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Beiruty wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:

Beiruty wrote:So, the US ambassador was in secret visit to Bengazi with no security. That is stupidity of the first rate or a suicide mission.

Why should it be unsafe? He'd have been safe in the U.S. He'd have been safe in Tokyo. He'd have been safe in Berlin. He'd even have been safe in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

Because it is well know fact that US killed Al-libby just few month back, and Al-Qaeeda and/or their supporters are highly active in EasternLibya. Gaddafi kept them in check, till US decided to let them prevail or at least as side effect let them roam freely in Eastern Libya.

Beiruty, just so you know, I'm not going to argue about this one with you because I confess not to knowing much about it. I've heard both sides of that story from sources in which I normally have confidence. I've heard on one hand that post-revolution Libya was generally, not perfectly, but generally safe for Americans because they appreciated our support during the revolution. On the other hand, I've heard those who say the exact opposite. This leads me to assume that the truth is somewhere in the middle.....that it was kind of dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as....say....Somalia would be for an American. It seemed to me that if the Ambassador was comfortable traveling with minimal security, and if he was someone who actually knew Libya and had served there before, then his security posture would have seemed to be reasonable.......and this is also why I had no trouble believing that the attacks there, in Cairo, and elsewhere were coordinated and came as a surprise.

Beiruty wrote:So, the US ambassador was in secret visit to Bengazi with no security. That is stupidity of the first rate or a suicide mission.

Why should it be unsafe? He'd have been safe in the U.S. He'd have been safe in Tokyo. He'd have been safe in Berlin. He'd even have been safe in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/french-weekly- ... 49808.html - Idiots exercise free speech in France.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-09- ... sher-store - Angry at French Magazine, Muslims blow up Jewish owned business.
http://www.france24.com/en/20120919-nak ... ench-paper - France closing 20 embassies in ME.

I have to say, the French have shown more courage than the Obama administration.............and that's just pathetic.

I'm inclined to believe them.

Another Victor Davis Hanson home run: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/ob ... epage=true

The Premodern Middle East and Postmodern West Don’t Mix, Mr. President

Globalization certainly did not bring the premodern world of the Middle East closer together with the postmodern West — despite Barack Obama’s 2007 narcissistic vows that his own intellect and background could bridge such a gap. If anything, the more we know about each other, the more we sense we are back to Lepanto and the siege of Vienna. Since the 9/11 anniversary attacks, the Obama administration has seemed bewildered, petulant, and more or less shocked in Casablanca-style fashion about the hatred shown the United States — whether overt among the Arab Street, or implicit among Arab governments’ wink-and-nod inability to protect U.S. embassies. It apparently forgot some basic rules about how to deal with radical Islam, and instead regressed back to the old familiar appeasement that led to 9/11/2001.

I. Pretexts

Mr. President, do not obsess over the pretext of the day. Terry Jones is only as crude as Andres Serrano and his Piss Christ, which I don’t recall warranted a personal call from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the artist to cool it, much less a federal effort to detain a Coptic filmmaker. Sometimes Muslims will rage at a Rushdie novel, sometimes at a papal reference to a Byzantine letter, and at other times at a supposedly flushed or torched Koran. Or maybe a grainy amateurish video will be set them off to kill a nun, blow up a priest, burn down an embassy, or assassinate a Western ambassador. There are three-hundred-million-plus free-thinking Americans, and thus at least that many possible “slights” — if you choose to go down that road of blaming free expression rather than the primeval mind that objects to it.

ghostrider wrote:

Beiruty wrote:The answer is to minimize and eliminate the support that extremists may cultivate. And, this on both sides. Do not forget that there are extremists from many other religions, including Christianity.

What matters is that targeting civilians as per Islamic law, is forbidden.

Beiruty, I have read a lot of what you've written on this forum, and I have a lot of respect for you, so I want to address you respectfully. Your underlined statement above is rather troublesome and I need to address it, because IMO it is a false moral equivalency. Which violent Christian extremists are you referring to? And why would you label them Christian - how are they using Christian teaching to justify their violence?

the Crusades?
the inquistion?
the KKK?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_ ... _terrorism" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread642190/pg1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In the same way that modern more moderate muslims would tell me that the extremists who killed our ambassador were not muslims, I'm telling you that the KKK is/was NOT a Christian organization. As for the Crusades and Inquisition, first, you've got to go back several centuries to find examples? Really? And by the way, the Crusades were at least partially a response to the Saracen invasion of an already Christian europe from the Balkans to Spain, and an attempt to push them back out. So who's the aggressor then? Muslims conveniently forget that part when they bring up the crusades. You're certainly allowed your opinions, but you are not allowed your own set of historical facts.

