…from Lara Logan:
“There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,” Logan said. It is driven in part by “Taliban apologists,” who claim “they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban,” she added sarcastically. “It’s such nonsense!”
Logan stepped way out of the “objective,” journalistic role. The audience was riveted as she told of plowing through reams of documents, and interviewing John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a Taliban commander trained by al-Qaida. The Taliban and al-Qaida are teaming up and recruiting new terrorists to do us deadly harm, she reports.
She made a passionate case that our government is downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war. We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past: “You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.”
There’s an old saying that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. Guess that a brutal gang rape can have the same effect.
But hey, it’s not the Muslims’ fault they’re so misogynistic and rapey and stuff. It’s just the way they were raised. We have to have sympathy for them.
Seriously, this should be serious debate fodder for Romney, in both debates, but particularly the final one.
Nevertheless, there is a benefit to journalists who aspire to be objective.
And there is a benefit to not overgeneralizing the lesson Logan is trying to teach, and applying it to “Muslims”, as you did Rand. I bet Logan wasn’t talking about “Muslims” – the Chicago Sun Times coverage certainly gives no reason to think she was – and there was no reason for you to offensively overgeneralize from Logan’s speech to Muslims either.
When I see more Muslims condemning this sort of thing than engaging in it, I’ll stop generalizing. Mostly I see victim whining and attempts at speech suppression from the likes of the Saudi-funded CAIR. It’s up to them.
Well, first I was going to quote this:
“You shouldn’t have to publicly distance yourself from anything unless it’s plausible that you might be complicit in it.”
and link to something like this:
http://www.juancole.com/2012/08/top-ten-differences-between-white-terrorists-and-others.html
(Except, I just know there is funnier version of the above out there somewhere. I was going to find it, and then I stopped and reread what you just wrote.
You actually think more Muslims engage “in this sort of thing” than condemn it, even though you know that you’re talking about 1 billion people? Ok, you win, for today anyway, because I’m too flabbergasted to argue for my point of view.
The misogyny in the Islamic world is widespread. Where’s the condemnation, Bob?
I’d rephrase it “misogyny in the world is widespread”. So,where is the condemnation? Well, where do you want to start?
Just as a guide to where look in the Islamic world, lets look at misogyny in America – just as guide, my focus is still the Islamic world.
Where would you look for condemnation of misogyny in America? Well, I might start with women’s groups. Or liberal bloggers. Or maybe I’d start at the “top”, and look for condemnations from executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. I don’t know — if you wanted to convince someone from, say, Zambia that America condemns misogyny, where would you start, Rand? And you’d have to acknowledge that all sorts misogyny exists in America, and that certainly *some* people who condemn it are hypocrites (and perhaps even are themselves rapists, wife beaters, etc).
So, back to the Islamic world. If you’re viewing “the Islamic world”, as a set of countries, then my answer is: “Where ever you’d look to find condemnation of misogyny in America, that’s where you should look to find condemnation in Islamic countries”.
If you’re looking at “the Islamic world” as a group of people who share a common religion, then look to whereever you’d look for condemnation among, say, Jews or Christians.
—
Just as an example: I found this story sickening:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/nyregion/ultra-orthodox-jews-shun-their-own-for-reporting-child-sexual-abuse.html?pagewanted=all
But as Jew, I felt no need to publicly condemn some other Jews’ behaviors. Those ultra-orthodox wackos aren’t like me, and don’t represent me. Most of them, I hope, aren’t child molesters or enablers, and I’ll defend them against anti-semitism, but when they behave badly, I don’t think it reflects on me, and I don’t have to condemn them. If someone from Zambia asked me “where is the condemnation”, I’d answer “well, I condemn them of course”, but if he asked “But where is the public condemnation from your religious officials”, I’d answer “Damned if I know. Judaism, like Islam, like many Protestant groups, and unlike Catholicism, is decentralized, and it is hard to say who speaks for everyone, and it is hard to say whether would-be spokespeople are really representative. “
The reason you find that story sickening is because it is so unusual and uncharacteristic.
In the rest of the world that is just as misogynistic as the Islamic world, can you find other examples of the sort of thing that happened to Lara Logan? Do you think that it’s just coincidence that the vast majority of rapes in Sweden are committed by claimed adherents to a particular “religion”?
I put it in quotes because it is not a religion — it is a totalitarian political ideology. I’m sure that there were many good Nazis, who were afraid to speak up. That doesn’t change the nature of Nazism.
There were no good Nazis. If they were good, they were just pretending to be Nazis. There are good Muslims.
What is a “good” Muslim, Bob? Someone who doesn’t really believe in the dictates of the Prophet? Or doesn’t follow them, as the Salafists do?
Jesus said render unto Caesar. Mohammed did not. This is a very important difference, that you continue to fail to understand.
It always comes down to the “1 billion” thing with you Bob. Such a HUGE number. Like there must be what, a couple hundred million of them who really don’t like honor killing and stoning homosexuals. They just never seem to be able to organize. Or something. But make a 10-minute long youtube video? Well, they don’t seem to have much trouble organizing over that do they? They’ll take out your ambassador for that.
Right Bob?
Yeah, I’m pretty sure she was talking about the Welsh – and maybe the Dutch.
I get the feeling you don’t know who she was talking about, or don’t care.
