I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

Hi folks.  Haven't been on for a bit.  Busy polishing my novels for several conferences this summer where I hope to interest an agent or publisher.  Still, caught the whole thread about Islam, and thought I'd weigh in.

I am a Jew.  My late uncle spent his teenage years shoveling the bodies, which included his mother and sister, into the furnaces of Auschwitz because his only other choice was to join them.  There were cousins and great aunts in the areas of the Ukraine who disappeared into the fog of the Holocaust. I support the state of Israel and want it to continue to exist as a Jewish state, and there is a lot of tension between Jews and Muslims because of Israel.  So, is it okay to hate Islam? NO!! IT IS NOT OKAY!!  IT IS WHAT THE NAZIS DID TO THE JEWS!!  I'm damned if I will sit silent, allowing others to classify another group as was done to us!!  It is not okay to condemn an entire religion because of the acts of the extremists of that religion.  I do not like the ultra orthodox Jews of Israel, who will stone you for driving on Shabbat, anymore than I like the extremist Christians or the extremist Islamists.   That does not mean I get to hate an entire group of people because I do not like the acts or beliefs of a certain sect of that religion.

And, by the way, the people who gassed, shot, and burned six million Jews a little over 70 years ago, were not Muslim.  They all came out of the Christian tradition.  That doesn't mean I hate Christians. That doesn't mean I blame Christians.  I am just noting, for the record, that one of the most horrific crimes in history was not perpetrated by Muslims.

So, yes, I don't like that some Muslim countries limit the rights of women and I don't like female circumcision. I don't like Christians who tell me I'm going to hell because I'm a Jew.  I also don't like the kosher laws nor do I like the fact that men and women can't sit together in Orthodox synagogues.  But do you what i really don't like?  I don't like bigotry, and I don't like bigots.

Commentary on GOP hate is popping up everywhere

The following is a comment written by a reader of Esquire Magazine, specifically; a comment appearing on Esquire's Politics blog, under the entry, THE BERGDAHL CHRONICLES: THE BITCHENING, By Charles P. Pierce on June 6, 2014.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Bergdahl_Chronicles:_Complaint_Department?id=742564A0EF1911E38989996AD7236D41#comments

Deborah Weiss

Bergdahl showed all the symptoms of having an actual, living conscience, poor kid--a fatal flaw in the cartoon version of America we're obliged to inhabit nowadays. Certainly, his devout Presbyterian father has behaved the way one would expect a Christian of the Calvinist persuasion to behave (I used to teach adult Sunday School at a Presbyterian church in rural Illinois, so believe me, I know Presbyterians): attempting to act with integrity, kindness, self-effacement and decency, living the imitation of Christ which is the challenge Christian souls are supposed to at least try to meet.

Which leads to this observation: one of the ways in which we can confirm that Republicans don't actually believe in God is that after lynching this boy, none of them has publicly resigned from office, weeping and contrite and praying for mercy from the Almighty. None of them has given up his riches and gone to work in a soup kitchen in the desperate hope that there's still time for redemption after what he's done to the Bergdahl family. None of them is gazing in terror at the clear summer sky, anticipating the thunderbolt that a wrathful Christian God might reasonably decide to wield.

On the contrary: they're all clearly enjoying the hell out of this soul murder, which has played out just the way their operatives (those experts at working the refs and rolling the press) said it would. Moreover, they're all doubling down, including--or perhaps especially--the vile McCain, who has now issued a deranged statement accusing some members of the press (not his friends, mind you, but some of the outliers, like Tapper) of lying by reporting things he said in the past that aren't the same as the things he's saying now.

These awful, hateful, horrid men destroyed the kid and his family without so much as a twitch of Christian conscience. And what makes it worst is they did it all for a mind-blowingly trivial reason: to deprive the president of what would have been a pretty nice photo-op in an election year.