Beiruty wrote:

ClarkLZeuss wrote:

Beiruty wrote:The answer is to minimize and eliminate the support that extremists may cultivate. And, this on both sides. Do not forget that there are extremists from many other religions, including Christianity.

What matters is that targeting civilians as per Islamic law, is forbidden.

Beiruty, I have read a lot of what you've written on this forum, and I have a lot of respect for you, so I want to address you respectfully. Your underlined statement above is rather troublesome and I need to address it, because IMO it is a false moral equivalency. Which violent Christian extremists are you referring to? And why would you label them Christian - how are they using Christian teaching to justify their violence?

Example, A living current-day Templar Knight, a crusader, or so he does claim:
[ Image ]

Latest: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/world ... wanted=all" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

One man, who by the way is obviously insane, as are the stupid morons who attacked our embassies and killed an ambassador and 3 others over a movie so stupid that it is only rivaled by the people who murdered them.

Beiruty wrote:TAM,
You are putting words in my mouth that I did not say or write. You are reading between the lines of things that I did not state nor I do agree with.

Take a break from this thread.

I am out.

Beiruty, I will say this one thing, and then I will bow out of this thread also, and that is this: I didn't put words in your mouth. What I did was follow your words to their logical conclusions. Sometimes those conclusions can make one uncomfortable, and that is when one has to start confronting one's own words.

Peace out.

Beiruty wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:

Beiruty wrote:Have you all considered for a sec the content of the said movie is a total lie, a slander. I have. The slander, if it is such (I have not seen it), does not justify for even one second the murders and rioting that followed. Artists in the U.S. have depicted the cross of Jesus immersed in urine, movies in which Jesus has carnal relations with a prostitute, not to mention other abominations. Yes, there were protests, but they were completely non-violent, and somehow, no buildings were burned, nobody was murdered for it, and the "artists" in question slept soundly in their beds at night. Why? Because we are not a barbarous and murderous people. Neither, for that matter, are most Muslims. But unfortunately, the reality is that there are some people who self-identify as Muslims who are members of that group which Michael Medved described as ROPO ("religion of perpetual outrage" see my previous post), and they are clearly insane......because a sane person does not commit murder over an insulting movie.

BTW, Extremists picked 9/11 11th anniversary to attack and the movie-cause was irrelevant. Inflaming the feelings of the mass of Muslims resulted in a predictable outcome as stated above. Until THIS reply, I have not addressed the video. You want my opinion? I think it was dumber than a bag of hammers, and I think the idiot who published it ought to be shunned because he is an unwise dirtbag, but that is all I think. He did not commit a crime, because offending someone is not a crime. If it were, then the above mentioned "artists" would all be in jail, and they clearly are not. However, the murderers who killed because they were offended clearly DID commit a crime. Also, if you reread my previous posts, you'll see that I did not address the timing of the recent attacks. My references were to the original event itself.

TAM, I see the difference, however justifying collateral damage, the death of civilians is problematic. Why, Because Terrorists are claiming the same principle, that in-order to harm US, killing US civilians as matter of collateral damage is acceptable. BTW, Terrorists even claim that killing innocent Muslims as collateral-damage is acceptable under the same principle. Terrorists or Extremists who call themselves Muslims would target Muslims who do not agree with their sick and deviant mentality first. I'm not justifying civilian deaths; I'm merely point out that they are a fact of war. You're conversing with someone whose mother survived a nazi invasion, occupation, and a corresponding Allied invasion, full scale all out world war which raged back and forth across the city in which she lived.....not to diminish the tragedies of Lebanon, but a war that was MUCH more devastating and killed MANY more civilians than died in Lebanon. War is absolute heck. In WW2, civilians died in the millions as "collateral" casualties. I am not saying it is OK. I AM saying it is a fact of war. If I were a terrorist or resistance fighter, I would not bring the war home to my family. That is an act of indecency. Why would I not do that? I would not do it precisely because I would not want to risk that my wife and children would be killed by the missile aimed at me. "Men" (and I use quote marks deliberately) who drag their families into harm's way are no kind of man at all. It is the act of an immoral coward. Do I want their families to die? No, of course not. But I DO want the terrorist to die. Men who hide behind the skirts of their women are contemptible. It is easy to criticize without offering alternative solutions. In my original post where I mentioned the threat to women and children, it is NOT that I think they are legitimate targets, it is that I think that when they are collaterally killed in pursuit of a terrorist, the moral responsibility for that rests on the terrorist's shoulders........in the same way that if you and I rob a bank together and get in a gunfight with police, the deaths of any civilians caught in the crossfire is on OUR shoulders, and not on the police, regardless of who pulled the trigger.....because if there had been no bank robbery, there would be no civilian deaths. By extension, if there were no terrorism, there would be no pursuit of terrorists; and if there were no pursuit of terrorists, there would be no collateral killing of their families. The alternative is to simply do nothing and just absorb the terrorist attacks and move on. That's an unrealistic expectation.

