Who Are We Fighting For?
On March 20, Pastor Terry Jones, who heads a congregation of 30 at his Dove World Outreach Center church in Gainesville, Fla., conducted a mock trial of the Quran "for crimes against humanity."
Pronouncing Islam's sacred book guilty, Jones soaked a Quran in kerosene and set it ablaze in a portable fire pit.
Few noticed. But Hamid Karzai did.
On March 24, the president of Afghanistan, our presumed ally in the war with al-Qaida and the Taliban, condemned this "crime against the religion and the entire Muslim nation," called on the United States to bring Jones to justice and demanded "a satisfactory response to the resentment and anger of over 1.5 billion Muslims around the world."
Thus the firebrand here is not just Jones, who perpetrated the sacrilege, but Karzai, who made certain his countrymen knew what happened 10,000 miles away and four days before.
Friday, after prayers in Mazer-e-Sharif, a mob, inflamed by imams denouncing Jones, descended on the U.N. compound. When they left, seven U.N. employees lay dead, two reportedly beheaded.
President Obama denounced Jones' "act of extreme intolerance and bigotry," and added that "to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous and an affront to human dignity and decency."
Gen. David Petraeus deplored the Quran-burning as "hateful, disrespectful and enormously intolerant."
Still, on Saturday, rioters waving Taliban flags and shouting "Death to America" and "Death to Karzai" went on a rampage in Kandahar that ended with nine Afghans dead and 80 injured when they tried to march on the U.N. compound and security troops fired on them.
Three more were killed Sunday as riots continued in Kandahar and spread to Jalalabad. Forty more suffered gunshot wounds.
Petraeus then met with Karzai, who issued a new statement demanding that "the U.S. government, Senate and Congress clearly condemn (the Rev. Jones') dire action and avoid such incidents in the future."
In short, our ally seized this opportunity to rub America's nose in what the Rev. Jones did, as though the U.S. government, whose highest civilian and military officials had condemned Jones, is morally culpable for not preventing his Quran-burning and not punishing him for it.
Nor is this sufficient. Henceforth, the U.S. government is to police its citizenry to ensure no such anti-Islamic sacrilege takes place again.
Intending no disrespect, who do these people think they are?
Undeniably, it was an incendiary insult to a religion professed by almost a fourth of the world's people for Jones to do what he did. But what does this murderous reaction to a book-burning tell us about the people for whose right of self-determination Americans are fighting and dying in Afghanistan?
Candidly, it affirms what we already knew.
Many Afghans believe beheading or stoning is the right response to an insult to Islam. And not only that. Five years ago, Abdul Rahman, an Afghan convert to Christianity, faced the death penalty for apostasy and was forced to flee his own country.
In some Muslim countries, death is the prescribed punishment for Muslims who convert, for Christians who seek converts and for any who insult Islam, like that Danish cartoonist who sketched a caricature of the Prophet with a fused bomb for a turban.
Stoning is also seen as proper punishment for women who commit adultery.
In Pakistan recently, the governor of Punjab and the Cabinet minister for religious minorities, both Catholics, were assassinated. Why? Both had opposed a law under which a Christian woman had been sentenced to death after some farmhands accused her of blasphemy.
The governor was murdered by his own bodyguard, who was then hailed by 500 religious scholars who urged all Muslims to boycott the governor's funeral ceremony, as he had gotten what he deserved.
In the last two years, Christians have been burned alive by Muslims in Gorja, Pakistan, and by Hindu extremists in Orissa, India. Christian churches have been torched and scores of the faithful massacred on holy days in Iraq and Egypt. Few of these atrocities have received the media attention of the Rev. Jones' stupid stunt or the Danish cartoonist's irreverent scribbles.
Before America sends more of her sons to die for the freedom of Arabs and Muslims, perhaps we ought to have a better idea of what these folks intend to do with that freedom. For across that Muslim world, the faith that created our world, Christianity, is being persecuted and in some sectors annihilated.
To neocons and liberal interventionists, the goal of U.S. foreign policy should be to use our wealth and power to advance freedom until the whole world is democratic. Only then can we be secure.
But if democracy means rule by the people, ought we not to inquire a little more closely what it is these people, down deep, really want, before we bleed and bankrupt ourselves to win it for them?
Maybe Hosni Mubarak had a point.
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An alien culture pervades our own land. People like Lindsay Graham and David Petraeus have internalized the critique of our sworn enemies. For them to compare Jones' Koran-burning with the mass murder of innocents is an outrage and a disgrace to America and its traditions. But maybe that's the point--our traditions mean nothing to these citizens of the world who are morally bankrupt. I am a Vietnam veteran and it makes no difference to me how much fruit salad David Petraeus sports on his chest. He is still a moral coward.
