Guest Contributer: Tom From NJ

Tom replies to my post entitled: "Massacre At Mazari-i-Sharif: It's A U.S. Pastor's Fault."

"We even tolerate the intolerant."

All too true, Peter; at least if the tolerated intolerant hail from one of PC's Most Favored Victim groups. That this is largely PC-driven is proven beyond doubt by the grotesque fact that Muslims as a group -- including the most radical, violent and, yes, intolerant among them -- have achieved full-fledged MFV status among the Liberal Establishment of both parties and the MSM. The latest stomach-turning development here is General Petraeus' mealy-mouthed apology for the Koran burning staged by self-proclaimed Christian minister Terry Jones and his huge throng of tens of like-minded haters.

The good General is no doubt a fine and dedicated officer but he has apparently fallen victim to the military professional's most prevalent occupational malady -- fighting the last war. Petraeus has been trying to adapt the deference to Islamic mores and traditional tribal structures that powered the successful surge in Iraq to a very different situation in Afghantistan, where the shorthand for Islamic mores and traditional tribal structures is most often spelt T-A-L-I-B-A-N. In Iraq, the Sunni elders had their own excellent reasons to morph into active foes of al-Quaeda; in Afghanistan, the incentives for tribal leaders vis-a-vis the Taliban seem almost 180 degrees opposite.

Unfortunately, the response of the General, and the Obama Administration, has been to double-down on an increasingly expensive and ineffective strategy, with his public reaction to the Florida Koran burning being the latest example. Petraeus rightly condemns the Koran burning as an offensive and intolerant act, but he never even mentions, must less denounces, the murderous temper-tantrums of Afghan Muslims that resulted in the deaths of innocent people, even the beheadings of a pair of UN mission officials, nor does he call any attention to the fact that the worst of these tantrums have been whipped up by lying imams who claim repeatedly that burning Korans by the dozen is virtually routine in Great-Satan America.

Now Senator Lindsey Graham, John McCain's poodle, is joining in with a strange and dangerous doctrine that the "loose lips sink ships" ethos of World War II be applied to the "war" that the USA is currently engaged in. Senator Graham, may we dare ask -- what war are we now engaged in, exactly? None has been declared, certainly not in the same way as WW II, and wouldn't we want such a clear legal basis before we limit our traditional American free speech, which in your statement you damn with faint praise as "a good idea, but . . .?"

Never one to miss an opportunity for working a scam, Hamid Karzai is also jumping in on this Koran-burning issue. Admittedly Karzai -- unlike General Petraeus -- condemns the murders as well as the book-burning, but how he and his well-respected, wildly popular regime is going to investigate to describe and explain what really happened. Can anyone doubt, based on the slippery Karzai track record, that the results of this "investigation" will be heavily couched in terms of "blame America first?" Followed by an even larger bill presented to Wash-DC by Karzai for his invaluable and selfless services in "opposing" -- ha, ha! -- the Taliban?

In any case, Petraeus, Karzai, Obama, Graham, the MSM, and all the rest of our dhimmis-in-training will sooner or later blame alleged American "intolerance" as the root cause of murderous anti-Western protests in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Ummah. None will question why, after all the sacrifices in blood and treasure Americans and their Western allies have made to benefit or "protect" -- today's buzz-word -- various Muslim populations, significant percentages of those same populations seem fully prepared to believe any outrageous charge that those same Westerners are nothing more than tools of the Jews and/or Crusaders in sheep's clothing waging war on Islam. Which is to say, could these murderous tantrums actually be the result of MUSLIM intolerance? But to say so is not PC and is, therefore, taboo, unlike willingly undermining our Constitutional protection of free speech, the better to tolerate the intolerant. God save America!
--------------------------------------------
My comment: They engage in 'murderous tantrums' because it works for them. Can you blame them? Like children, the more they act out, the more we allow. Tolerance only works up to a point.

Massacre At Mazar-i-Sharif: It’s A U.S. Pastor’s Fault

In order to bring back any semblance of sanity to our public and private affairs, our people have to be re-educated, all the way from basic math to an understanding of right and wrong. In the absence of any standard - which is where we are now - who is to pass judgment? For far too long we’ve been drifting. Every issue has become existential; a tug of war, pulling our nation apart. We have yet to learn that our near paralysis in responding to events stems from being so utterly disorganized; that the most organized – not the most powerful, not the most tolerant, not the kindest – invariably win the day. The storming of the UN (do-gooder) compound in the Afghan town of Mazar-i-Sharif earlier today drives this thought.

