“It is the eternal struggle between two principles...
“It is the eternal struggle between two principles,
right and wrong, throughout the world.”
Read the above quote and you will think it is about the struggle of the non-Islam world with the Islam world. Wrong, it may fit, but President Abraham Lincoln made the statement at a debate at Alton, Illinois, October 15, 1858.
The politicians in the ilk of Rep. Murtha, AKA Cut and Run Democrats, do not recognize the fact that the civilized world is in an eternal conflict with the radical wing of the Islamist.
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich at Newt.org has a piece on this eternal conflict.
He states...
America’s lack of preparation, however, should not discourage us or even surprise us. Americans have had to rethink and reorganize for every major national security challenge in our history. We must recognize that we have three objectives to achieve.To read the complete piece, go here...
First, we have two immediate opponents, the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam and the rogue dictatorships that empower the radical Islamists.
posted by John at 3:19 PM
3 Comments:
Clearly you should bone up on your history a bit, my friend. The Crusades, if anyhing, was the "civilized Islamic world" versus "the radical religious zealots of the West." Islamic writers such as Usamah ibn Munidq would report with horror, for example, at how Christian physicians would demand trepanning as a chre for demon possession when the trained physician provided by the Kingdom of Jerusalem's allies in Damascus suggested instead a simple herbal remedy. Crusaders also ate people, including children. That horrified the Arab and Turkish Muslims, so much so that certain groups of zealots went around killing and eating random Muslims as part of a "divinely-appointed" mission to terrorize the "heathen Saracens" into submission.
That is not to say that the various forces of Islam were all good during the Crusades (they did some low stuff too, not even counting all the times they stabbed each other in the back), but it does point out the false simplicity of your supposition. There is no more an eternal struggle between elements of "the civilized West" and any part of Islam than there is an eternal struggle between Coke and Pepsi. What we are wintessing now is a blip with some historical precedent, but is largely unique to the modern day and time.
Trying to create some sort of eternal struggle and eternal blood-feud between Christianity and Islam is the goal of Usamah bin Laden. It hardly behooves us to help bin Laden by repeating the same sort of misinformed drivel he's pushing to an English-speaking audience. Patricularly when more worthy people, such as the late Pope John-Paul II, saw considerable common ground and sought to build bridges between the largely Christian West and the Islamic world.
It is precisely this kind of divisiveness, and black v. white thinking, that has caused the seemingly irreconcilable conflict in the Old World.
At least this blog is correctly named. I can hardly imagine a more misinformed view.
Surely you aren't suggesting that Islam has the market cornered on extremism? Christianity has a long history of violent extremism.
And by "rogue dictatorships" do you think that Newt was thinking about Saudi Arabia at all? The Bush family has had a rather cosey relationship with THAT rogue ruling clan for quite some time haven't they?
I guess I resent the idea that the "civilized world" would be in eternal conflict. No one participating in eternal conflict can consider themselves to be particularly civilized.
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