NOT IN OUR NAME
By David Harsanyi
Denver Post
April 10 2009
CO
The United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam . . .,"
President Barack Obama explained to the Turkish parliament on his
recent tour of Europe, emphasizing the need for "mutual respect"
between our cultures.
"War" and "respect" are two distinct ideas. Both ought to be meted
out judiciously. But let’s reserve the former as a last resort and
the latter to those who actually deserve it.
When Obama bowed to Saudi Arabian "King" Abdullah last week (sadly
reminiscent of W.’s insufferable hand holding with a Saudi prince)
he probably thought it an appropriate level of deference. The problem
is the wrong person was prostrate.
Why should we "respect" the Saudis? Is it the corporal punishment and
amputations? Is it the lack of free speech? Is it a judicial system
where women are often forbidden from testifying as they are incapable
of "understanding what they observe"? Or is it that victims of sexual
assault are prosecuted for the crime of being in the presence of
an unknown male? The honor killings? The forced circumcisions? The
terrorist funding?
Though we need not parachute Marines into Mecca to remedy that nation’s
historical and moral sickness, we should never be expected to "respect"
gangsters, either.
Why so many on the left are willing to extend tolerance toward those
who are militantly illiberal has always been a mystery. Many of these
countries wage internal wars to exterminate Christianity and Judaism
(in some cases religions that existed in those places long before
Islam) and the concepts of secularism and atheism live only in fantasy.
It’s not only fanatics holed up in the caves of Pakistan, it’s also
the majority of Islamic nations that on some level disregard basic
human rights.
And instead of "respecting" Turkey, Obama might have taken the time
to live up to his campaign promise to acknowledge the Turkish genocide
of 1.5 million Christian Armenians in the last century. He hasn’t.
In Iraq — a country propped up by American lives and generosity —
The New York Times reported that in 2005, the most influential Shiite
cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a religious
decree declaring that gay men and women should be "punished, in fact,
killed." But that wasn’t enough. Gays, he decreed, "should be killed
in the worst, most severe way of killing." The Iraqi government looks
the other way.
Even our "moderate" allies like Egypt — a country which subsists
on $6 billion in U.S. bribes not to wage war on its neighbor —
regularly imprison political dissidents, execute sexual "deviants"
and run state-funded television shows that would give Nazis pause.
Hey, I guess, Egypt is "moderate" — compared to Sudan.
Our nation should not be in the business of imposing our values on
other cultures. We can’t. Not only do our values diverge, they are most
often antithetical. And let’s never pretend there is anything "mutual"
about a call for respect. The deep and fanatical hatred of America
flourished decades before the Iraq war or George W. Bush. Islamic
leaders have long blamed their own societal corrosion on the West.
Obama promised to transform American foreign policy. He was elected to
do so. So he used his first chance to make an impression as president
by apologizing for imaginary crimes against Islam and employing a
tone of subservience rather than defending our principles.
Not surprisingly, the more "thoughtful" among us immediately embraced
the president’s self-flagellation in front of some of the world’s
worst offenders of human rights as a constructive approach. As a
geopolitical ploy . . . well, we’ll see what happens.
But there is undoubtedly nothing thoughtful about offering a false
choice. To wage war or to offer respect? We can avoid both. We should.
E-mail David Harsanyi at [email protected].