That's all. That's it. That's what was worth taking this boy and his mother and father and flaying them in public, humiliating them, exposing them to death threats and to the monstrous raw id (with its insatiable capacity for scalding rage) that is the Republican base. It's an election year, and that Rose Garden photo op might have played well in the boonies. It might even have been good for a fraction of a point or two in the polls. And so they unleashed their hate machine and ruined the kid's life.

It's beyond anything. I've rarely been so disgusted. I'll certainly remember it from now on, whenever I see one of these so-and-so's putting on that pious jowly Republican holy face and Gawd-blessing America. 

http://www.stonekettle.com/2014/06/negotiating-with-terrorists.html

Negotiating with Terrorists

Are we really going to do this?

Is this what it’s finally come down to, is it really?

Look at yourselves, you silly selfish bastards.

Look. At. Yourselves.

Go on, do it, find a mirror and look into your own dead zombie eyes and see the empty void looking back.

This revolting, disgusting display of hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy, is this what we’ve finally become?

Are we now so filled with foul bilious hatred, are we now so consumed with soul-destroying fear, do we now despise our own selves so much that we would actually protest the return of one of our own? Is that it?

Is that what we’ve become?

If so, then the sooner America collapses of its own maggot-ridden gangrenous rot, the better.

No. No, don’t you dare look away. Don’t roll your eyes and dismiss the question. Don’t change the subject. Don’t click on to another story you find more palatable. You started this. You look into your own rotten soul and you answer the question.

Is this who we are?

Because the utter unmitigated, unhinged, unbounded yellow-eyed hypocrisy that defines this sick twisted morally bankrupt philosophy has finally, today, reached its zenith.  There is nowhere left to go.

I didn’t think these people could dishonor the spirit of this country any more than they already had, but I was wrong.

Oh, I get it. I understand that frightened people become more and more irrational, especially when they are allowed, encouraged, to feed incestuously on each other’s fear. And I get that they are afraid. I can see it in their faces, I can hear it in their voices. I get that they’re afraid of change. I get that they’re afraid of the future. I get that they’re afraid of the past. And I get that they’re afraid of the present. I get that they’re afraid of losing power and privilege and prestige. I get that they’re afraid of their capricious and childishly vengeful god. I get that they’re afraid of different races and different cultures and different accents and different religions and different sexual orientations and different viewpoints and different politics. I get it, they’ve screamed their small fears over and over and only a dead man could possibly miss it.

I get that they are so consumed with rage and so filled with naked hate and so programmed with their diseased ideology that it poisons their minds like a computer chip submerged in acid.

I get that they are so utterly terrified of the world that they piss themselves in abject fear at the mere thought of going to the grocery store without a goddamned gun stuck in their pants like an extra oversized prick.

More than anything, I get that they are afraid of Barack Obama, everything about him, every single thing about the president terrifies them. Obama stalks their feverish nightmares and he is the very symbol of their shameful impotence – so much so that they’ve written him into their precious bible, in a starring role as the devil, the destroyer of worlds.

I get it.

And I get that it’s an uncontrollable mindless tic, a raging xenophobia, a political PTSD, and they know that it’s wrong but they can’t seem to do anything about it.

It’s just how their crippled minds work.

I know that I’m supposed to cut these people some slack. I know that an objective person would try to empathize. I know I should try and see the world through their eyes, to meet them halfway, to treat them as if their gibbering insanity is, if not okay, at least reasonable. Understandable. Sane. And I try, with varying and limited degrees of success, but I try because I understand they are afraid and they just can’t help themselves.

But this? This, right here, this is the limit of my patience.

With this, they can no longer claim that it’s a difference in political philosophy, or a clash of competing economic theories, or the debate between big government and small, or civil rights, or taxes or the national debt or jobs or gay marriage or abortion or any of the bullshit excuses they’ve used to justify their unhinged rage for the last five years. 

No, it’s hate pure and simple.

It’s hate for hate’s sake, hate driven by unreasoned selfish fear and nothing more. 

