the world. They want to harm us. We should take them out.

Possible Minister of Ag tag line
- Inseminate a Cow or the Terrorists Win!

Regarding the release of the Brown Recluse, I tend to release spiders since they prey on other insects, thus reducint he overall insect population. The caveat to this is that I’ll destroy egg sacs if I find them. In retrospect, I should have killed the Brown Recluse. Now it’s free to release all the digital pictures in it’s posession of my mistreatment of other arachnids and insects.

Tag Line Free for 124 days!

UPDATE FROM YOUR MAXIMUM LEADER: This tagline made your Maximum Leader chuckle. So much so that he decided to go ahead and add it to the list of rotating tag lines that now work at the top of this page. (Thanks again Francey!)

One of the reasons I have taken a hiatus is that these Blogs can suck down HOURS of your time… Sometimes over semantic issues that should probably just be left alone (so I won’t touch the Spain thing again or the Rice thing)

Where I am sure that Kerry wants Osama brought to justice and Terrorism defeated, I would bet the farm on him not wanting those things to happen TOMORROW (or before the election). He wants them to happen after HE is elected.

You are a smart enough guy to know that when this prison crap broke, the Democratic election machine was giving themselves high fives. It doesn’t matter that there was an investigation underway and it was being taken care of already by the military.
As sick as it sounds, every body bag and flag draped coffin that comes back is an opportunity for the Kerry election campaign and they don’t seem to be missing the opportunities that often.

Yes the war may hurt us in the short to mid term but it will only hurt us in the long term if we pull out/loose. I think that the war in Iraq WILL help us with to defeat global terrorism and (when we are successful) help with the middle eastern problem.

If George Bush had gone to the American people on September 1st 2001 and said that we were about to begin offensive operations against the Taliban-Osama-Afghanistan because of a major threat to the security of the US, your side of the Aisle would have been up in arms! “What proof do you have?”; “We have no interests in Afghanistan,” etc ect. And after the invasion, Colin Powell would have shown pictures of terrorist camps that looked like budget kids playgrounds and the Left would be having a field day.

Just like in Iraq now.

The worst thing that could happen for the Dems (before the November election) is for the US to find Osama, get Iraq back on track, and continue to add 288K jobs per month.

What would they run on?

On a different note. Do you get to VA often? How about this summer?

Back to the…. you know

And I take special note that he has his own closure line, ‘Back to the Trenches!’ Bravo, Foreign Minister! Incidentally, I’d like to point out that while I didn’t have a problem with Spain turning out their pro-U.S. government, I think the Minister of Agriculture could rightfully argue that a vote for Kerry is still a vote for a pro-U.S. President and theefore his position remains consistent. Kerry would like to see Osama bin Laden killed and terrorism defeated just as much as anyone else, and only a self-blinded ideologue would suggest otherwise. The issue under debate is whether or not the Bush-conducted war in Iraq helps us or hurts us in the war on terror, not which individual is a bigger patriot.

The correct answer is that the Iraq war hurts us, but everyone is welcome to disagree; that’s why it’s a debate (unless of course the Republicans are in charge, in which case “it’s not a time to be disagreeing with the President”).

On a lighter note, I would like to open the floor to suggestions for a Minister of Agriculture closure line, since he’s failed to select his own. Perhaps ‘Rotate your crops’ or ‘I’m not all squishy, I’m independently principled’ or ‘Boys don’t make passes at girls who are fascists.’

The last one might be a nice addition to the Maximum Leader’s rotating tagline on the blog.

The Air Marshal could use ‘Aim High,’ but I don’t know if there are copyright issues with the Air Force itself.

Believe.

UPDATE FROM YOUR MAXIMUM LEADER: As someone being accused of being a fascist at times, your Maximum Leader might not add that last one as a tag line for the site. But he did add some others….

I do protest his releasing of the ever-dangerous brown recluse, now free to spread it’s venemous hatred for humanity amongst it’s acursed ilk. I have a strong dislike for spiders, and I think they should all be classified as enemy combatants. Before anyone lectures me about their supposed benefits, let me just say that I’m content to swat at flies myself.

Jennifer Love Hewitt was very cool.

Things have gotten so slow around here that those of us on the left are debating amongst ourselves. I want to see some spirited defense from the Bush camp, something we can sink our teeth into. As for Bush sending Rice before the Commission being an example of his response to failed policy, the administration position of ‘executive privilege’ was leaking so badly that the water was up to Bush’s eyeballs before he relented, and even then Janet Jackson gave a better performance on ‘SNL’ than Condi did in person. In the meantime…

While the Minister of Agriculture did commit an error in parliamentary procedure by addressing me directly rather than speaking to the blog at large, he is correct that I don’t agree carte blanche with all of the Democratic Party positions and the protectionist rhetoric specifically. I’ve also made personal note of the medal flap and the war vote flap and several other missteps, but I think those are campaign errors, not character or leadership flaws. I’ll save my arguments concerning free trade for when a Democrat is in office, because I don’t think anything Kerry might do to the economy will be as bad for the country as the Iraq fiasco that Bush will perpetuate if reelected. On issues of character, Kerry could change every one of his positions twice in the next two months and I still think he’d be a better model for integrity and honesty than the Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfield crowd. On that front, I suspect the Minister of Agriculture and I agree.

Finally, the Democrats have had at least one worse campaigner/candidate in my memory: otherwise we’d now be debating President Gore’s merits instead of Bush’s failures.

Believe.

