I am going to say something very unpopular I am sure. Let me first say that the killing of journalist Jim Foley is terrorism pure and simple. He should not have been murdered and his killers are terrorists. IS is a destructive force... no doubt about it.. they are bigoted, they are ethnic cleansers... they are genocidal. Having said this, I listened to President Obamas message, understanding his attempt to speak to the heinous nature of this killing and his desire to pronounce on the absolute lack of ethics... practiced by IS... in fact what we call the evil of this group... and I could not help but wonder at the hubris involved when the man speaking the words himself, supports acts that are as violent and as deadly as IS.... acts that involve the slaughter of civilians, people with the same basic human rights as Jim Foley certainly has. I saw the photos of this poor man about to be executed, a man without crimes, a man who had done nothing wrong... and I was sickened of course. At the same time, I have just been seeing for over a month, photos of dead Palestinians, women, children, old people... some of them shot at by jets made in the United States..flown by Israelis, some of them crushed in their homes, or even in shelters.... and I have been sickened by these images as well... Obamas words: Let’s be clear about ISIL. They have rampaged across cities and villages killing innocent, unarmed civilians in cowardly acts of violence. They abduct women and children and subject them to torture and rape and slavery. They have murdered Muslims, both Sunni and Shia, by the thousands. They target Christians and religious minorities, driving them from their homes, murdering them when they can, for no other reason than they practice a different religion. They declared their ambition to commit genocide against an ancient people. So ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just god would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day. ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt. They may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior. What he says seems true enough. But when our President points out that no faith teaches people to massacre innocents, and that no just God would stand for what IS did yesterday and what they do every single day, the President is duplicitous. He supported Israel in its massacre in Gaza...a massacre that continues. He himself has conducted drone warfare that has slaughtered innocents in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is the leader of a country that is the most feared country on the planet, not because of the good we do or because of the ethical stands we manifest but because of the turmoil, exploitation and aggressiveness we exhibit world wide and continue to exhibit. If you want to talk about massacres of innocent people Mr. President... good. But when you support massacres sir... please say nothing. The same goes for Congress, 100% of which supported the Israeli governments invasion of Gaza and continues to support it... We must come to a point, as a nation, where we do not divide between slaughter and terrorism we approve... fund... or conduct... and the slaughter and terrorism we do not like because others are conducting it..... Innocents are innocents, where ever they are, whomever they are... The dead children of Gaza are as important as the dead journalist..they are all important... or as the Yazadis.. We must become just in our assessments of crimes against humanity. No one is fooled in this regard but ourselves.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 22:41:38 +0000
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