Three More Advantages to the Cairo Speech
Here is what I argued here in April, in a column citing Gorenberg and Schell: "Morally as well as physically, violence in people's wars as well as by military machines is usually a dead end. As Albert Camus understood but Jean-Paul Sartre and Franz Fanon did not, those who lack the courage to think their way through this become, by default, apostles of murder.
"Schell's rendering of coercive non-violence draws not just from Gandhi but also from the even less-pacifist Hannah Arendt's understanding of the inverse relationship between violence and power: The more of the former, the less of the latter, and much sooner than many zealous young fighters of the left or the right ever seem to realize, until it's too late.
"Real power grows from voluntary consent, or it is doomed by its violent imposition, even by people's liberation movements. This is what people who get swept up in moralism aren't strong enough to understand, or brave enough to deliver on. They're not equal to practitioners of coercive non-violence who have brought down vast-national security states in India, South Africa, American Dixie, and Eastern Europe."
Of course, when people are invading your land and threatening to trample you underfoot, you have the right to respond as violently as possible. But that isn't the case in Israel's occupied territories. These places are relatively stable; the Palestinians aren't in danger of disappearing. In fact, it's the kind of situation where nonviolent protests a la Gandhi and King could work wonders.
For more on the Cairo speech, see Obama's Nine Hard Truths. This explains why Obama is a moral and intellectual giant compared to Bush. For more on the subject of nonviolence, see Diplomacy Works, Violence Doesn't and Winning Through Nonviolence.
6 comments:
Faking being Indian is pathological as well, Ward.
"Of course, when people are invading your land and threatening to trample you underfoot, you have the right to respond as violently as possible."
So in other words you're fine with Hamas blowing up Israeli civilians? Also it amuses me how you haven't criticized such hellholes as Iran. I guess you don't have a problem with a tyranny that murders 17 year old girls for sharing non-Islamic beliefs with school children? Admit it you're really George Galloway aren't you? ;)
"But that isn't the case in Israel's occupied territories."
MYTH
"Israel "occupies" the West Bank."
FACT
In politics words matter and, unfortunately, the misuse of words applying to the Arab-Israeli conflict has shaped perceptions to Israel's disadvantage. As in the case of the term "West Bank," the word "occupation" has been hijacked by those who wish to paint Israel in the harshest possible light. It also gives apologists a way to try to explain away terrorism as "resistance to occupation," as if the women and children killed by homicide bombers in buses, pizzerias, and shopping malls were responsible for the plight of the Arabs. Given the negative connotation of an "occupier," it is not surprising that Arab spokespersons use the word or some variation as many times as possible when interviewed by the press. The more accurate description of the territories in Judea and Samaria is "disputed" territories.
In fact, most other disputed territories around the world are not referred to as being occupied by the party that controls them. This is true, for example, of the hotly contested region of Kashmir.
Occupation typically refers to foreign control of an area that was under the previous sovereignty of another state. In the case of the West Bank, there was no legitimate sovereign because the territory had been illegally occupied by Jordan from 1948 to 1967. Though the Palestinians never demanded an end to Jordanian occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state, only two countries — Britain and Pakistan — recognized Jordan's action.
It is also important to distinguish the acquisition of territory in a war of conquest as opposed to a war of self-defense. A nation that attacks another and then retains the territory it conquers is an occupier. One that gains territory in the course of defending itself is not in the same category. And this is the situation with Israel, which specifically told King Hussein that if Jordan stayed out of the 1967 war, Israel would not fight against him. Hussein ignored the warning and attacked Israel in 1967. While fending off the assault and driving out the invading Jordanian troops, Israel came to control the West Bank. Had Hussein heeded the warning, the Palestinians of the West Bank would in all likelihood be happily living as Jordanian citizens.
By rejecting Arab demands that Israel be required to withdraw from all the territories won in 1967, the UN Security Council in Resolution 242 acknowledged that Israel was entitled to claim at least part of these lands for new defensible borders.
Since Oslo, the case for tagging Israel as an occupying power has been further weakened by the fact that Israel transferred virtually all civilian authority to the Palestinian Authority. Israel retained the power to control its own external security and that of its citizens, but 98 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza came under the PA's authority. The extent to which Israel has been forced to maintain a military presence in the territories has been governed by the Palestinians' unwillingness to end violence against Israel. The best way to end the dispute over the territories is for the Palestinians to fulfill their obligations under the Oslo agreements and stop the terror and negotiate a final settlement.
Also here's a good reply to the lie that Barry spouted about Islam and America:
Speaking at the University of Cairo, President Barack Hussein Obama said that Americans are indebted to Islam for the great contributions Muslims have made to the history and development of the United States.
“I know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story,” Mr. Obama told the throng of unenlightened Muslims. “The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. . . And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States.”