Answers in red above....

TAM,

1) Do not use red for replies, please use blue. Why? I need a reason. Otherwise, I use red simply because it is more easily discernable to aging eyes like my own as "Not Black." I'll use blue this time, but I'll need a reason to not continue using red, just because I don't like being manipulated.

2) In Civil war, Civilian damage and massacre, kidnapping and killing for fun, are more devastating than just collateral damage. I survived my first 26 years of life in Beirut Lebanon. That period, was up to 1994, four yrs after the so called the end of Lebanese Civil war, 1974-1990. A total of 17 yrs, of mayhem and ridiculous killing. In one incident out of many, my whole family was inside our apartment, the top-most floor, when 10-12 rds of 82mm mortar rounds fell on our apartment. By grace of our Creator, Allah. none of us, had single physical scratch. Ever lasing psychological effect lives with us till date. In 1982 invasion of Beirut by Israeli forces, After the cession of hostilities, I came to find on my bed a 1/2 of 155mm shell a gift from the invaders forces, the Israelis. I think anyone at my age at that time 14 would not harbor good feelings for those who live south the border. My mother does not hate the Germans, and she has many very good friends who are German. She once had a 500 lb aerial bomb land in the courtyard of their family home, demolishing it entirely. And by the way, all of this happened in the ME.....she was born and raised in Algiers and lived there as well as Tunis and other north African cities (and I, for what it's worth, was born in Casablanca, Morocco). She ate rats and cats for a while during that war because that was all there was to eat.......and she does not hate the Germans OR Germany. Why is that? I believe that it is because "forgiveness" is a common expression of western culture because of the influence of the Christian church on that culture. It is my observation that "forgiveness" is a foreign concept almost anywhere in the ME. Because there is no forgiveness, there can be no peace. I would love nothing more than to forgive and forget, but you know as well as I do that there is a certain element that will NEVER forgive the imagined slights against them (you can't forgive, where there is nothing to forgive), and I am not willing to accept the murder of an occasional American citizen as the "dhimmi" price of not murdering all of us.

War would only make more enemies and not friends. That is FALSE! Germany and Japan have been close partners of the U.S., and German has been an ally of the U.S. (and a NATO partner) ever since 1945, when both countries were bombed back into the stone age after having been lead by autocratic dictatorial regimes into a war they could not win in an era of total war. The Germans and Japanese are fundamentally decent people who allowed themselves to be deceived into supporting a great evil. When those regimes were driven from the earth, it was like blinders had been lifted from their eyes. Radical islamists have apparently not performed enough atrocities against mainstream Muslims in order to motivate the mainstream to police their own and stop the atrocities. And until that happens, those same radical islamists will continue to perform atrocities against American targets in the ME and in the U.S. (can you say, "Fort Hood?"). Your solution is that we should just "shut up and take it," "because war would only make more enemies and not friends." Well here's a truth also: if we just "take it," it won't stop the ongoing terrorists because they don't respect weakness and they will use it to justify continuing the attacks........with the tacit approval of the mainstream Muslim community, because it is all somehow all the failures of their own culture to provide peacefully for all of their needs is "our fault," but it SURELY WILL NOT make us more friends. It will only make us more despised and disrespected than we already are. I would rather have them as a friend, but that isn't going to happen because THEY don't want it. Since I can't have them as a friend, and I have to have them as an enemy, I'd rather they be an enemy that fears us too much to attack us. The ball is in their court. They can have it either way, but they cannot have it BOTH ways. Nobody can, including the U.S.

