France gave the United States the Statue of Liberty, which welcomes people fleeing from oppression.
President Obama is trying to do a very difficult job of protecting the country and its values. This job is especially hard when terrorists are invoking fear all over the world. Today, like in the past, some people are confusing the victims with the terrorists who wish to do us harm. We are not acting in harmony with our beliefs of freedom or humanity. To take a page out of the singer Sting’s songbook, “You know the Muslims love their children too.”
Some people seem to forget (or maybe they just don’t know); those evil individuals do not care about hiding behind any religion to camouflage their wicked intentions. In this country the KKK burn crosses as they profess to be the defenders of Christian values. For years the Mormon Church used the biblical account of Noah and his son to justify slavery. In Germany, the Lutheran and Catholic Church did little to discipline and discourage their own members to oppose the Nazi regime before it was too late. On Thanksgiving we will talk about how the Pilgrims were saved by the Indians; those same Indians who lost their land and their country to those same Pilgrims.
Death cult terrorist represent Islam about much as racist represent Christianity. ISIS, Al Qaeda and Boko Haram are death cults bent on Armageddon.
The fear mongering, the betrayal of our democratic principles and common humanity is playing in the hands of the terrorist! They want us to be afraid. They want us to discriminate against each other. They want a modern crusade of Christians against Islam. Politician who fan of the flames of hatred not only are recruiting more ISIS members, they are making themselves look big and bad. They are writing a check that young blacks and poor white people will have to cash.
The Friday 13 terrorist attack in Paris killed almost 130 people. Overnight the polls reflected the fear people were having and how it has been misdirected toward people who have been dealing with murder for the last three years. Police found one fake Syria ID on one attacker and now many Americans don’t want any Syrian refugees.
Out of the quarter of a million refugees, Obama wants to help 10,000. France, the country where the attacks happened, asked to take in 20,000 refugees days after the massacre. Now which country is not betraying its values? France is not allowing these murders to comprise their values.
This fear mongering rhetoric has a very anti-Obama tone to it. After 9/11 do you remember any Republicans talking about putting Muslims in a database? Three thousand Americans died that day, but nobody questioned President Bush about his resolve or ability to keep American safe. Several embassies were attacked during the Bush years and less Americans have been killed at embassies under Obama. How is it that all we hear about is Libya and Obama’s refusal to put Americas in yet another Mideast Civil War?
This year death cult terrorist killed 150 students at a college in Kenya. They struck Mali and Beirut also but the American public reacted to people killed in France.
In 2011, the beautiful peaceful country of Norway suffered its worst attack since the end of World War II. In a coordinated attack very similar to the Paris attacks, one person bombed a government building in the Norwegian capital of Oslo killing about eight people. The same person then went to an island where many young people associated with the Norwegian Labour Party were camping. This vicious animal hunted these young people, and mowed them down like helpless deer in the forest.
Altogether about 80 people died, most were young. The man’s name was Anders Berivik, a right wing extremist who was also inspired by the writings of an American name Robert Spencer who wrote several anti-Muslim pieces one of which he actually substituted the word Muslim for “black people.”
I was in Norway in 2014 and even though this madman Berivik killed 77 white Norwegians, some of the people I spoke to were more concerned about the reasons this clown gave. Berivik hated Muslims and immigrants and he spilled white people’s blood to make his point. Still many Norwegian don’t fear the right-wing terrorists who call themselves Christian, they fear the ones who misuse Islam. Ones who don’t look like them.
“We have been conditioned to respond to all threats, the rhetorical speeches of the Soviet, how can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy? Believe me when I say to you I hope the Russians love their children too.”— Sting “Russians”
Today, we can substitute the word “Russian” with Muslim, Korean or anyone we choose to hate rather than understand. In the end as Martin Luther King said: “We will learn to live together as brothers or we will perish as fools.”