Mr. Obama went on to say: “They [Muslims] have fought in our wars. They have served in our government. They have stood for civil rights. They have started businesses. They have taught at our universities. They’ve excelled in our sports arenas. They’ve won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building and lit the Olympic torch. And when the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same holy Koran that one of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, kept in his personal library.”
No one at the Egyptian University or the international media took issue with the President’s bizarre interpretation of American history, let alone his confusion of the Nation of Islam (the religion of Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X) that bears scant similarity to orthodox Islam. The Nation of Islam teach that Allah in the flesh was a bona fide nutcase named Wallace Fard and that Eli Muhammad, a conman with a tested IQ of 70 and not the Prophet Muhammad, was the true last prophet of Allah.
Let’s set the record straight once and for all.
Sorry, Barack Hussein, but there were no Muslims among the passengers on the Mayflower or the settlers at Jamestown. Muslims were conspicuously absent from the ranks of George Washington’s Army of the Revolution and played no role in the creation of the American republic - - save for the fact that the new country’s first declaration of war was against the forces of Islam in the form of the Barbary pirates.1
Despite popular folklore, few Muslims numbered among the 12 million black Africans who were shipped to the New World from the 17th to 19th centuries. The Muslims, in fact, were not the slaves but the slave traders. Senegalese educator Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow has written that in 1587 a shipload of Moriscos (Spanish Moors) landed in a coastal area of South Carolina. The Moors, he contends, migrated to the mountains of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina where they established colonies.2 In reality, this is pure speculation. There is not a scintilla of archival or archaeological evidence to support this claim.
This is not to say that no Muslim slaves were transported to the colonies. Two such slaves - - Ayuiba Suleiman Diallo and Omar ibn Said - - were brought to America is 1731 but both were returned to Africa in 1734.3 In a Herculean effort to materialize at least one Muslim living in America before the Civil War, Muslims in America, an Islamic website, point to the name of Mahomet, the great grandson of Uncas, the founder of the Mohegan tribe, on a gravestone in Norwich, Connecticut.4 The name of this Native America, they argue, resembles that of the prophet, and, therefore, he must have been a convert to Islam.
In a similar example of straining at gnats, the compilers of The Collections and Stories of American Muslims, a non-profit organization, claim that Peter Salem, a former slave who fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill, must have been a Muslim since “Salem” bears an etymological resemblance to “Salaam,” the Arabic word for peace.5
For additional proof, the compilers turn to folklore, such as the story of Old Tom, a slave at a plantation in Georgia, who allegedly uttered, “Allah is God and Mohammed his Prophet” on his death-bed - - and the apocryphal tale of “Old Lizzy,” a slave from Edgefield County, who reportedly said, “Christ built His first church in Mecca.”6
Surprisingly, there is no record of any Islamic American among the enlisted and conscripted forces of World War I, let alone among the blue and grey armies of the Civil War. The great migrations that lasted from 1865 to 1925 brought 35,000,000 people to the New World: 4,500,000 from Ireland, 4,000,000 from Great Britain, 6,000,000 from central Europe, 2,000,000 from the Scandinavian countries, 5,000,000 from Italy, 8,000,000 from Eastern Europe, and 3,000,000 from the Balkans. But the number of Muslims who came here from the Middle East was statistically nil.7
In 1960, aside from the temples of the Nation of Islam, the only mosques in the United States were in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Dearborn, Michigan, and Washington DC (which opened in 1957) - - and all three professed less than 200 active members. Four other cities contained miniature mosques with less than fifty members.8
Oh, yes, Jefferson did possess a copy of the Koran which Keith Ellison, our first Muslim Congressman, used to make his oath of office. But what was Jefferson opinion of Islam? Did he believe the Muslim religion represented a salubrious influence in world affairs? Far from it. In 1786 Thomas Jefferson, then US ambassador to France, and John Adams, then US Ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Dey’s ambassador to Britain, in an attempt to negotiate a peace treaty with the Barbary Pirates based on Congress’ vote of funding. To the US Congress these two future Presidents later reported the reasons for the Muslims’ hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.
“...that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
Jefferson had it right.
Obama has it wrong.
Fact: Israel occupied the West Bank. Fact: your copy-pasted weaseling changes nothing.
Sorry, Barack Hussein, but there were no Muslims among the passengers on the Mayflower or the settlers at Jamestown.
He never said there were. You are either incredibly thick or consciously dishonest. Probably both.
Actually, it turns out you're plagiarising, without attribution, a dimwitted columnist called Paul Williams. You can't even string your own words together... pathetic.
"Fact: Israel occupied the West Bank. Fact: your copy-pasted weaseling changes nothing."
Thanks for ignoring the facts of what I posted.
"He never said there were. You are either incredibly thick or consciously dishonest. Probably both."
No one said he did, it's sarcasm do you understand the concept?
"Actually, it turns out you're plagiarising, without attribution, a dimwitted columnist called Paul Williams. You can't even string your own words together... pathetic."
Yeah I CnPed an article so what?
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