3) The cause and effect story and who started what that lead to more violence and death is too problematic. Cause, for the extremists, US has only 3 goals in the Middle-East
A) Oil Yes, and unapologetically so. And if ME nations don't want to sell it to us, then DON'T SELL IT TO US......but don't blame us for buying it. Besides, there isn't a single oil producing nation in the ME whose citizens don't enjoy a better lifestyle than they would have because their economies export oil to the U.S. and other western nations. On the day that the U.S. and other western nations stop buying ME oil, those economies AND the lifestyle they buy will disappear, and those nations will revert to abject poverty.........so sure, I'm all for pulling out and not buying anymore of that damned oil. I would MUCH rather that we drill drill drill right here in the U.S., becoming energy independent and then no longer having to give money to foreign nations that hate us, and no longer having our own economy subject to the whims of the very dictators you don't like. Screw 'em.
B) Protecting Israel, an occupier of Arab land and a colony-state since British Occupation of Palestine after 1918. But not the Arab occupiers since the Jewish Diaspora?....
C) US is only interfering and supporting oppressive regimes in the ME. Like Saddam Hussein's in 2003?


US foreign policy is by design is to serve the US interests first at the cost of others. Of COURSE! And Iran's foreign policy in Venezuela serves Iran's interests first at the cost of others. And Russia's foreign policy in Syria serves Russia's interests first at the expense of others.........but somehow the U.S. is wrong when WE do it? Give me a break.

Edited to fix a spelling error....

ANTI-ISLAM FILMMAKER DONATED MILLION DOLLARS TO OBAMA CAMPAIGN
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/ ... -Filmmaker

Blame the filmmaker.

Hunt him.

Out him.

Demonize him.

Burn the straw man!

And all at the direction of a president of the United States who has sworn to uphold the Constitution, you know, the same Constitution that treasures the right of free expression and speech above all else.

But no one asks … What about Bill Maher?

Bill Maher?

Bill Maher made a comedy/documentary called "Religulous" that's most famous for mercilessly mocking Christianity. But what people forget is that the last twenty-minutes or so of the film make a damning case against Islam.

Bill Maher made a film that mocked Islam.

Oh, yes, he did.

Bill Maher also contributed $1 million to a pro-Obama super PAC.

And I'm sure that upon being reminded of this, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will tremble with self-righteous indignation and demand Maher take his money back.

After all, if movies create the terrorists who in turn create the terrorism, what about Bill Maher?

And what if the terrorists learn that the president of the United States is benefitting from a million dollar contribution given by a filmmaker who mocked Islam? How will Hillary Clinton claim with any credibility that the United States government has no connection to this outrage?

What does this mean? It means that democrats protect their own, and they fry the Christian. I'm not excusing the Christian......if he really is a Christian. I'm just saying that liberals have been doing this—deliberately offending religious people through film and other art—for decades now, and the media lets them get away with it..........because Americans do not react with violence to religious insults. Therefore, lefties and their media enablers feel safe being deliberately disrespectful of religion. But when a nominal Christian makes a movie insulting another religion, they're all over him for being intolerant. If that ain't the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is.

Beiruty wrote:Have you all considered for a sec the content of the said movie is a total lie, a slander. I have. The slander, if it is such (I have not seen it), does not justify for even one second the murders and rioting that followed. Artists in the U.S. have depicted the cross of Jesus immersed in urine, movies in which Jesus has carnal relations with a prostitute, not to mention other abominations. Yes, there were protests, but they were completely non-violent, and somehow, no buildings were burned, nobody was murdered for it, and the "artists" in question slept soundly in their beds at night. Why? Because we are not a barbarous and murderous people. Neither, for that matter, are most Muslims. But unfortunately, the reality is that there are some people who self-identify as Muslims who are members of that group which Michael Medved described as ROPO ("religion of perpetual outrage" see my previous post), and they are clearly insane......because a sane person does not commit murder over an insulting movie.

BTW, Extremists picked 9/11 11th anniversary to attack and the movie-cause was irrelevant. Inflaming the feelings of the mass of Muslims resulted in a predictable outcome as stated above. Until THIS reply, I have not addressed the video. You want my opinion? I think it was dumber than a bag of hammers, and I think the idiot who published it ought to be shunned because he is an unwise dirtbag, but that is all I think. He did not commit a crime, because offending someone is not a crime. If it were, then the above mentioned "artists" would all be in jail, and they clearly are not. However, the murderers who killed because they were offended clearly DID commit a crime. Also, if you reread my previous posts, you'll see that I did not address the timing of the recent attacks. My references were to the original event itself.

