BHO Terrorist Apology Eight Days After 9/11

Here's my analysis of that drivel:

"We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness."
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We don't need to understand it; we merely need to destroy such sources of madness.

"The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others."
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He's dead wrong. The essence of this tragedy is taking pleasure in others' suffering, a PERVERSE and EVIL ability to imagine and connect with the humanity and suffering of others.

Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics."
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He's right that no group of people is above using violence that is essentially nihilist to achieve something. He has failed to consider that many of these terrorists simply wanted to be violent for the sake of violence and clothed this naked desire for destruction in radical Islamic garb.


"Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair."
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All of the 9-11 hijackers came from middle class, comfortable families. They did not grow up poor and they were NOT ignorant. They were well-educated people who took definitive action to launch an air strike on the OTHER side of the world. They were hardly helpless and they fully believed that their actions would bring God's wrath upon the US.
 
We don't need to understand it; we merely need to destroy such sources of madness.
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An utterly pitiful approach to national policy. Using such an approach you will be playing whack a mole for decades and gaining zero ground.

I fully support going after those who conduct terrorist attacks and the nations which harbor them. The LONG TERM solution though must be understanding the driving factors, of which poverty and ignorance are certainly two, and properly countering them.

Killing every extremist will do nothing in the long run unless the systems that generated them are changed with the will of the people. All that will happen is new extremists will take their place. Education and Prosperity are the key to long term change.

Sadly there are many knee jerk reactionaries who think it is impossible to effectively prosecute such terrorists with lethal force while also working to understand their motivation and change the system.
 
Musketeer makes a very good point. The very heart of why success in Iraq is so important.

You don't have to be idealistic to understand that people want ownership of their own lives. Arabs and Persians, whether Islamic Muslims or not, are as human as you and I. The Islamic fascists don't define the culture. The work of General Petraeus over the last year has succeeded BECAUSE they want liberty and the Petraeus approach has been a bottom up, or local to central, assurance that they CAN live how THEY want as long as they DON'T kill their neighbor for living how THEY want. Then keeping that promise. Soon the people themselves saw AlQ as the one telling them under threat how to live not the Americans. And as the promise was kept the Iraqis chased AlQ off with the Americans.

Take hold of the concept of liberty as ownership of ones own life and that Persians and Arabs are human and also desire that. As Americans we take for granted our liberty. We have enjoyed it for so long that we have developed an expectation of justice. We actually EXPECT justice. This is counter the the culture in the middle east where people expect injustice. The desire for liberty is usurped by the desire to survive. The assertion of their desire for liberty has been met with death until now as they didn't have the strong ally we did in France to overcome the overwhelming power that kept that desire down.

The dramatic progress in Iraq wasn't from bombing Iraqis into submission, playing whack-a-mole, it has been by a bottom up or local to central change in the expectations of Iraqis. They are seeing a possibility that they may be able to expect justice.

Long term, bombs and bullets are of less force then the force of liberty and the change of expectation from expecting injustice to expecting justice in the culture of the middle east. The spread of that will do more damage to the threat of terrorism then bombs. That is the WHOLE Operation Iraqi Freedom premise. To spread this in the middle east.


Now, with that said, once you become a mass murderer you've lost all credibility and righteous indignation. I tell my kids that it's not what happens to you that determines if you will get justice or not, it's what you do about it.

If your pissed at the US, with cause or not, you have absolutely no justification to commit acts of terrorism. NONE. Being pissed at your city council does not justify blowing up the city bus depot.

The comments by Obama in the days after 9/11 reveal that he buys into the 'we deserved it' mentality that is taught in Madrases across the middle east. His comments are not as much apologist as that would show a a recognition that it was wrong as they are justifying what happened. "Yeah it was tragic but justified" sums up his comments.
 
Quote:
We don't need to understand it; we merely need to destroy such sources of madness.
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An utterly pitiful approach to national policy. Using such an approach you will be playing whack a mole for decades and gaining zero ground.

I fully support going after those who conduct terrorist attacks and the nations which harbor them. The LONG TERM solution though must be understanding the driving factors, of which poverty and ignorance are certainly two, and properly countering them.
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I believe my point still stands: Pull out the root and the weed will die. Pull out the roots of the weeds before they flower and go to seed and the infestation will stop. We only need to know what the driving factors are (and not necessarily understand them thoroughly either) and then act to remove the worst of them (which will effectively destroy such sources of madness). Spending the time to reach a definitive and thorough understanding of the situation also means that time wasn't used to change the situation either.

