Steve Harkonnen -- Pandered enough? Oddly, you accused Bush of doing the one thing he did the least. For the moment, let's imagine that Bush had called Islam the religion of war. Can you guess the results would have been?
Is Islam a religion of peace? There is no precise answer, but the Koran certainly does not encourage tolerance of nonbelievers. What it does do is promote the survival of Muslims. The Koran does not encourage believers to initiate hostilities when the odds of winning are bad.
Can we get along with Muslims? Probably. So long as we operate from a position of strength, the vast majority of Muslims will not pick a fight with us. That is one reason why the Islamic world has been relatively peaceful. Until the discovery of oil, the backward countries controlled by Muslims did not have the material resources needed for war.
So what should Bush have said? He probably should have said the question was not relevant. Islam is not monolithic. The president puts only those organizations demonstrably hostile to the United States on the enemies list, and Islam is not on the list. Some Islamic extremists are on the list.
We have nothing to gain from a leadership that sticks our collective fingers into Muslims eyes. What we do need to do is to avoid the position of Europe. We do not want a flood of poor Muslim immigrants bent upon making the United States an Islamic conquest.
We would do well to stifle the flow of poor immigrants altogether, and that is where Bush and almost all of our political elite fall flat on their ass. They are so damn greedy for cheap labor they will not recognize the risk. The immigration of so many poor immigrants from the same place is a monstrous Trojan horse. Even the relatively peaceful Mexicans take time to assimilate. Do we really need millions people here from anywhere more loyal to someplace else?
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This is the very first I've heard of this trip.
I wonder why he's going over there? Hasn't he pandered enough?
No offense, but I completely lost my support for Bush after he declared that Islam was a religion of peace. Reminded me far too much of Chamberlain.
Steve Harkonnen -- Pandered enough? Oddly, you accused Bush of doing the one thing he did the least. For the moment, let's imagine that Bush had called Islam the religion of war. Can you guess the results would have been?
Is Islam a religion of peace? There is no precise answer, but the Koran certainly does not encourage tolerance of nonbelievers. What it does do is promote the survival of Muslims. The Koran does not encourage believers to initiate hostilities when the odds of winning are bad.
Can we get along with Muslims? Probably. So long as we operate from a position of strength, the vast majority of Muslims will not pick a fight with us. That is one reason why the Islamic world has been relatively peaceful. Until the discovery of oil, the backward countries controlled by Muslims did not have the material resources needed for war.
So what should Bush have said? He probably should have said the question was not relevant. Islam is not monolithic. The president puts only those organizations demonstrably hostile to the United States on the enemies list, and Islam is not on the list. Some Islamic extremists are on the list.
We have nothing to gain from a leadership that sticks our collective fingers into Muslims eyes. What we do need to do is to avoid the position of Europe. We do not want a flood of poor Muslim immigrants bent upon making the United States an Islamic conquest.
We would do well to stifle the flow of poor immigrants altogether, and that is where Bush and almost all of our political elite fall flat on their ass. They are so damn greedy for cheap labor they will not recognize the risk. The immigration of so many poor immigrants from the same place is a monstrous Trojan horse. Even the relatively peaceful Mexicans take time to assimilate. Do we really need millions people here from anywhere more loyal to someplace else?
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