Iraqi Protestors Shout Death to Israel!
If you didn't agree with some of our posts on the Middle Eastern perception of Israel and the US as little Satan and the Great Satan, you'd better read this article by the Associated Press and writer MURTADA FARAJ.
This sounds like the kind of protest that you would read about happening in Iran not in Iraq!
It is important to understand that the Shiite population is the majority in Iran, but the minority in the overall Muslim population. The Sunni sect of Islam is the predominant sect worldwide. However, these kind of extremist pronouncements are not unique to Shiites, but do show a disturbing pattern of the increase of verbal violence toward Israel that has been exacerbated by the bombing and lack of movement to a ceasefire in Lebanon. Hezbollah is also a part of the Shiite sect of Islam.
I think that even when the hostilities have ceased as they will, Pandora's Box will have been opened; strife and increasingly hostile and violent actions will be perpetrated against civilians in the name of religious duty in the Middle East.
Hundreds of thousands of Shiites chanting "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" marched through the streets of Baghdad's biggest Shiite district Friday in a show of support for Hezbollah militants battling Israeli troops in Lebanon.
"I consider my participation in this rally a religious duty. I am proud to join this crowd and I am ready to die for the sake of Lebanon," said Khazim al-Ibadi, 40, a government employee from Hillah.
This sounds like the kind of protest that you would read about happening in Iran not in Iraq!
It is important to understand that the Shiite population is the majority in Iran, but the minority in the overall Muslim population. The Sunni sect of Islam is the predominant sect worldwide. However, these kind of extremist pronouncements are not unique to Shiites, but do show a disturbing pattern of the increase of verbal violence toward Israel that has been exacerbated by the bombing and lack of movement to a ceasefire in Lebanon. Hezbollah is also a part of the Shiite sect of Islam.
I think that even when the hostilities have ceased as they will, Pandora's Box will have been opened; strife and increasingly hostile and violent actions will be perpetrated against civilians in the name of religious duty in the Middle East.
Bush, "fundamentalist" Christians and Israel.
But do Carter's views represent those of the Democratic Party? Well, he sure seems to think so. He told Der Spiegel, "I think I represent the vast majority of Democrats in this country." If so, that's scary.
Expanding on the theme of his latest book, "Our Endangered Values," Carter said the Bush administration has abandoned the nation's "old" moral principles. That's a curious concept: By upholding traditional moral values President Bush has diverted the nation's moral course?
Carter is particularly exercised about Bush's foreign policy. He said, "Under all of its predecessors there was a commitment to peace instead of preemptive war. Our country always had a policy of not going to war unless our own security was directly threatened and now we have a new policy of going to war on a preemptive basis."
But no less an antiwar Democrat than Sen. John Kerry -- after savaging President Bush for his "preemptive" attack of Iraq -- admitted in the first presidential debate that, "The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War."
No matter how persistently Carter's Democrats attempt to rewrite history, President Bush attacked Iraq because he believed it was a threat to America's security -- and it was, just like Iran is today. Carter is delusional if he believes Bush was just recreationally flexing America's "imperialistic" muscles to spread democracy.
The debate here between Democrats and Republicans isn't over the use of preemptive war -- as Kerry reluctantly confessed -- but on the assessment of threats to our national security. Specifically, the debate centers on the parties' respective views of the nature and scope of the terrorist threat, whether Israel is seen as more of a victim surrounded by hostile regimes bent on its destruction or a bullying, aggressive nation, and whether we should defer on these questions to anti-American leaders in Europe and the United Nations.
Carter states the Democrats' position quite clearly. Islamo-fascist terrorists aren't that bad. They are probably peace-loving people like the rest of us who just have their noses out of joint over Bush's "unilateral" foreign policy and his "preemptive" attack on Iraq. Indeed, Carter said the Arab world hates us because we invaded Iraq, and even more so for "supporting and encouraging Israel in its unjustified attack on Lebanon."
Posted by out of patience | Fri Aug 18, 07:56:00 AM EDT