TAM, I see the difference, however justifying collateral damage, the death of civilians is problematic. Why, Because Terrorists are claiming the same principle, that in-order to harm US, killing US civilians as matter of collateral damage is acceptable. BTW, Terrorists even claim that killing innocent Muslims as collateral-damage is acceptable under the same principle. Terrorists or Extremists who call themselves Muslims would target Muslims who do not agree with their sick and deviant mentality first. I'm not justifying civilian deaths; I'm merely point out that they are a fact of war. You're conversing with someone whose mother survived a nazi invasion, occupation, and a corresponding Allied invasion, full scale all out world war which raged back and forth across the city in which she lived.....not to diminish the tragedies of Lebanon, but a war that was MUCH more devastating and killed MANY more civilians than died in Lebanon. War is absolute hell. In WW2, civilians died in the millions as "collateral" casualties. I am not saying it is OK. I AM saying it is a fact of war. If I were a terrorist or resistance fighter, I would not bring the war home to my family. That is an act of indecency. Why would I not do that? I would not do it precisely because I would not want to risk that my wife and children would be killed by the missile aimed at me. "Men" (and I use quote marks deliberately) who drag their families into harm's way are no kind of man at all. It is the act of an immoral coward. Do I want their families to die? No, of course not. But I DO want the terrorist to die. Men who hide behind the skirts of their women are contemptible. It is easy to criticize without offering alternative solutions. In my original post where I mentioned the threat to women and children, it is NOT that I think they are legitimate targets, it is that I think that when they are collaterally killed in pursuit of a terrorist, the moral responsibility for that rests on the terrorist's shoulders........in the same way that if you and I rob a bank together and get in a gunfight with police, the deaths of any civilians caught in the crossfire is on OUR shoulders, and not on the police, regardless of who pulled the trigger.....because if there had been no bank robbery, there would be no civilian deaths. By extension, if there were no terrorism, there would be no pursuit of terrorists; and if there were no pursuit of terrorists, there would be no collateral killing of their families. The alternative is to simply do nothing and just absorb the terrorist attacks and move on. That's an unrealistic expectation.

Answers in red above....

Beiruty wrote:TAM,
Let me understand:
Are all conspiracy laws unconstitutional?
Is the Patriot act unconstitutional?
Is water boarding American Citizens unconstitutional?
Is Killing civilians under the banner of "collateral damage" i.e. excessive use of military force against civilian targets is legally acceptable under the laws of war?
Do accept to drop a "hellfire" on drug dealer or murderer's house, just because he killed someone?

Beiruty, with all due respect......I completely respect your right to practice your religion, but you've just raised a red herring here. Everything I posted above was relevant to foreign soil, and nothing in your answer has anything at all to do with what I posted......and there is a HUGE difference between criminal conspiracy to rob a bank on American soil, resulting in the deaths of people inside the bank, and a paramilitary conspiracy to fly aircraft into buildings in an attempt to kill tens of thousands, succeeding in killing multiple thousands, etc., etc.

Waterboarding an American citizen who is not trying to overthrow his government would be definitely unconstitutional. If you're referring to that cretin terrorist overseas, I don't care if they grind his guts into hamburger and feed it to him. He is an enemy combatant, and enemy combatants are not subject to civil/criminal law.

You're making a moral equivalency between a foreign terrorist, and a civilian criminal. There IS NO equivilency.

I believe that parts of the patriot act were well motivated good ideas. I believe that, under Obama's administration, DHS is on its way to becoming this county's gestapo. But again, that has nothing to do with killing foreign terrorists.

As far as conspiracy laws go, we have in this country a right to peaceable assembly and free association. When that assembly is used to plot crimes, then the conspiracy is itself criminal. When the assembly is used to plot acts of a fundamentally military nature against noncombatant civilian targets, then the consipirators lose the protections of the constitution because they are now enemy combatants.

If a foreign terrorist is positively identified, and reliably tracked to his dwelling in a foreign land, and a predator drone puts a hellfire missle into that dwelling, and all inside are killed including his wife and children, SHAME ON HIM FOR BRINGING DANGER UPON HIS FAMILY!!!

I am surprised that you cannot see the difference.

You are welcome.

RoyGBiv wrote:

williamkevin wrote:

ffemt300 wrote:Since when does an ambassador tell the Marines what to do?  :headscratch

The Marine detachment works for the ambassador.