Here is the problem: Our country has invented laws that protect scum like Terry Jones, who knowingly seeks personal notoriety while putting Americans and our allies at risk.
We then go to war to spread this bogus principle and are surprised when savages who hate our guts take this nutcase's action as an opportunity to do what they always do--rape and kill. No one I have talked to who has come back from Afghanistan will be surprised by the Afghan response. This is how they behave. Jones gave them the cover to do it and be applauded or at least defended throughout the Muslim world. So who is more guilty, Jones or Karzai? Neither. The guilty parties are two presidents, their cabinet members, and the political generals who have been lying to us from the beginning about Afghanistan. When we first went in, Putin told us the truth and tongue in cheek wished us good luck.
I agree with what you've said on this topic in the past Dr Fleming, but I do wonder when this will end. Will a performance of the Divine Comedy, somewhere in the western world, if publicized, bring us hellfire and riots from Muslims? Could our theoretical performers be said to have blood on their hands ?
I know thats not exactly a fair comparison, considering the Pastor is little better than a showboat, but sometimes Im not so sure. I understand muslims have attempted to blow up the interiors of churches that had art depicting their 'prophet' burning in hell.
Once upon a time, the Civilized world considered it a moral obligation to civilize the uncivilized- by force, if need be. No more. For instance, if, tomorrow, a group of environmentalists decreed that, in order to appease the gods who were giving Gaia a fever, several virgins must be thrown into a volcano, I dare say that not more than a handful of intellectuals could be found in the entire world to say it shouldn't happen, or even call such a thing uncivilized. The reason I dare say that is because barely any intellectuals today can bring themselves to say that chopping someone' head off for converting to Christianity, or burying a woman up to her waist in a pit and bashing in her skull with boulders to punish her for being a rape victim is uncivilized.
Dr. Fleming,
The New York Times has been promoting religious hatred for years. Pat Buchanan has documented and answered alot of it over his lifetime but to my mind they are of the same sick variety in essence as Pastor Terry Jones and catoring to the same naive populace, just a little more sophisticated and clever in their designs. In fact who on earth dispenses this kind of behavior as news worthy in a society the size of ours?
Indians and Russians must be wondering what made Najibullah worse than the Karzai clan. A google search of well known Medieval book burn advocate Nicholas Donin shows he may be more well-known in the Muslim world than in the West. Communist and American WASP education commissars equally had a vested interest in short-changing a study of Medieval and Byzantine history. It is likely that most only associate book burning with Berlin, 1933.
Yes, indeed to all of the above, but it is up to us not to give way to the understandable impulse to rally round childish Jerks like Jones. We are all obliged, before making a public gesture, to make some crude analysis of our own intentions, the chance of success, and the possible results--in other words, apply a sort of just war theory. After all, a demonstration is a gratuitous act. If I knew that by standing up in Saudi Arabia and reading John I in public, that all the Christians in the country would be tortured to death, I would be not just a fool but very wicked to do what would otherwise be a simple testimony. Jones was told repeatedly what would happen, and he is unrepentant. It is too bad we don't live by an older moral code that would justify the victims' relatives in taking vengeance on such a person.
PS WG Simms in several novels portrays rabid evangelical types whose unseasonable prayers expose their relatives to an Indian attack. The passages are very amusing to read, but it is clear that Simms himself despised such fanatics.
What is amazing to me is that he a pastor of some sixty people like the family in Kansas who have a congregation of 8 or 9. Why on earth is this type of thing news for the major media? If every crackpot is deserving of this kind of national coverage for some stupid act it seems to me the media can create a global crises at will. The only thing I found interesting about Terry Jones is he was a former roomate of Rush Limbaughs and recieved his theology certificate from a mail order outfit. Those two things explain a lot more to me about the national coverage than the book burning.
The simplest explanation is that Terry Jones was permitted to proceed with his stunt so as to keep the threat of terrorism dangling before the eyes of the American public at a time when their attention could easily be diverted by more pressing economic issues.
To many, if not most, of the people stumbling around in the swamps of anti-Christian liberalism of the NYT/NPR variety, there is no difference between committed Christians who believe in sound doctrine and these outrageous snake-charmers like "Pastor Jones" or whatever he calls himself. This is in large part because major media outlets love to drag these obscure ignoramuses out of the deeper recesses of the American specimen jar to perpetuate that mindset.
Going further, this also leads them to be able to piously denounce "all fundamentalism," thereby equating Islamic terrorists, screwballs like Jones and all Christians who don't believe that their religion sanctions serial polygamy or sodomy.