When these capering lunatics stand in front of the nation, the world, and without a single shred of decency, without the tiniest modicum of self-conscious shame, without any apparent awareness of their own boundless hypocrisy, and loudly protest the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from the clutches of our sworn enemies, I have to say no more.

I’ve reached the limit of what little tolerance I have for this insane hatred.

They say it’s because Bergdahl is a deserter, that he could be a traitor.

And maybe he is. Maybe he’s both.

And maybe he isn’t.

We don’t know. No one knows, except for Bergdahl himself.

And Bergdahl has neither admitted his guilt nor proclaimed his innocence as yet. There’s been no Article 32 hearing, no trial, no court martial. The military and the intelligence agencies haven’t even begun his debriefing. All we know for certain is that an American soldier was taken captive by the enemy, held for years, and returned as part of a prisoner exchange.  That’s it. That’s what we know. We don’t know what events led to his capture, not all of them, not yet. We don’t know the details of his captivity. We don’t know the particulars of his release beyond the broad details that have been published in the press. 

Nevertheless, Bergdahl has been condemned by the popular media, by social networks, by pundits and politicians, not because they know more about the situation than you or I do, but solely because they hate the president. If Obama was behind Bergdahl’s release, then Bergdahl is a traitor, Q.E.D. because the president must never, ever, be allowed even the slightest acknowledgement of patriotism. 

This condemnation isn’t about Bergdahl, it’s about Obama.

Certainly, some of Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers say he deserted. That he was disillusioned with the war, with America, that he left his guard post and walked away into the desert in some foolish and quixotic attempt to reach China.  They say that men, good men, real heroes, died searching for Bergdahl after he disappeared. 

And those soldiers, they’d probably know, wouldn’t they?

And, yeah, if I was one of them I’d be damned resentful too and I have no doubt whatsoever that I’d use this blog to protest those who would attempt to paint Bergdahl as a hero – if I knew for certain that he deserted, if I’d lost friends searching for him.

I don’t begrudge those soldiers one iota of their resentment, they earned it with their own blood.

And let’s say it’s true.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that Bergdahl is indeed a deserter, that his capture by the Taliban was a result of his own cowardly actions.

So?

So what?

Last time I checked, the punishment specified for violation of UCMJ Article 85 (or Article 86 depending on Bergdahl’s intentions) isn’t to throw him to our enemies!

Ultimately, Bergdahl will have to face his accusers, and if the allegations of desertion are proven true then he will answer for the crime of desertion as specified under the Uniform Code of Military Justice – which technically could include the death penalty since the desertion is alleged to have occurred during time of war and in the face of the enemy. Far more likely, of course, if Bergdahl is convicted of desertion he’ll probably get little more than a bad conduct discharge and forfeiture of any benefits. It’s unlikely that he’d see prison time – and, really, how would that even be a punishment compared to what he’s already been through?  Likely he won’t ever face a hearing and he’ll be administratively separated from the service at the Army’s earliest possible convenience.

But, and here’s the thing so pay attention, even if Bergdahl is tried and found guilty of desertion, even if he’s found guilty of treason as some would have it, he’ll go to prison – we won’t give him back to the Taliban.

There is no crime so great that leaving him in the hands of our enemies is the indicated punishment. 

He was, he is, one of ours. Period.

For better or for worse, he’s one of ours, and we don’t leave our people behind – not even the deserters.

We Americans sent him into the meat grinder and it is our sacred obligation to get him home, no matter what.

Even if he was dead. 

We’ve been digging through the jungles of Southeast Asia for the better part of four decades, trying to make good on that promise for the men we left there.  We’ve spared no expense to return home little more than tiny moldering pieces of bone.  Some of those dead men were heroes, some were hardened professionals, and some were just soldiers doing their duty, who came when called and who did their best to survive a horrible conflict they couldn’t understand and wanted no part of. Some were steadfast and some were cowards and some were fools. But they were, each and every one, ours. And we have done our best to bring them home.

And what? We should do any less for Sgt. Bergdahl?

