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September 28, 2006

Southern Baptists wanna go negative, surprising nobody

Land: Majority of Baptists support Bush

Land, who also serves on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent and bipartisan federal agency, said the United States needs to worry less about trying to improve its image in the Middle East.

Instead, Land says, "we ought to go negative."

"We ought to be spending our money explaining what the Middle East would look like if the jihadists win, what Afghanistan looked like when the Taliban was in control and what the role of women was.

"We need to focus more on the fact that most people being killed in Iraq are not Americans but Muslims being killed by other Muslims," he said. "If democracy loses in the Middle East, it's Muslims who will be the primary losers."

The biggest problem I see with what Mr. Land is suggesting here is that there are apparently a lot of folks in the region who don't want either of his two choices - Islamic terrorists or western-styled democracy imposed at the end of a gun barrel and with a blatent ethical and moral double-standard wherein we can imprison them where, when, why and for as long as we wish and be accountable to absolutely nobody for any of it while on the other hand we lecture them repeatedly about the desirability of doing things our way.

To make a very loose historical analogy... think of some of the former Soviet Block nations in Europe. The brave freedom fighters in Prague didn't want either the Russian Communists nor the German Nazis who went before them. As the Soviet forces slowly beat back the Germans in the waning days of WWII undoubtedly more than a few citizens, had they known what was coming, would have vastly preferred to both be rid of the Nazis and to be left alone to pursue their own course.

Recall that the Soviets too were fond of extra-judicial imprisonment and kangroo courts where defendents had virtually no rights, just as president Bush is.

Some of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East were propped up at various times by American governments. Saddam in Iraq (Reagan) and the Shah in Iran (Nixon, Ford, Carter) top the list.

Rather than "going negative" as the allegedly Christian Mr. Land suggests, we could instead stop using the Arab people as our own personal bitchs in the name of supposed freedom.

Posted by Kevin at September 28, 2006 07:31 PM