There is also the possibility that gaining a significant understanding isn't really possible. Such is the case in US dealings with North Korea: Their society is completely closed and we know very little about North Korea because the government is so hostile and paranoid. The North Koreans probably don't understand us at all, but they do know what we aren't willing to do and using that knowledge they've consistently manipulated the US like a chess piece for many years.
 
After looking into BO's support of his Marxist, Murderous cousin Odinga in the Kenya presidential elections nothing surprises me. Here is a link to an article on the subject:

http://www.nysun.com/opinion/kenya-connection/69273/


As he reminded us again after losing narrowly to Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, Barack Obama likes to evoke Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech.

We must all hope that, like King's, Mr. Obama's dream is "deeply rooted in the American dream." But before giving him the keys to the White House, Americans might like to know a little more about the content of Mr. Obama's dream.

Let me propose an unlikely place to start looking: Kenya. Even in the midst of the primaries, the horrific scenes from that country since the disputed election on December 27 will not have escaped most people. In particular, the burning of a church with up to 50 men, women, and children inside, while machete-armed mobs slaughter up to 600 more people, have evoked memories of the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Who is behind these massacres? The opposition leader, Raila Odinga, has had a good press in the West, after he accused the president, Mwai Kibaki, of rigging the election. But the victims of the recent violence have mostly been members of Mr. Kibaki's tribe, the Kikuyu, while those who have gone berserk are supporters of Mr. Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement, which is dominated by the rival Luo tribe.

Whether Mr. Odinga has ordered his men to commit murder and arson is unclear. But his own background does not exactly suggest enthusiasm for democracy and the rule of law. Mr. Odinga's father, Oginga Odinga, led the Communist opposition during the Cold War and Raila Odinga was educated in Communist East Germany.

In 1982 he was implicated in a failed coup against the then president Daniel Arap Moi. His eldest son is named after Fidel Castro and his daughter after Winnie Mandela................................




In August 2006, Mr. Obama visited Kenya and spoke in support of Mr. Odinga's candidacy at rallies in Nairobi. The Web site Atlas Shrugs has even posted a photograph of the two men side by side. More recently, Mr. Odinga says that Mr. Obama interrupted his campaigning in New Hampshire to have a telephone conversation with his African cousin about the constitutional crisis in Kenya.

What should Americans make of Mr. Obama's Kenyan connection? If he has been putting tribal or family considerations above America's national interest by supporting Mr. Odinga's anti-Western candidacy, it raises serious questions about his judgement.

At the time of his visit in 2006, President Kibaki's spokesman complained that Mr. Obama was behaving like a "stooge" of Mr. Odinga — which was at best undignified for a visiting American senator, and at worst unwarranted interference in the internal politics of another country.
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It doesn't matter what motivates America's enemies as long as they're dead. Our task is not to change the minds of America's enemies; our task is to make them dead.
 
A bit of clarification:

Did Obama state this eight days after 9/11/2001 or eight days after the anniversary of 9/11 in some year other than 2001?
 
Bruxley said:
The comments by Obama in the days after 9/11 reveal that he buys into the 'we deserved it' mentality that is taught in Madrases across the middle east. His comments are not as much apologist as that would show a a recognition that it was wrong as they are justifying what happened. "Yeah it was tragic but justified" sums up his comments.
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I don't see how you get that from the quoted comments. "Tragic but expected" would be more accurate. Obama basically said that you can expect poor and uneducated people to be mean. That would imply that more anti-poverty and education programs are a solution to terrorism.

I guess when you are holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

The problem has been pointed out already: plenty of terrorists throughout history have been well educated, financially comfortable people, the 9/11 terrorists included. Can anyone point out acts of terror committed by toothless morons who were fooled by demagogues?
 
Richard Reid is not a good example of what Obama was talking about in the topic quotation. Obama was talking about poor and uneducated third worlders being potential recruits for terrorist. Reid was born in England and went to Thomas Tallis School, which looks like the Brit equivalent of an American prep school. He is yet another example of a case in which the motivations/sources of his actions, whatever they were, were most likely not poverty and ignorance.
 