The staggering hypocrisy of this becomes immediately apparent when you realize that the very same folks who would grant an unconditional pardon to the traitorous Edward Snowden, a man who provably and self-admittedly gave aid and comfort to our adversaries during time of war and who continues to do so to this very day, these same people would proclaim Snowden a hero and leave Bergdahl to die unlamented in a Taliban cave – solely because they despise Barack Obama and for no other reason.

For the last two years, these very same people have been screaming for Obama’s impeachment, because the President ordered the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American who publicly renounced his citizenship, declared his allegiance to our sworn enemies, and who then actively took up arms against the United States and loudly encouraged others to do so as well.  These same people would sacrifice untold numbers of American soldiers to capture a self-declared terrorist and give him a trial because they simply cannot and will not acknowledge that the president did the right thing, but these very same people would condemn Bergdahl and leave him to rot in Afghanistan without so much as an Article 32 hearing, solely to further their blind hatred of Barack Obama.

For the last eighteen months these very same people have been screaming for Obama’s impeachment. Impeachment? Hell, some of these silly sons of bitches, including sitting members of Congress and members of the military, have marched on the White House demanding the actual overthrow of the United States government and the imprisonment or death of the President, because four Americans died in Benghazi, Libya. They are outraged, outraged beyond logic, beyond prudence, beyond reason, because they believe Obama didn’t do absolutely everything possible up to and including an armed military invasion to save those men.  But these same people, these very same people, would leave an American soldier to die at the hands of the Taliban and they refuse to cheer his safe return, solely because they hate Barack Obama beyond all rational bounds and they will not allow this administration any victory no matter how small – even when they themselves have been condemning Obama for leaving an American serviceman in the hands of our enemies. 

For them, Bergdahl be he a captive or a free man, is nothing more just another way to attack the president and they can spin their hypocrisy in any fashion necessary.

They are angered by Bowe Bergdahl’s release, because they say we don’t negotiate with terrorists.

But what they conveniently fail to mention are those pictures of Cheney and Rumsfeld with Saddam Hussein, back when we were giving the murderous Iraqi despot money and guns in his war against Iran and which he later used to invade Kuwait.  Or that part where we armed Osama bin Laden with Stinger missiles and all the guns he and the Mujahidin could carry into Afghanistan. Or that part where these people’s beloved patron saint, one Ronald Reagan, sold arms to our mortal enemies in Iran, a nation the US Congress and that very same President had publicly labeled a terrorist state, the very same terrorist rat bastards who took our entire embassy staff hostage and held them for over a year.  Or that part where that very same administration took the profits from that arms deal with terrorists and used it to finance still more terrorists in the jungles of Central America. And the really, really amusing part is that the same people who are right now shouting “we don’t negotiate with terrorists!” are some of the very same people, name for name, who were personally negotiating with terrorists in Iran, in Iraq, in Libya, in Afghanistan, in Colombia, in Nicaragua, in Somalia, and in Beirut. 

We don’t negotiate with terrorists?

Jesus Haploid Christ, we do business with terrorists on a daily basis and have all the way back to WWII when we contracted with the Mafia to run arms into occupied Sicily.

We don’t negotiate with terrorists, what a fucking joke.

Answer me a question, if we can sell arms to terrorists, to our own enemies, then you tell me why we can’t negotiate with those same terrorists for the return of our own people.

If our people aren’t worth it, if they aren’t worth more than the value we place on arm sales and political maneuvering, then you go right on and tell me what all the shouting is about over Benghazi. Go on, I’ll wait. 

If our people aren’t worth four or five terrorists sitting in a Gitmo prison cell, then you tell me why we’ve spent the last twelve years in two wars, why we traded the lives of six thousand servicemen and why we killed hundreds of thousands Iraqis and Afghans to avenge three thousand Americans. Go on, tell me why it was okay for the previous administration take a hundred enemy lives for every one of ours, but it’s not acceptable for the current administration to trade five terrorists for the life of one American soldier – especially when we gave six American lives as a down payment looking for him after his disappearance.  Why were the Americans who died on 911 any more valuable than Bowe Bergdahl?

