First Things First
First things first.
President Barack Hussein Obama chose his very first television interview as commander and chief to be with Al-Arabiya, the Arab satellite television network. The president felt it was important that he got his message of change out to the Arab and Muslim world with the line “My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.” The statement was made in an effort to assure Muslims that Americans do not consider themselves to be the enemy. The obvious problem is that Muslims do.
Americans did not chose to be the enemy, Muslims chose us.
The jihad against America was called for and started by Muslims long before their attack on 9-11. We have been at war with them for over 30 years. The problem was we didn’t know it. So when the new CEO of the American military says that America has made mistakes but “that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there’s no reason why we can’t restore that” it should send a chill down every historically aware spine.
It was 30 years ago in November of 1979 that a group of Iranian “students” attacked and seized the American Embassy in Tehran. This act of terrorism was conducted only after another pacifist American president Jimmy Carter, led the way for the overthrowing of the Shah for alleged human rights violations and the empowerment of the radical Ayatollah Khomeini. That short sighted act allowed these “students” to conduct this act with complete Iranian governmental support.
In April of 1983 a truck packed with explosives blew up in the US Embassy compound in Beirut killing 63 people. Six months later a truck blew up the US Marines barracks killing 241 US military personnel. In December of 1983 another truck filled with explosives was driven into the US Embassy in Kuwait. In September of 1984 another attack on the US Embassy in Beirut. In April of 1985 a restaurant frequented by US military is bombed in Madrid Spain. In August of that same year a car filled with explosives is driven through the main gate at the Rhein-Mein Air Force Base killing 22. Less the two months later the Achille Lauro cruise ship is hijacked and an American in a wheel chair is chosen and executed. In April of 1986 TWA flight 840 is bombed killing 4 and Pan Am flight 103 is blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland killing 259. In February of 1993 the first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center is staged with a van filled with explosives detonated in the underground parking garage killing 6 and injuring over 1000. In November of 1995 a car bomb kills 7 military personnel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In June of 1996 another truck bomb destroys the US Air Force Khobar Towers barracks killing 19 and injuring over 500. In August of 1998 simultaneous attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania kill 224. In October 2000 the US Cole is attacked killing 17 US Navy Sailors.
Tell me Mr. President, is this the type of respect and partnership you are referring too?
President Obama is correct in that we cannot paint the entire Muslim world with a broad brush and assume that all Muslims are radical terrorists. But the narrow brush with which we can paint that faction whose sole purpose in life is to kill Americans is growing broader by the day because it is unchecked and in some cases protected by the peaceful factions that chose to not get their hands bloody.
Let us also not forget that every war we have fought against Muslims for the past 30 years has been a war to free other Muslims of radical oppression.
It’s apparent that history is not the long suit for President Obama. But one would have hoped he would have at least had time to read a newspaper.
The very last thing America needs is to go back to the same blind international policy of the Carter administration.
We got all the respect and partnership we could handle from that already.
