Or, at least, a recurring fantasy.
After the next big Islamic terrorist attack (and while I wish to hell there won’t be, I’m sure there will be) I’d like to assemble a group of people outside a mosque. We’d have signs and banners denouncing the atrocity in particular and terrorism and general. And then we’d unfurl one more banner, bigger than all the rest:
“PLEASE JOIN US”
We would ask the Muslims inside to come out and join with us, to openly condemn terrorist attacks on civilians without reservation. No mention of “the oppression of the Palestinians,” no “legitimate resistance,” no “since Israel has universal conscription, there are no civilians,” just standing with us and speaking out against the atrocities.
It would be very calm, very peaceful, very cordial. We wouldn’t be demanding anything, just giving them the chance to join us.
And if they refuse, or equivocate, or want to negotiate, we would simply walk away.
I fear the only way we can stop radical Islam without destroying all of Islam is to convince the mainstream Muslims to see that Brothers in Faith are a threat to them, too, eventually, and they need to stop turning a blind eye and lending their tacit support. And we need to get them to put deeds to their soft words of condemnation.
Hey, what about Garfield? or US Grant? They where pretty bad. Or Buchanan, he could have prevented the Civil War (or as we say, ‘The War of Northern Aggression’) but lacked the stones to do it.
Tob
And I still assert: “The Bush administration has been the most ethical administration in modern memory”.
Tob
Seems that Hoover is the one that Bush is competing with on the horrible domestic policy front. As for foreign policy, no US president has ever invaded a sovereign nation preemptively, we won’t even get into how and what happened next.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2082321/
Much as conservatives blather on about the booming economy under Bush, unless you’re making the VERY BIG bucks, things are pretty dismal. Stagnant wages, sending jobs overseas (that one is hitting particlarly close to home as I continue to build the IT infrastructure for our India site and ship it over in pieces….it’s ramping up at breakneck speed), and millions settling for part-time work or jobs that they are overqualified for.
I could go on (a clear goal of dismantling the New Deal, paying “journalists” to propagandize your policies, the strange saga of Bush and the 9/11 investigation, huge lies on Medicare, intimidating members of Congress over votes on the floor etc.)….well I guess I went on.
Regarding your last post. You’re too smart to believe that. 😉
I don’t know if your still monitoring this thread JmaR but I have to say, your last few posts are just witless.
“Seems that Hoover is the one that Bush is competing with on the horrible domestic policy front. As for foreign policy, no US president has ever invaded a sovereign nation preemptively, we won’t even get into how and what happened next.”
I think that Polk invaded Mexico rather premptively on Apr. 25, 1846. There’s a precedent for you. Aquire Texas down to the Rio Grande, Arizona, New Mexico, and California. Sure beats ‘Blood for Oil’.
And as far as domestic policies, even if I were to grant everything in your rather vague post, then it still wouldn’t make Bush the worst president (which I most certainly do not grant, having been conscious through much more of recent history than you apparently have; Did you ever try to find a job while Carter was president? I did.) . And you compare him to Hoover, sheesh. Pardon my bluntness, but you write as a fool. Your trying to compare the Great Depression to today? Where’s the 25% unemployment? the bread lines? the overflowing orphanages? The Okies? You wish it was the Great Depression, that was the only environment that progressives and socialists had any success in.
“things are pretty dismal. Stagnant wages, sending jobs overseas (that one is hitting particlarly close to home as I continue to build the IT infrastructure for our India site and ship it over in pieces….it’s ramping up at breakneck speed), and millions settling for part-time work or jobs that they are overqualified for.”
Perhaps, things ARE dismal for you and that explains your pessimism. You must be a little-box guy if your worried about you position in IT. Forgive my presumption but take this advice for what it cost you. See if you can’t get on with a Mainframe shop. Technical positions with big iron are going begging. Its always tough when you have a job that self-educated teenagers can do and thats what many Windows/Oracle/Linux guys are finding out.
Apparently, Bush seems like the worst president for you since the evil-moron-chimphitler-supergenius just keeps cleaning your party’s clock. Things can’t be as bad as you think or else the Republicans would start losing elections. The best proof of the way people really feel are 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004. Holds or gains for elected Republicans in all. Cry into you beer or pull up your belt, JmaR. Without an attitude adjustment, you’re in for much more heartache.
Tob
JmaR:
I’m fifty-two and I really should know better than to try and engage a troll in reasonable conversation. Still…
On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf Tonkin Resolution, granting President Lyndon B. Johnson authority to begin an air war, and later, a ground war, in support of South Vietnam against North Vietnam. This was the response to reports by the commander the Navy destroyer U.S.S. Maddox that his ship had been attacked twice by North Vietnamese torpedo boats while patroling(and spying on the North) in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin.
There was just one problem; the first attack (on August 2) may not have happened and the second (on August 4) almost certainly didn’t. And within weeks of the passage of the resolution Johnson knew it, as evidenced by his tape-recorded conversations in the Oval Office (Nixon wasn’t the first to tape record his conversations). Yet he did nothing to correct the intial mistake; indeed he plunged us further into a land war we probably shouldn’t have been involved in. All so he wouldn’t look weak on defense heading into the 1964 election against Barry Goldwater. His economic policies brought on roaring inflation and his Great Society welfare state (built on the foundation of FDR’s New Deal and JFK’s New Frontiers) created a permanent underclass of government-dependent poor that exists to this day.
Now I remember that time VIVIDLY. And I’m here to tell you that things aren’t nearly as bad today as they were then. We don’t have double-digit inflation, unemployment IS dropping and we don’t have race and anti-war riots in the streets. (I’ll just bet the lack of anti-war riots really chaps your ass, doesn’t it?)
As for your condescending suggestion that I “check out” something called “books”, I have, believe it or not. Books are great for giving you details about a time or place, but very few writers are talented enough to make you FEEL what it was like to live in that time or place. That’s why when I agree with Toby928 and say that James “The Shame Of Pennsylvania” Buchanon is the worst president this country’s ever had, or say that Theodore Roosevelt was the best, it is, for me, an academic exercise. Comparing the presidents I’ve lived under isn’t.
Finally, don’t call me “brother”. You’re not my “brother”. My parents were incapable of conceiving such a pusillanimous little snot as you.