It’s hard to imagine any outrage building in the West over the burning of a Bible or an American flag. In fact, this would likely be applauded by untold numbers of our own. We even tolerate the daily shredding of our own Constitution. We tolerate gross incompetence in leadership. We tolerate insult. We tolerate the erosion of our living standards. We tolerate decline. We even tolerate the intolerant.

At this point we lose. We declare ourselves ‘good people’. Why? Because we are tolerant, of course. At the same time, we have no idea that ‘good’ actually means standing for something. Without any discernable standards to go by, who is to say? We are fruit, ripe for the picking. We will not defend ourselves because we have nothing to defend. A man robs us on the street and we say, “He probably needs it more than us.” And, once again, we fall for the ruse of equating tolerance with virtue.

Our enemies have noticed. They are advancing without feeling the need even to disguise themselves. The drama of vultures feasting on a corpse is unfolding right before our eyes. Despite our considerable arsenal of bombs - which is larger than all the bombs in the world combined - no one respects us.

It’s open season. Libya is not the arena to demonstrate our roar – like Iraq was, and (to a lesser extent) Afghanistan. In Libya we lose no matter who wins. Our immediate focus should be on Iran. Instead we ignore it.

The world wonders and waits, vying for position for the privilege of driving the final stake through America’s heart. At this point, it’s no contest. Anyone can do it. Buried up to our necks in our own justifications for our limitless tolerance, anyone can throw the stone that will put out the lights.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

The Blunt Edge of Brutality

Religion, like language, is hard-wired into the human psyche. At their core, all religions are the same. Religion typically splits into two aspects: spiritual and political. The spiritual aspect of religion is straight forward. Its ‘signature’ is tolerance. It deals with questions regarding faith, God and eternity. The political aspect of religion currently draws most of our attention because it has the potential of affecting our immediate circumstances. The same is true for ‘isms’. We can say that man is in essence a religious animal. Or we can say man is in essence political. Both statements accurately reflect a singularity of the human condition.

While it is true that equating man’s spiritual nature with his political nature is paradoxical, the two are nevertheless inseparable. Mankind is most at ease when the political aspect of whatever his primary concern may be (as Alfred North Whitehead suggests) is benign. A wizened curmudgeon professing his belief in Marxism within the confines of an ivory tower suite is no threat to anyone. Man suffers when such concerns become militant as happened during the crusades and is happening now as militant Islam makes its moves.

The constant striving of religion is to reduce all the divergent aspects of life to one. People who may be several happy meals short of enlightenment do not recognize the essential oneness in what they see. They fail to make the connection that ties everything together. There are two ways to force the issue to its resolution. One is persuasion (proselytizing), militancy and violence; the other is tolerance.

Tolerance is the more difficult nut to crack. We have chosen the easy path. It is easier to lop off the heads of non-believers. It’s easier to ban conservatives from speaking at universities. It’s easier to call for jihad. It’s easier to cause havoc and break things, and then pick up the pieces of whatever is left and cobble these into a single atrocity based on the principle of exclusion. It is also easier getting people to submit.

We here in the West have chosen submission. Our enemies attack us and we submit. In order to rationalize our cowardice, we change the language. We blur the line between good and evil. We assume our enemy’s narrative and admit that we are at fault; that it is we who must adjust or even erase ourselves. Our mea culpas – and even our sacrifices - are flawed; it is only ego that speaks. We abandon our principles; our allies. We no longer tolerate ourselves.

This is the mindset of our current administration. It pays no mind to the violence, pain and dislocation that is certain to ensue. For them, all these comprise the necessary gateway through which we all must pass in order to achieve a more perfect union – the Utopia that is envisioned in James Hilton’s Shangri-La, in B.F Skinner’s “Walden Two”, in Pol Pot’s Cambodia, etc.

In today’s world the concept of tolerance has been all but abandoned. Political strife has taken its place. Unfortunately, just as religion cannot be exorcised from the human psyche, we cannot fight ‘isms’ with ‘isms’ and arrive at a good place. Religion has always been a double-edged sword. We have chosen the blunt edge of brutality.