And if Bergdahl is guilty of desertion, then don’t we owe it to those six dead soldiers to bring him home and make him account for his cowardice?

These people are so eaten up with hatred, their souls are so corrupted by their poisonous worldview, that instead of satisfaction at the return of their fellow countryman they feel only loathing – because they simply cannot stand to see Obama with a joyous Jani and Bob Bergdahl, announcing the safe repatriation of their son.

The staggering hypocrisy of John McCain continues unabated, the man is a disgrace to the uniform he once wore and the honor he swore to uphold. McCain, more than any other living American, should know what it’s like when governments value politics over their own citizens. Navy Lieutenant John McCain, if he still exists inside that wretched bitter old man, that John McCain more than any other should remember what it’s like to come home as a POW under a cloud of doubt and suspicion. But Vietnam was a long, long time ago and John McCain is a rich man now and more than willing to condemn others for his own sins.

Ted Cruz, a man who wants to be President of the United States, who wants to be the Commander in Chief, is the very epitome of these intractable sons of bitches. No other American embodies every horrible facet of the moral bankruptcy that is this corrupt selfish philosophy – unless it’s his father, the turd-blossom didn’t fall far from the horse’s ass in the Cruz family.

Cruz said, "What does this tell the terrorists? That if you capture a U.S. soldier, you can trade that soldier for five terrorists?"

Cruz went on to say the prisoner swap was “very disturbing.”

Disturbing?

What does it tell the terrorists?

This, this right here, is where we as a nation, need to say no more.

We need to stand up and say we’ve had enough. That not only are we sick and tired of being afraid of terrorists, but we’re even more tired of listening to the fearful cries of the other terrorists, the ones who practice being terrified as a political philosophy.

This madness, this crippling unreasoning fear, must be dragged into the heat of the sun and cauterized, before it kills us all.

What does it tell the terrorists? 

Fourteen years we’ve been killing these cockroaches, we’ve killed thousands of them, we’ve killed their families, we’ve destroyed their country, we rooted them out of their strongholds, we hunted down their leader and shot him in the head and dumped his body into the sea. 

And for what? So we can still be afraid?

All of this, all of these lost lives, all of the terrible terrible cost, all is for naught because we were willing to trade prisoners, because we’re the kind of people who would care enough about our own to want him back? Is that it?

What the hell have we been fighting for?

What were all those lives traded for?

If we can’t bring one American home alive.

Why do we have the mightiest military in the world? In the history of the world, if we have to live in fear of what the goddamned terrorists think?

If we have to live in terror all of the time.

If we can’t even go to the goddamned grocery store without a gun?

Here’s the really disturbing question:

What does Ted Cruz’s statement tell the US Military?

What does it tell the terrorists? Who cares. The real question is what does it tell America?

That under a Tea Party administration if you’re captured by terrorists, well fuck you, Soldier. We don’t negotiate with terrorists. Our vaunted principles, our inflexible ideology, our unbending politics and our sound-bite simple-minded doctrine is worth more than your life. We don’t negotiate with terrorists (even though we really do, don’t we? Pretty much all of the time). Besides, you’re probably a traitor anyway.

Think about that.

Think about it real hard.

Think about it real hard, especially if you’re the parent of a soldier-age son or daughter.

And then be glad, goddamned glad, that you have a president who was willing to do what it takes to get Bowe Bergdahl home.

Dead or alive, we get our people home, whatever the cost, that’s the one promise that must never be broken.

The day we forget that, the day the fear of “what will the terrorists think” becomes more important to us than that sacred obligation, that’s the day America dies.

Whether or not Bowe Bergdahl is a hero or a deserter or just a hapless fool who screwed up under the enormous pressures of war, he’s still an American.

He’s one of ours and and there’s only one thing to say:

Welcome home, Soldier.

Welcome home.

