Dem argument against the Mosque Haters

[EnlightenedOne]

What in the hell do they think are troops are "supposed" to be doing over in Iraq & Afghanistan? Teaching them/showing them the "American Way" of FREEDOM AND TOLERENCE.

Maybe someone else has said or mentioned this - but it struck me clear as a bell over the weekend. Great argument against the haters: Why are you against our American troops overseas and what they are trying to do? My nephew happens to be over in Iraq right now - so it certainly pisses me off. We're not supposed to be Iran or North Korea or Saudi Arabia. We're America dammit.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Frank Rich had a SUPERB OPED in the NYTimes this weekend..

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/opinion/22rich.html?ref=frankrich

<snip>
Here’s what’s been lost in all the screaming. The prime movers in the campaign against the “ground zero mosque” just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America’s nine-year war in Afghanistan. The wrecking ball they’re wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America’s already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.

So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right — abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats — that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative.
How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?

You’d think that American hawks invested in the Afghanistan “surge” would not act against their own professed interests. But they couldn’t stop themselves from placing cynical domestic politics over country. The ginned-up rage over the “ground zero mosque” was not motivated by a serious desire to protect America from the real threat of terrorists lurking at home and abroad — a threat this furor has in all likelihood exacerbated — but by the potential short-term rewards of winning votes by pandering to fear during an election season.
<snip>

The rest is well worth reading..

[EnlightenedOne]

3. Thanks for that!

How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?

My thoughts exactly. And I do see it has dinhonoring the troops and their mission. Now, we need our Dem leaders to start screaming this back at them.

[BrklynLiberal]

4. Your thoughts and Frank Rich's thoughts coincided perfectly.

I figured you would see what he was saying as the correct point of view.

[Mz Pip]

2. Defending the freedom

of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting to secure their ability to develop a constitution seems to be just and honorable.

Defending the rights that American Muslims have under our very own Constitution is some kind of liberal nonsense.

Go figure.