How are Students of Liberty University Like Suicide Bombers?

9 Comments

1. Comment by Clayton E. Cramer

   I just blogged about CNN’s God’s Warriors. The attempt to draw moral equivalence failed miserably.

2. Comment by Jay S.

   I didn’t see an attempt at equivalence. What I saw was an attempt to show what dogma and a lack of tolerance can do. Obviously, trying to equate American fundamentalist Christians with suicide bombers would be stupid. However, pointing out that Hagee and many like him are actively seeking the Rapture is good for our foreign policy.

   I’m sick of subsidizing the Holy Land and trampling on everything Jesus taught just to hold on to the piece of ground from which He taught it.

   It’s time to welcome our Hebrew brethren into America and let the Palestinians have their country back.

3. Comment by Adam Graham

   If they’re not trying to equate them, what the heck are they doing in the same report? Also, as for Israel, the Zionist have been in that land for 120 years which is far more than I can say for some “Palestinians” include the late Yassar Arafat, a terrorist madman from Egypt.

4. Comment by Clayton E. Cramer

   “I’m sick of subsidizing the Holy Land and trampling on everything Jesus taught just to hold on to the piece of ground from which He taught it.

   “It’s time to welcome our Hebrew brethren into America and let the Palestinians have their country back.”

   From what I’ve read, much of the “Palestinian” population of what is now that part of the world actually arrived there after Zionists started to improve the local economy in the 20th century. I’m not saying that there weren’t Arabs (both Muslim and Christian) in Palestine before that, but there were Jews there as well.

   The analogy to the situation in South Africa is quite strong. Much of the South African black population isn’t native to the area, but came there as employment opportunities grew under European management. The native population of much of South Africa in the 16th century, for example, were Cape Bushmen–who were exterminated by Zulus and Dutch as both arrived.

5. Comment by Jay S.

   Modern Israel, as you will recall, came about after much shooting in 1948. This was backed by the U.S. because Truman felt guilty about turning away Jewish refugee ships during and after the Holocaust. At that time there was, in spite of the Holocaust, much anti-Semitism in most industrialized countries, including ours. The creation of Israel was our way of handling a sticky problem and has since proven to be a short-cut that continues to haunt us. Our billions per year to Israel and matching funds to Egypt to keep it at bay are a Rube Goldberg Machine foreign policy disaster.

6. Comment by Clayton E. Cramer

   “Modern Israel, as you will recall, came about after much shooting in 1948. This was backed by the U.S. because Truman felt guilty about turning away Jewish refugee ships during and after the Holocaust. At that time there was, in spite of the Holocaust, much anti-Semitism in most industrialized countries, including ours.”

   You’ve got some of this a bit out of sequence. Pre-war anti-Semitism (and Depression-era concerns about unemployment) drove the unwillingness to accept refugees. After the war, the U.S. took in a lot of refugees–hence the large number of Holocaust survivors in the U.S. until they started to die off. I’m impressed how many Holocaust survivors I have known over the years.

   After the war, the Holocaust did a lot of damage to traditional anti-Semitism, and the U.S. wasn’t the only guilt-ridden nation. The Soviet Union recognized Israel just after we did. This post-colonial understanding of why Israel exists is very popular in some circles now, but it is an attempt to imagine Israel as an American colony, rather than recognizing it for what it was: a modern equivalent of the national self-determination that Wilson promoted at Versailles.

   “The creation of Israel was our way of handling a sticky problem and has since proven to be a short-cut that continues to haunt us. Our billions per year to Israel and matching funds to Egypt to keep it at bay are a Rube Goldberg Machine foreign policy disaster.”

   I don’t dispute that we’re throwing a lot of money into that part of the world for confused and sometimes irrational reasons. On the other hand, Islamofascist hatred of the West goes back way before Israel’s formation. There were Muslim pogroms directed at Jews and Christians in Palestine in the 1860s, and part of the Turkish genocide of the Armenians was Islamic resentment of Christian economic success. (There’s another part as well, which started with Armenian collaboration with the Russians during the World War I invasion of Turkey.)

7. Comment by Jay S.

   Israel IS an American colony, Adam. They come to us for the o.k. to conduct warfare, they would not survive as a nation without us, and, like all colonies, we take their resources in the form of intelligence and covert ops that our country would deem illegal. Their continued presence guarantees that they will have to resort to tactics that are unacceptable even to large portions of their own citizenry and that only maintains the cycle of violence and frustration. To me it really is the only answer to some kind of peace in that region and for our country.
   But let me say that I truly appreciate that I have not been called anti-Semitic during our discussion which is usually what happens with this subject. Again, thanks for letting me comment.

8. Comment by Jay S.

   That last comment should’ve been addressed to Clayton.

   BTW, considering Pace’s opinion that we’ll have to start drawing down troops in Iraq no matter what, I was wondering if anybody has changed their opinion on the draft. If it came down to draft or lose which should it be?

9. Comment by Andrea Graham

   If it came down to draft or lose which should it be?

   You mean there’s a difference between the two?

   Seriously, this is a false dichotomy; with current popular (naive) sentiment on the war, a draft would lead to the other choice. So in effect you are asking us how we prefer to die.

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