16 Months?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080721/pl_nm/iraq_dc


Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama met Iraq's prime minister in Baghdad on Monday but did not raise his plan to remove combat troops within 16 months if he wins the election, an Iraqi official said.
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Is this now the official Obama time schedule for leaving Iraq? 16 months? That's more that a year...right? Maybe after 16 months he can add another 16 months. My how times change. I guess he just not want to bother the Iraqi's with that minor detail.
 
If you had taken the time to read the New Yorker article you would know these are his cited written words and were not paraphrased by myself or anyone else.
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When I spoke of misrepresentation, I was speaking of what I quoted in my last post. Specifically starting at the second sentence.

This thread is as good as any to put a link in that I think represents why I will be voting for Obama this election regardless of his faults.

Venial versus Mortal sins
 
SecDef ... If you've already decide to vote for BHO and no one else that is your right. I'll never fault a fellow for standing his ground and sticking to his convictions.

The thread I started, really wasn't intended to change your vote, but to help and inform others who still seek reasons to vote either for or against BHO. My personal opinion is JMc is a patriot and BHO isn't. Further more, BHO is a left voting socialist, terrorist apologist and political opportunist. While JMc is lacking in many areas, his endeavors are recognized to work both sides of Congress and he enjoys a much longer Senate voting record than BHO's less than four years.

Winston Churchill once said: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is equal sharing of miseries."

Yes, both candidates leave allot to be desired based on their current histories and each exhibit major political deficiencies in who I would want running the United States of America. If BHO is elected President, then I hope I'm 100% wrong about his socialist tendencies and untested abilities to lead our country. If I'm right, then God save the United States of America.
 
SecDef ... Funny how great minds work. The article you refer to is dated the same day I posted my third post of this thread dated July 16, 2008.

In my opinion, the only hope for our country is BHO, if elected, will use his education and intelligence to quickly evolve and morph into a realist with true centrist responses to the world's insane challenges which face these United States.
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So then is Obama winning the presidency and using a Dem majority to push through judicial nominees who look at their position as one to foster societal change through the principal of a "living COTUS" while disregarding the written law or reinterpreting it based on the meaning they believe appropriate today a "Venial or Mortal Sin?"

How about nationalizing healthcare? Do you think that will EVER be turned around?
 
In my opinion, the only hope for our country is BHO, if elected, will use his education and intelligence to quickly evolve and morph into a realist with true centrist responses to the world's insane challenges which face these United States.
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I have defended the statements about understanding the motivations of terrorists and the systems which gives rise to them. At the same time if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it's a duck. Expecting the duck to suddenly turn into a cow is lunacy.

Obama is what he is and will not miraculously change into something else after being sworn in as President.
 
Muskeeter

Well, I suppose if pigs could fly....
I think it's perfectly clear where I stand on BHO as President.
Actually I parsed "if elected" with "I hope"
Expecting the duck to suddenly turn into a cow is lunacy
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So... I really don't expect, but I remain hopeful.
 
SecDef ... If you've already decide to vote for BHO and no one else that is your right. I'll never fault a fellow for standing his ground and sticking to his convictions.

The thread I started, really wasn't intended to change your vote, but to help and inform others who still seek reasons to vote either for or against BHO. My personal opinion is JMc is a patriot and BHO isn't. Further more, BHO is a left voting socialist, terrorist apologist and political opportunist. While JMc is lacking in many areas, his endeavors are recognized to work both sides of Congress and he enjoys a much longer Senate voting record than BHO's less than four years
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I'm just here to make a stink when your personal opinion isn't in line with reality.

In both recent "crossing the aisle" legislation (immigration and election reform) McCain has gone against his own work. Woohoo, what a champion!

He blatantly lied about conditions on the ground in Baghdad to support his position on the surge.

If the republican primaries had put someone worthwhile on the ballot, I would give them consideration. John McCain is lacking in far too many areas which you will NOT explicitly list, of course.

Personally, I am EXTREMELY happy with Obama's move towards the center (towards my own political stance).

You have not shown Obama is a terrorist apologist. You have shown his statements, then you have launched off on your own version of what you think they mean. Incorrectly. Making a statement that we should attempt to understand the motivations of terrorists in NO WAY attempts to justify their actions. It is merely an adult response to a threat. To think otherwise is simply ignoring personal bias.
 
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