As for Graham and Betrayus, well,this is simply the logical conclusion to what our foreign policy establishment has become.
@2 Dr Fleming ...scum like Terry Jones ... Oh my word!
It seems like not so long ago that a communist burned a flag on the steps of the capitol, took his case all the way to the Supreme Court and won a case which protected burning as free speech. I know, it's a bit of a stretch, to call an act speech, but now it's precedent. I think the inbred low IQ Afghans acted on our behalf. They got seven of ours (if the UN is on our side), and killed and maimed many more of their own. If we pull out our troops, we can burn korans (not Qurans) here and they'll kill each other over there.
I'm more concerned with doctrinaire party member Petraeus' politically correct response. His sensitivity is probably why we're losing wars. Where's Patton when we need him?
The Afghan war hides a three-way geopolitical contest between the USA, Russia and China. Petraeus is trying to beat down recalcitrant Taliban while wooing corruptible Taliban to the side of the US. Taliban have become an inescapable part of the Pashtun political scene over the last 30 years, and the US is still hoping to recuperate them for their own uses. The Russians and the Chinese on the other hand, are happy to see the Americans bleed in Afghanistan but at the same time do not want the Taliban to become too powerful (at least, not before making a deal with them). They are also watching with great unease any negotiations between the US and Taliban.
To further complicate things, the Indians and Pakistanis persist in fighting their own proxy war via Afghanistan-based proxies.
That is why the Afghan war seems so confusing.
"...the US is still hoping to recuperate them for its own uses."
"In Pakistan recently, the governor of Punjab and the Cabinet minister for religious minorities, both Catholics, were assassinated."
One of them was a Catholic, the other was a pure Muslim.
I am a little disturbed to see a internationally syndicated columnist make a major error.
In fact, let's not be fooled by the "moderate" Muslim tag on Salman Taseer. Salman Taseer may have belonged to the secular Pakistan People's Party and was even tortured by an Islamist government for his secular dissidence in the 1970s. But it was his politically opportunistic party in the late 1960s that passed Pakistan's first blasphemy laws and allowed its first tribal retrogression for just a little political capital! Taseer and his ilk started all this and only late his life did he see the monster he created bite him back in his own state.
It's these moderate Muslims who hang around on the middle of the fence that they think that a little Central Asian barbarism of the old days doesn't hurt now and then.
By the way, did you guys know that in the old days, the tribals in modern day Afghanistan used to behead their enemies, scoop and clean out the skulls, and make pyramids of skulls to amuse themselves?
Did you know that these Central Asian barbarians used to casually joke about beheading friends when they fell down drunk, and did not see their dark humour as taboo at all?
Did you know that despite their disapproval of homosexuality, they saw nothing wrong with going after small boys now and then and doing them hard just for fun and not for sexual love?
All these Uzbeks and Pashtuns have a scary past going back to days of Khan Timur-i-Leng and Khan Kublai. This whole beheading thing that happened to UN workers is a very modest example of what goes in these crazy tribal societies.
The Russians learnt it the hard way when their special forces soldiers were tortured for fun by these people and had their arms ripped off on videotape with laughing Afghans standing by. (One of my schoolfriends used to watch snuff tapes and told me about it.)
I take it that that is the genetic memory of the victims of Amir Timur speaking...
ps. Kublai Khan was a bit further east.
@Robert "Why on earth is this type of thing news for the major media?"
Two other Koran desecrations by prominent figures were never used to inflame tensions with Muslims. The atheist blogger P.Z. Meyers performed a desecration in 2008 along with an alleged consecrated Host from a Catholic Mass.
Another was Charles Merrill, who blogger Dale Price says was "a wealthy gay artist-of-some-sort" who in July 2007 "actually destroyed an artistically-significant Koran gifted by King Hussein of Jordan (and valued by some at $60,000)."
Am I being too cynical to worry that some influential people love to stir up Christian-Muslim tensions? The phrase "let's you and him fight" comes to mind.
Just one other thing about Afghanistan.
The Taliban and the various other Pashtun Islamist factions will not necessarily be able to seize the whole country upon the departure of NATO forces.
Between the withdrawal of the Soviet Army and the end of the USSR, the Afghan regime of Najibullah held its own quite well against the coalition of Pakistan-based mujahideen factions. The Afghan army achieved a level of performance superior to anything that it demonstrated under Soviet tutelage. The divisions among the mujahideen on the other hand, became a huge stumbling block to victory. What did Najibullah in was the withdrawal of Soviet logistical support once the USSR dissolved and the attendant defection of Rashid Dostum's hitherto pro-Soviet Uzbek militia to the side of the mujahideen.