Another forum post on this subject worth reading here... 

http://pistol-forum.com/showthread.php? ... #post91399" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Roy, thanks for the link. Jus as the guy who wrote that post concludes in one of his prior posts, I'm a very conservative guy, and I cannot stand the Impostor in Chief or his sidekick, Cankles; but it is clear that this did come under the heading of "stuff happens" rather than some kind of clear cut fecklessness on the part of DoS or our intelligence apparatus.

That said, what truly does chap my hide is the tone of the official responses—from the idiot functionary at our Cairo embassy's apology, even to the president's "make no mistake" response. I want him to STOP CONSTANTLY REASSURING MUSLIMS that their rights will be protected—NOT because I don't want their rights protected, but because he does not extend the SAME protections to CHRISTIANS, whose rights are under assault in this nation daily from a hostile administration. This is NOT because I am arguing that we are a "Christian nation." This is because NO RELIGION SHOULD BE SINGLED OUT FOR PROTECTION OR PERSECUTION.

Instead of the words he used, he should say "Make no mistake, it does not matter what your religion is, if you harm us, we will find you, waterboard you to find out where the rest of you are, and crush ALL of you like the vermin you are. Our response WILL BE out of proportion to the offense. There WILL BE collateral damage and casualties, including YOUR wives and YOUR children. You just think about that for a few minutes before you try any crap against any American embassies and citizens inside of your borders."

The First Amendment to the Constitution states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." ANY official response must be couched in such terms. The First Amendment makes the religion of the people from whose ranks the attackers emerged irrelevant, and peaceful Muslims living among us have no legitimate fear of reprisal against them because even on 9/11/01, when Muslims in American neighborhoods danced in the streets upon hearing the news, we did NOT retaliate. WE ARE NOT LIKE THAT. In this particular context, I like to quote Michael Medved, one of the most common sense conservative commentators I know of. He says that it would be terribly wrong to characterize all Muslims as terrorists. He also says that, however, ALL of the terrorists who have attacked Americans over the past 20 years or so have been Muslims. And despite that, American Muslims have largely gone about their business, in total safety, even in the face of the ignorance or hostility of their fellow citizens; even on the day of the worst attack on the nation in American history by self-professed Muslims; and often with the support of their local communities who did not share their religious faith but wanted them to be safe in this country. WE ARE NOT A BARBAROUS PEOPLE, AND THE PRESIDENT NEEDS TO STOP IMPLYING THAT WE ARE, and that Muslims or anybody else needs a guarantee of special protections from US. We are not the bloody Hutus. We are not like the Muslim government in Darfur, exterminating Christian farmers.

There is at least ONE example I can think of in my lifetime when religious/political violence involving Christians took place, and that was the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. Whatever one thinks of the political agendas of either side, the fact is that Catholics in England slept safer in their beds at night than did Protestants in Ireland.

Whatever else one thinks about the nation of Israel and the seemingly perpetual war between Israel and her Arab neighbors, Muslims living inside of Israel's borders sleep safer in their beds at night than Jews living in the Palestinian Authority would sleep—not because there is any love lost between the two, but because the one group is essentially lawless and violent by nature, and the other isn't.

So why is it that Muslim Israelis are safer in their beds than Palestinian Jews? It is because Israel, despite being populated by a mostly religious people, is a secular nation. In any nation made of mostly of one religion in which the government seeks to impose religious law (Sharia) on everyone instead of secular law, then the rights of the religious minority are necessarily curtailed or even crushed.

There are some valid conclusions to be drawn from this. First, to my fellow citizens who are Muslims, I am about to vote for a Mormon for president, and as an evangelical Christian, I regard Mormonism as theologically unsupportable and a flawed religion (as I do Islam, by the way). But the fact of my religion does not mean that I cannot coexist peacefully and cooperate—and even support politically—people of good character whose religious choices are different from my own, but with whom I share political ideology. I will defend my theology to the death, but I'd rather do it over barbecue and lemonade. The above mentioned Michael Medved has a nickname for that segment of Islam which is predisposed to act reflexively, violently, and without legitimate reason against the west and most specifically against America and Americans: "ROPO," which is short for the "Religion of Perpetual Outrage."

ANYONE who is a Muslim and who is NOT a member of the ROPO, has nothing to fear from other Americans, regardless of their religious orientation; and I REALLY wish that the clown in the White House and any of his likeminded trolls in the State Department would quit speaking as if they did.