Lara, who was gang raped by a mob of Egyptian islamists not long ago, interviewed a Taliban commander who bragged about the help he’s getting from Al Qaeda because the Taliban are not Al Qaeda, they’re just run of the mill islamic militants. She of course has to dress up in Muslim garb for that interview, and as with much of her reporting, she has to be extremely cautious because she’s a western female reporter working in the Middle East. In the Sun Times article, she even mentioned the need for revenge in Libya. So it’s hardly a stretch to say she’s focused on the threat from radical Muslims.
Back to the point of the article, she’s telling us the US media and the Obama administration are lying to the American public. Any thoughts on that?
It would be doubleplusungood for Bob to have thoughts on that, George.
Bob, you talk about Muslims as if they are an ethnic group, which they are not.
Ethnic groups are not ideologically aligned. Muslims are.
You keep trying to describe a Muslim as somebody that doesn’t believe in Islam. If they don’t believe in Islam, they are by definition not Muslims.
Convert, enslave or kill. For Islam, that’s it, no other options.
I bet Logan wasn’t talking about “Muslims” – the Chicago Sun Times coverage certainly gives no reason to think she was.
Bob, she specifically named the Taliban. Are there any members of the Taliban that are not Muslim?
Bob’s off on something about misogyny and ultra-orthodox Jews, having a desperate fit of politically correct cultural relativism. He might return to rationality shortly, or maybe not. At least he hasn’t tried linking Lara Logan to apartheid.
I could turn the entire hand-waving diversion on its head by asking if he feels threatened by South African blondes, and proudly note that conservatives are at least clear-sighted and brave enough to volunteer to be the meat in a Lara Logan/Charlize Theron sandwich, but Bob would take offence at the thought of women making a guy a sandwich and argue that we’re no better than the taliban.
Jiminator, you are so close to coming to a useful conclusion! Just keep thinking about set theory. Yes, all members of the Taliban are Muslims. But that’s not very useful. And all members of the Taliban are humans. But that’s not very useful either. But, more specifically, all members of the Taliban are …. [fill in the blank!] You can do it!
Members of a fervently anti-liberal, anti-modernization, misogynistic death-cult that isn’t to be confused with The Religion of Peace even though there are more similarities than differences.
Now follow through Bob, …some humans are frikkin’ evil.
Bob, if you are about to declare my comment to be a useful conclusion, then I am certainly wrong.
Logan even called for retribution for the recent terrorist killings of Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other officials.
I guess this was Logan referring to Coptics? It certainly isn’t the Taliban, because they are not in Libya. Who else is in Libya? Some brotherhood of? It will come to me.
Assuming the average Muslim has a thinner skin than the average Christian is”Christians” get the blame collectively for, -essentially-, every significant religious war. Pretty sure the whole split between “Fervent radical supporter, supporter, going-with-the-flow, and silent-but-opposed” was all going on then too.
They’re also -still- blamed wholesale for ‘flat Earth’, ‘Earth-centered universe’, ‘anti-Evolution’, and the whole 2000-year-old Earth insanity. (Regardless of minor details about who, exactly, is discovering/repudiating, and proposing or supporting replacements for some of these things in the first freaking place. Hint: Galileo was an ass. And a smartass.)
And we’re being told that it is straight-up bigotry to overgeneralize from ‘Some Christians’ to ‘Christians’. Because no one is able to parse that the statement is not all Christians.
I still prefer the term “Jihadists” or “Crusaders” because they’re self-identifying. Bob might believe there’s only a million or so Jihadists while begrudgingly accepting the term. It also helps the small sliver of fervent Islamic anti-Jihadists define the split coherently while trying to build support for the reformation.
Whenever I see posts here about how “leftists” are racists while [rightwingers, libertarians, whatever you want to call yourselves] are better, because they know the value of judging people as individuals, I’ll point to this thread as the definitive example of not treating people as individuals.
Nowhere in this thread has anyone proposed that Muslims not be treated as individuals.
The issue is how we deal with Islam as an ideology.
Excellent. Please do.
You are (at this second) the only person on this entire page to bring up race.
I don’t give a damn what race they are. They can have tentacles.
We keep hearing “Muslim is overbroad.”
Jihadist is not.
Anyone that feels that they’re at war with the US -> Jihadist. If you have a better one-word label, trot it out. But I’m -defining- (Or redefining) my term to mean exactly that: Anyone that’s at war with the US.
Shockingly, the majority of Jihadists aren’t American.
I’m at war with Jihadists. Of any color.
In Bob-land, that makes me the racist. Because I’m clearly the one who gives a shit about race.
With a reported 1 billion Muslims around the world, the idea of an Islamic race is absurd. The most populus Islamic country in the world is Indonesia, an Asian country. Likewise, the southern Philippines are largely Muslim and there are Muslims in other Asian countries. Go to Africa and you’ll find millions of black Muslims. Likewise, go to some former Yugoslav republics and other countries have white Muslims. They come in just about every race known to man and in just about every country.
Muslims are not a race Bob, they are members of an ideology.
The media blackout on Afghanistan is a disgrace. Americans need to know what is going on over there. We need to know more about the jihadi type countries because their culture is so different from ours and people are looking at them through the prism of our ethos which is the wrong thing to do.
The author of the piece has an odd definition of “objectivity”. What’s not objectively true about the assertions that “they” hate us, want to kill us, and have plans to do so? What’s not objectively true about the statement that the Administration has been trying to sell a rosy picture of the situation over there in order to bring the troops home?
Sounds pretty objective to me.
Dead thread now, but RCP posted the video of Lara’s talk.