A while back The M of A was in chorus with those decrying Spain for Sending the wrong message to Osama by not re-electing their Pro-US president.

Now you are doing the same thing with our own?

Have I been away a tad bit too long from this blog.

I have had some wonderful conversations in the past couple of weeks with returning soldiers AND some of my friends that are “contractors” in Iraq.

I don’t think the western mind is capable of fully understanding what is motivating these terrorist/insurgents and what they understand. They only understand power and winning.

When we pulled back from Fallujah, in the west, we think it is a peaceful solution. On Arab street, we are portrayed as weak and that wecan be beaten (or have no political will).

If we are gonna win this thing, we have to commit to it and all of us be on board no matter how nasty it appears to get.

I really believe that their are some in the US (that are running for office) that HOPE that we do poorly. Lets face it, Kerry can’t win the election himself, but Bush can loose it.

Back to the Trenches

The M of A asks

please e-mail me with a description of a time when Bush or Cheney realized one of their plans was not working and changed policy. I eagerly await your response

OK
Condi Rice testifying in front of the “Lets Blame Bush For 9/11 Commission”.

Back to the Trenches

On a lighter note, it occurred to me the other night that the Minister of Propaganda once worked on the Party of Five Set. He probably knows the apple of the Maximum Leader’s eye. Yet he has strangely failed to mention his experience with Ms. Hewitt. Is this a sign of a gentleman’s discretion?

Perhaps it won’t be me who is the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

The Minister of Propaganda suggests that I should get on board with Kerry and stop criticizing the Democratic nominee.

As I have said many a time (and those on both the right and the left don’t seem to get it), I am not a partisan. I’m gonna call it like I see it.

I don’t think my negative impression of Kerry is the result of Republican propaganda. I seem to be a bit resistant to ham-handed electioneering. It is Kerry himself who has given me this impression. He has had plenty of time to stake out clear positions and has failed to do so. His speeches consist of platitude after platitude.

On some of the issues on which he has been clear, I actively disagree with him. Be honest, Rob, you too are too well educated to buy the protectionism crap the Dems are peddling.

Kerry’s response to the medal flap has been insipid. Why didn’t he just look at the reporters and ask “Let me get this straight: The five-time deferment chickenhawk and the guy who used daddy’s influence to get a safe appointment to the guard are arguing that my elbow wound was too minor to qualify for my THIRD purple heart? <> Next question.”

All of those criticisms aside, I want to WIN the WAR. Kerry’s nuances and flip-flopping may be embarrassing, but at least they designate an active mind - anything would be preferable to Bush’s train wreck.

From the online discussion of the article I pimped in the last post:

There was a time when Bill Gates was convinced the Internet was not a threat to Microsoft’s business. But Gates is a curious person who reads widely and takes two weeks off each year just to talk to interesting people around the world. And he wants and expects people within the organization to challenge his thinking. And as a result of that process of continually subjecting his “vision” in the marketplace of ideas, he changed his “vision” and decided Microsoft had to embrace the Internet. And that’s a pretty good model — a guy who is tough enough to have a vision and stick by it, even when some people criticize it, but also a guy who is open minded enough and curious enough and “paranoid” enough (as Andy Grove calls it ) to do a 180 degree turn when it appears he’s wrong. Does that describe George W. Bush? Donald Rumsfeld? Dick Cheney? There’s not a lot of supporting evidence that it does, in my opinion.

Does the Maximum Leader disagree? Republicans (note that I do not say “conservatives” since true conservatives have been and are continuing to jump ship), please e-mail me wth a description of a time when Bush or Cheney realized one of their plans was not working and changed policy. I eagerly await your response.

A Washington Post columnist mirrors Dave’s earlier post about Bush’s management style.

Money quotes:

it is that unwillingness to get into the details and the lack of interest in hearing divergent views that create a kind of ideological rigidity, rendering Bush incapable of admitting mistakes or considering changes in direction.

The Bush team likes to crow that it brought disciplined, private-sector management to government. But as Joshua Marshall wrote last year in the Washington Monthly, theirs turns out to be a largely discredited, old-economy management style — one better suited for the cartel-like oil, drug and railroad industries they came from than the messy, fast-changing realities facing the government of the United States.

On a further note, I would like to differentiate myself from the Minister of Propaganda and the Air Marshal. I do not think that there were shady, ulterior motives in Bush and Cheney’s heart when they launched the war. I think that they legitimately were trying to make the world a better place. My real beef is with the intellectual inflexibility and doctrinaire ideology that has doomed their attempt to improve the world situation.

Cross posting a long rant on beheading etc. on Big Hominid’s blog.

No, the Arab street won’t protest the murder of a Jewish American. It’s a racist, antisemetic, anti-American society. There is no concept of Justice, only revenge. Yeah, I’m prejudice in this respect. I admit it. I’m also right.

Nice post, Smallholder.

Too bad we’re mired in Bush’s private war in Iraq. It’s distracting us from our real fight against Al Quaeda.

The recent Al Queda atrocity enrages me.

Americans wrongly force a prisoner to wear underwear on his head.

Islamofascists saw off a prisoner’s head and proudly display while in a state of religious ecstasy.

The Islamofascists claim that this is a legitimate response to the Abu Gharib humiliations. Daniel Pearl must have been a pre-emptive strike.

Let’s have no more discussion of moral equivalency.

We’re right.

They’re wrong.

We MUST win.

Udate: Do you suppose the Arab street will protest the decapitation of Mr. Berg as ardently as they protested the nakedness of prisoners?