I don't know if it is genetic memory, Jonathan, since the family is rooted from either Nepal or the far eastern side of South Asia.
I just know the local high school history books.
Tamerlane = Not a nice person.
Babar, in his days in Afghanistan, also did some crazy stuff. The enemy tribe after defeat started walking on all fours and eating the grass to show that they were his cows, to be milked. And then he killed them all anyway.
Such tends to be the nature of Mongolic, Turkic tribals from Central Asia to the Middle East - plain, unusual cruelty for no reason at all. The Russians know how all the tribal Muslims in their regions are, since they comprise some of the terrorists who bomb their trains.
Now, now, the terrorists the Russians are concerned with are from the North Caucasus. Different kettle of fish altogether...Many of the Turkic peoples of the Eurasian steppe (Ferghana valley aside), starting with the Khanate of Kazan, have been part and parcel of Russia for centuries. The whole of their nobility (that was not killed in the initial conquest) was incorporated into the Russian nobility. Hence the old Russian nobility had a significant Genghisid component. The name "Sibirsky" indicates descent from the nobility of the Khanate of Siber (i.e. Siberia), for instance.
It seems that before the development of field artillery and hand-held firearms, the Eurasian steppe nomads, be they Iranic or Turkic peoples, had the whip's hand over all the sedentary societies on their borders. Once that technological revolution occurred, these horse archer empires rapidly found themselves squeezed between Russians to the west, Chinese to the east, and Persians to the south. Even the Crimean Tartar khanate found itself subordinated to its sedentarized Ottoman cousins.
As for the Afghan mountaineers, the very geography of that country seems to work in favour of savage, warring tribesmen. Best leave the Shanghai Cooperation Organization countries to figure out how to keep them in line.
Mr. Sanjay,
Since we have wandered onto this subtopic, did the Mughals (i.e. Persianized Chagatai Mongols) not send some of their Rajput vassals to try and subjugate tribals in the northeast?
The Mughals were always in a period of suppressing some rebellion or the other violently, and their intercommunal relationships kept changing. I can't remember of all of it. The supposedly tolerant and multicultural Akbar (who started a universal religion) once executed several tens of thousands of Rajputs.
Back to topic:
This Terry Jones is a Pentecostal, right? My cousin saw a Pentecostal Church once, where they were laughing like madmen. There are also famous videos online of one Kenneth Copeland and one Kenneth Hagin leading their Pentecostal flock to laughing like madmen. Pentecostal loonies are Pentecostal loonies.
We don't live in a post christian period, we live in an anti-christian culture. When the primary symbol of Christian faith, The Crucifix, was soaked in urine and displayed as an art exhibit in New York, the media defended the artist. When a croackpot preacher burns a book, the media reports a crazy act leading to the endangerment of troops. The only intelligible thread in all of this, is if it mocks, demeans or villifies the Christian faith, print it. Or when
"Everything, crackpot, cruel and crass
Celebrates itself at Mass."
"Before America sends more of her sons to die for the freedom of Arabs and Muslims, perhaps we ought to have a better idea of what these folks intend to do with that freedom. For across that Muslim world, the faith that created our world, Christianity, is being persecuted and in some sectors annihilated."
Mr. Buchanan,
One thing about Jewish and Moslem society is that they will die defending their friends and traditions against all enemies foreign and domestic. We Americans tend to elect our enemies to high office so they can rule over us and send our sons and duaghters to fight for libyan radicals, Afghan tribal leaders and socialism for Iraq.
One thing I admire about our current GOP is that they are willing to say to Americans, look we stole your money. There is no lock box or even a mayonaise jar with money in it. We can't give it back to you, we can't even pay it back in installments. We can't police the world, fight three wars against the world of Islam, prevent humanitarian disasters around the globe, bail out our financial institutions who were too big to fail, (although they lied, cheated and comitted fraud) and worry about you people at the same time. You will simply need to work until you lose your minds, our country is bankrupt or you die inthe struggle.
Can anyone tell me where did they find Karzai? I suspect some European villa.
Outside of Kandahar. Is a Pushtan I believe but am not sure. Does speak French and several other languanges. The important thing for those interested in watching democracy spread in Aghanistan is the last election was badly tainted with ballot stuffing, election fraud and other "irregularities."
“Before America sends more of her sons to DIE FOR THE FREEDOM of Arabs and Muslims,...” Difficult to swallow this, Mr Buchanan!
Karzai is a high-up member of the Popolzai Pashtun tribe. He apparently played a logistical and diplomatic role for the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s, and was a Taliban supporter and consultant for UNOCAL in the 1990s.
