Friday, March 25, 2011

Barry And The Crusaders

I don't know if Barack Obama reads his own press, but if he did, he might find some serious disjoint between what is being said and what is happening in the world on his watch. True, these days most of the "Obama is a Muslim" talk has backed down, and even the birthers have mostly given up their insistence that he was born in Kenya, but nobody got word to Colonel Gaddafi. Back in February he gave a speech which said, in part, “Now, ruling America is a black man from our continent, an African from Arab descent, from Muslim descent, and this is something we never imagined: that from Reagan we would get to Barakeh Obama.”
And now that favorite son is launching his cruise missiles at Libya, and flying his war planes overhead. This is in addition to the wars in two other Muslim nations that his administration continues to pursue. I confess that much of my education about Islam has come from the evening news, but that doesn't sound like Barak(eh) is being a very good Muslim. In stark contrast, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Monday that a United Nations resolution authorizing military action in Libya resembled "medieval calls for crusades" after Western forces launched a second wave of air strikes. You remember the crusades, don't you? The ones that pitted Catholics against all comers, but primarily those of the Muslim faith. That was back in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Two hundred years of military campaigns waged in attempt to recapture the Holy Lands. The Catholics left disappointed. By contrast, the eighth anniversary of our troops in Iraq seems positively brief, and the "few days" that we have been assured by Robert Gates that we would have to take the lead in Libya is just a hiccup on the timeline of that particular region. Unless it's just a continuation of a program that dates back to 1091. Stay tuned.

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