Link to video comparing Islam to Communism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2K7Kedza6E
Link to video comparing Islam to Communism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2K7Kedza6E
I would really like to know David's thoughts on this.
A quick counterpoint:
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-artic...ection=opinionTony Blair will not go away. Last week in a fashionable London restaurant a young barman who regards him as a war criminal tried to place the former UK prime minister under citizen’s arrest. Days later, with customary unabashed self-importance, Blair was proclaiming that religious extremism, not political ideology, lies at the root of 21st century global conflict. He was also trumpeting the establishment of a Blair Foundation website at Harvard University designed to expose perversions of faith and promote tolerance.
Blair behaves like a prophet the world ignores at its peril. Not that he bears much resemblance to traditional conceptions of prophets, feverishly pursuing as he does a gaudy celebrity life-style and missing no opportunity to enlarge his wealth. Yet what most compromises Blair’s crusade against extremism is the perception that he himself has done more than a little to foment it through his unconditional support of the calamitous US invasion of Iraq in 2003. His critics are hoping that the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war will lay bare that Blair knowingly misled the UK parliament, encouraging the belief that Iraq posed a nuclear threat to the UK after agreeing with US President George W. Bush to invade Iraq in order to effect regime change. But what has become of the inquiry that was launched five years ago under the auspices of the former top civil servant Sir John Chilcot?
Expected later this year, the Chilcot Inquiry report has apparently been delayed because of concern that disclosure of communications between Blair and George W. Bush could compromise the UK’s ‘special relationship’ with the US. Blair’s new posture as an apostle of tolerance seems like a faintly desperate bid to write his own headlines, a pre-emptive strike against a report he fears is going to damage his ‘legacy’.
Whatever Chilcot’s verdict on the conduct of the Iraq war, it has long been plain that Blair’s foreign policy was a catalogue of counter-productive folly. It was Blair’s belief that only by remaining as close as possible to the US could European nations hope to exercise influence over the superpower’s foreign policy. Like most of Blair’s arguments, it was specious, meaning in practice that the UK occupied a role of abject subservience without being able to exercise any benign restraining influence on the US whatsoever. For his critics it is perhaps some consolation that Blair’s supine stance vis-à-vis the US has ultimately helped to make the ‘special relationship’ a public issue as never before. It is not just anti-American leftist cranks who are exercised about evidence that US military bases in the UK are being used for drone strikes and mass surveillance.
Perhaps the greatest irony attending Blair’s career is that the British leader who proclaimed the virtue of interventionism has done more than any other to discredit the whole concept. Arguably, it was thanks to Blair that there was so little public support in the UK for intervention in Syria. The rejection by the British parliament of such action, followed as it quickly was by the US decision against intervention, raises the possibility that greater caution in London in 2003 might have prompted second thoughts in Washington about the wisdom of subjecting Iraq to military ‘shock and awe’.
Added to all this, Blair’s strident advocacy of military intervention has been a potent factor in radicalising Muslim youth in the UK, spawning bitterly disaffected young British people who regard their government as the stooge of the US in a ‘war on terror’ that is actually a war on all Muslims.
Incapable of admitting to error, certain of the righteousness of his cause, mystified that he inspires widespread abhorrence, Blair exemplifies the very zealotry he aspires to combat. Possessed of a no less rigid mindset, George W. Bush has seldom been seen since his catastrophic presidency came to an end, and many must wish that Blair had followed his example. Where Tony Blair differs from his old American friend is in his manifest horror of going unnoticed. Indeed, it is tempting to feel that if Blair has crimes to answer for, not the least of them is his insatiable craving for attention.
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
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Curmudgy,
All politicians are dangerous because they want power over lots of people and once they get power all they ever seem to want is more power but whenever a politician changes his primary view to one that goes completely against his former views there just might be an awakening taking place and some small amount of truthfulness coming out.
After all President Reagan was a Democrat before he woke up.
I don't believe Blair "saw the light of reason", I think he saw the opportunity for a headline and to rewrite his legacy.
"Radical" anything is generally bad. Radical Christians kill abortion doctors and homosexuals. He is not saying anything particularly helpful, only fueling an already existing belief that the problem is Islam.
... and to tie into our other conversation on COIN, part of the distrust of Islam is the result of the social/psychological dynamics of in-group/out/group identity. More sociology coming at yah ....
Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 05-16-2014 at 12:08 PM.
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
---
Tony BlairAt the root of the crisis lies a radicalised and politicised view of Islam, an ideology that distorts and warps Islam’s true message.
No, Mr. Blair, you are so focused on the sizzle that you can't see the steak.
At the root of instability in the region he describes are national systems of governance long used to governing in any way they see fit that are unable or unwilling to make the minor evolutionary adjustments of governance necessary to get into synch with newly empowered and rapidly evolving populations. That is the steak. The sizzle is those relative handful of advocates who are employing a radicalized version of Islam to motivate people to illegal political action to force those changes; and who are also willing to employ acts of terrorism to advance their organizaitonal causes.
Layered over this are systems of external foreign policies that directly affect the governance of the region as well; and those foreign systems have proven to be every bit as unwilling or unable to refine for the realities of the world we actually live in today.
It is easy to blame some small group of violent, illegal actors and the extreme message they employ - but this is about a failure of politics and policies in regard to the governance of the people writ large - not the extreme positions and actions of a few.
Tony was wrong when he was the PM, and he is still wrong today.
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
Slap:
The importance of Mr. Blair's speech lies in the fact that a bone-fide member of the international elite is willing to say what is obvious and increasingly so, this is a matter of religion and we have to recognize that and take a side. As he said the religious part is a fight within Islam between the takfiri jihadist killers and the those Muslims who are willing to live and let live. The Muslims will primarily determine who wins that one but that is where our having to pick and take a side comes in. We can't determine which side will win but we can have some influence on the outcome, if we try. We will have no influence at all if we don't try and that is where the picking the side part comes in.
So good for Tony, and astute of Tony too. He anticipated the exact nature of the criticisms he would receive in his speech. The speech is an encouraging sign. If one prominent member of the international elite is able to see the sun in the sky there are probably others who are starting to notice the heat on their faces and that they are squinting a lot.
Who knows? Maybe they have been reading Zenpundit.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
You seriously used the expression "bona fide" in the context of Tony Blair?
The man is a proved liar and warmonger.
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