#28, Geronimo,
Mr. Buchanan takes the stated reasons for US wars far too seriously.
@9 Comment by robert
"What is amazing to me is that he a pastor of some sixty people like the family in Kansas who have a congregation of 8 or 9. Why on earth is this type of thing news for the major media? If every crackpot is deserving of this kind of national coverage for some stupid act it seems to me the media can create a global crises at will."
They get major media coverage precisely because they'e crackpots and so that all Christians can be labeled crackpots- guilt by association. Whiping up global crises at will is just the gravy
@16 by Prateek Sanjay
"Did you know that despite their disapproval of homosexuality, they saw nothing wrong with going after small boys now and then and doing them hard just for fun and not for sexual love?"
Accoding to a number of sources they till do this.
@26 Bryan
It was worse, they found him lurking around the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington DC.
Isn't the significant point that this phony minister's trivial stunt was obviously public theater staged and blown out of all proportion by the American media, which makes their actions premeditated terrorism for aiding and abetting our supposed enemies in the Muslim world? Considering the evidence linking the shadow government groups like the CFR, for example, to the recent uprisings, isn't it also likely this stunt was orchestrated by one of more of these neocon front groups to further destabilize the Muslim world? At least it's now clear that our strategic energy interests in the Middle East have been subjugated to the neocon agenda, for if the spillover topples the Saudi monarchy, oil will go through the roof and no longer be priced or paid for in dollars. That will end the dollar, our economy, and ability to defend even our own shores. Congress may appear oblivious, but their actions make it clear that when it comes to the Middle East, Israel comes first and the hell with what happens to America.
Dan @33. I do not know enough about the other points you are making about the CFR and neocons, but I think you are exactly correct about the American media. That's the problem with 24 hr news channels; they lose all sense of proportion and throw ethics out the window. Responsible media would have ignored and never reported on a loser like Terry Jones. Without the reporting of the media, Karzai would not have been able to spread the news in the middle east.
It's interesting how so many people in Europe and North American can bestir themselves in support of the Palestinians, yet when Christians are the victim of Islamic repression--not a word is to be heard.
One more item in the Suicide of the West, duly logged.
Come on now folks, you all should know why this was made into a big hyped up media event. First of all, like previous posters have alluded to, this action shows how Christians are very untolerable, and further marginalizes them from the mainstream. Second, it just fuels the fire in the Muslim world, assuring our psychopathic elites, more war, and more importantly more profits and power. If the mainstream American protestant denominations had any brains Jones would have been vehemently ridiculed, but since corporatized Christianity in America is more akin to saving face or putting up a front of being spiritually deep, nothing is done. The servants of the NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM need not to worry, as Christians are tying their own noose.
If Terry Jones is in the US, and if he is a citizen, he can burn whatever book he wants. People who try to use laws against Terry Jones are enemies of one of the foundations of the US.
This is argument by declaration. Who says this? Not the Constitution, certainly. Which foundation of the US? Jacksi doesn't say because to say it would expose the hollowness of his/her argument. Welcome to the internet, where people have the inalienable right to expose their silliness.
Thank you for your kind words, Mr. Fleming.
I make the assumption that a citizen in the US can legally burn any book he or she wants. In practice, some people might try to stop or punish the person. But the Constitution gives extremely broad rights to the individual, in fact, it gives the individual any right that is not explicitly denied in the Constitution or ?possibly denied by the particular state the individual is in (I'm not sure about the details of the latter).
This extremely broad granting of all rights not specifically denied by the Constitution is clearly one of the foundations of the US.
I am sorry but saying it does not make it so. I think one might make an excellent argument that to use the term "foundation" in connection with the USA, is to accept a kind of revolutionary progressive attitude. Individuals are not given any rights in the Constitution. Some rights are reserved to the states and their citizens, but that is only a way of preventing the growth of government. Any state in the union could have passed a law against burning any specific book and the federal government would have had nothing to say to it. Besides, Jones's act is decidedly not political speech, which is the only kind of speech that is protected in the first amendment. Like most Americans, alas, you have swallowed the leftist reinvention of America hook, line, and sinker. I am sorry to be so harsh, but in old age I have grown tired of reading and listening to people who say things as if they have taken the trouble to know what they are talking about. Dr. Johnson called such people liars, but I am informed that people are offended by such blunt speech. Imagine, though, I told you how to tune up your car, even though I really knew very little about such things. I think you would rightly resent my pretense of knowledge in such a case. How much more dangerous is it to sound off on questions of morals and politics without having taken the time to study the matters.