----------------------------------------------------------

In all fairness, the next post at this blog (they are posted in reverse chronological order) is a response to this.  You can go there and read it if you like.  It purports to be from a Marine who has a number of things to allege about Bergdahl and what "they" were told about him.  It may or may not be true.  I am not really interested in it, since anything purporting to come from someone in the military isn't official until the Pentagon says it.  In fact, let me make it easy - here is the link:  http://www.stonekettle.com/2014/06/negotiating-with-terrorists-counterpoint.html 

In the fog of war, it is all too easy for the grapevine to make up smack about someone who pissed off his unit.  If he didn't fit in (and by all accounts, he didn't), we all know how savage peers can be.  I am suspicious of anything that doesn't come out of the Pentagon and Army CID that addresses the situation. 

Thank you Alexandria, RL, Kam - 

I really was concerned about those posts.  It still hurts me to read so much bigotry on this thread.

HATRED IS NOT A POINT OF VIEW.  

BTW - FGM has been an issue for years and years and years - at least with the nonprofit organizations I work with, and it is NOT a factor of any particular religion.  IT IS A HIDEOUS CUSTOM all over the world.

It's pointless to post arguments to the haters.  They've already convinced themselves they're right and they'll not listen to other viewpoints.

I'm done.

To this wondeful thread .  You are all very much on point, I THANK YOU for posting the words and thoughts I never could. 

I agree with everything that has been said. Bottom line for me is that racism and bigotry in any form are totally unacceptable. I experienced way too much of that growing up in Texas during the 50's. Observed a lifetime of hate early on, don't want to see any more, if I can help it.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=655516711197360&set=vb.231295150286187&type=2&theater

I had to cut and paste this from my IPhone.  It has nothing to do with hate, racism, Muslims, Bergdahl...it just made me smile and if you are a dog lover I guarantee you will have a smile on your face.

Wow, Kam loved that!

suzie -- According to the latest census (2011) a very meagre 2.2% of all Australians follow the Muslim faith.

My question is this:  Why are you, an educated, intelligent woman, allowing the extremist Australian Defence League thugs to persuade you that Sharia law is on its way?  If you remember your history, Hitler's National Socialist Party (the Nazis) started out the same way, by demonizing the Jews, the Gays, the Roma -- in fact, anyone not of Aryan descent, or to put it more truthfully, anyone NOT LIKE THEM.  Then the propaganda machine got to work, spewing out all manner of lies to persuade the general populace that they were under siege by all those folks NOT LIKE THEM.

I know you were born in NZ, but let's just say, hypothetically, that a party emerged much like the ADL who decided to demonize all descendants of the British men who were shipped off to the penal colony in Oz -- because they just couldn't have been the fine, upstanding gentlemen that settled in and made Australia the fine and prosperous country it is today?  Oh, and that they are the ones responsible for today's criminal element in Oz.  And what if your DH was a descendant of those British society rejects and criminals?

Think about it.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/sharia-law-at-work-in-australia/story-fn59niix-1226097889992

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/our-laws-are-not-negotiable/story-e6frfhqf-1226590281341

http://theconversation.com/sharia-why-a-dual-legal-system-will-not-work-in-australia-5281

I know nothing about the ADL but there has been a push for Sharia Law here.

Well, Suzie, I think that your worries are totally unfounded, unless you actually believe that less than 3% of your population could possibly persuade the other 97% to accept  dual Aussie/Sharia law.  Not gonna happen!

But tell me the difference between the extremist Muslims who want it, and the extremist Christian fundies in the U.S. (and spreading into my own country) who want the Old Testament laws to replace our own secular laws.  Google "The Dominionists" to see what I'm talking about, and if you google even further, you'll find the names of politicians and several high-powered monied folks who are determined to see it happen.  (Palin, Bachmann etc.)  Scary stuff indeed.

Edited to add: both The Australian and the Herald Sun are owned by that master manipulator Murdoch.

SAMPSON SELFIE

My gorgeous daughter, spinning yarn at last night's Relay for Life:

E- love the pics.