Quote of the Day -- On the US Out of the Middle East

From this article in POLITICO

Why the Arabs don't want us in Syria

"Let’s face it; what we call the “war on terror” is really just another oil war. 

We’ve squandered $6 trillion on three wars abroad and on constructing a national security warfare state at home since oilman Dick Cheney declared the “Long War” in 2001. The only winners have been the military contractors and oil companies that have pocketed historic profits, the intelligence agencies that have grown exponentially in power and influence to the detriment of our freedoms and the jihadists who invariably used our interventions as their most effective recruiting tool. We have compromised our values, butchered our own youth, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, subverted our idealism and squandered our national treasures in fruitless and costly adventures abroad. In the process, we have helped our worst enemies and turned America, once the world’s beacon of freedom, into a national security surveillance state and an international moral pariah.

America’s founding fathers warned Americans against standing armies, foreign entanglements and, in John Quincy Adams’ words, “going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” Those wise men understood that imperialism abroad is incompatible with democracy and civil rights at home. The Atlantic Charter echoed their seminal American ideal that each nation should have the right to self-determination. Over the past seven decades, the Dulles brothers, the Cheney gang, the neocons and their ilk have hijacked that fundamental principle of American idealism and deployed our military and intelligence apparatus to serve the mercantile interests of large corporations and particularly, the petroleum companies and military contractors that have literally made a killing from these conflicts.

It’s time for Americans to turn America away from this new imperialism and back to the path of idealism and democracy. We should let the Arabs govern Arabia and turn our energies to the great endeavor of nation building at home. We need to begin this process, not by invading Syria, but by ending the ruinous addiction to oil that has warped U.S. foreign policy for half a century."

~ Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Where Facebook is headed

"Initially, Facebook was just a place to post photographs and see which of your high-school classmates had gone to pot. Then it became a place for organizing political protests, and wasting time playing games. It’s grown and grown in all these ways. It gets credit from many for helping facilitate the Arab Spring, and it now hosts four per cent of all the photographs ever taken. Now, if Facebook gets its way, it’ll be where you read your news, find new songs, and watch video. It will have eaten a big chunk of the rest of the Internet." --Nicholas Thompson, "What Facebook Really Wants", The New Yorker Link to original story; http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/09/what-facebook-really-wants.html

There he goes again, being all smart and eloquent and statesmanlike and forward-thinking and stuff

Obama lays out new vision for Middle East

Those other parties hates when he does that.

On the biggest problem of Muslims

No, the biggest problem of Muslims is not that they exist.  Don't be a hater.


The biggest problem of Muslims is that there are two sects of Muslims in the world, as we all know--Sunni and Shii'a--yet in too many countries and situations across the world, they kill each other.


Get that.


They're both Muslims.


They both have nearly identical beliefs on what they and most people, really, consider to be the most important issues in the world and life but a bit of a difference between the kind of Muslim they are and all of a sudden they can't abide the other type Muslim.


I won't go into a detailed account here of their differences but I will put this one quote up on the differences of Sunni and Shii'a Muslims:  


Sunni and Shia developed different political beliefs regarding the leadership after the death of Prophet Muhammad PBUH. All those who are in favor of Abu bakar, Umar and Ottoman ,the first three caliphs, are called Sunnis and those who believe that leadership only belonged to the family of the Prophet call themselves Shia. Shia Muslims believe that Ali was the legitimate successor and eligible as the first caliph since he was the cousin and son- in- law of the Prophet.


If you would like more information on the differences between these two types of Muslims, go to the links at bottom.


Anyway, it's insane.  It is truly insane.  It's psychotic.


Keeping all that in mind, here are some statistics on Muslims:

Islam is the world's second largest religion after Christianity. According to a 2009 demographic study, Islam has 1.57 billion adherents, making up 23% of the world population.^[1][2] 

Did you get that?  Nearly ONE QUARTER of the world's population is Muslim.  Added to that is the fact that they are also one of the fastest-growing populations of the world, too.

More:

Islam is the predominant religion in the Middle East, in northernAfrica^[3][4], and in some parts of Asia.^[5] Large communities of Muslims are also found in China, the Balkans, and Russia.^[6] Other parts of the world host large Muslim immigrant communities; inWestern Europe, for instance, Islam is the second largest religion after Christianity, though it represents less than 5% of the total population.^[7]

Approximately 50 countries are Muslim-majority.^[2] 

A demographic study conducted by the Pew Research Center in October 2009^[1][2] found that there are 1.57 billion Muslims around the world, accounting for roughly 1 in 4 people.

The vast majority of Muslims are Sunni, while an estimated 10 – 13% are Shi'a.^[2

Okay, so why do I mention this right now?  

I bring this up because of this quote below, from The New York Times "Quotation of the Day" today and because of the state of the world right now, both in some isolated countries and, more specifically, the country we just blew up and have to put back together--Iraq--and now the one we're starting to blow up--that is, Libya, as well as too much of the Middle East:

"I think all countries probably would like to see Libya remain a unified state. Having states in the region begin to break up because of internal differences is a formula for real instability in the future."  --DEFENSE SECRETARY ROBERT M. GATES

Looking at the "bigger picture" of the Middle East countries that are right now breaking apart--Libya, Tunisia, Bahrain, etc.--and, we hope, getting Democracy with a capital "D", at the heart of each of these countries are these Muslim people of both sects and their inability to tolerate and so, live with one another.  

I think it is incumbent on all Muslims, worldwide, to push stringently for all of them to no longer even want ill of the other sect, let alone to kill or want to kill the other, first.

That seems obvious enough but I haven't heard this happening.  I'm not aware of anyone pushing for this.

Second, I think it is also incumbent on the rest of the world--all religious and non-religious organizations, all political parties, all politicians, everyone, everywhere, to push for this one-quarter of the world's population to, again, not have it in their heads that they can or should kill or want to kill or even to wish ill on anyone in the other sect of their faith.

This needs to happen and it needs to happen immediately, ladies and gentlemen, all across the world.

It especially needs to happen in the Middle East, where their own countries need to pull together so they can form countries that works together for the benefit of all their own people and that of the world.

Any thing less is more insanity.

Links:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Muslim_population

http://islam.about.com/cs/divisions/f/shia_sunni.htm

http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-sunni-and-shia/

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=difference+between+sunni+and+shiia&aq=&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=b26d2f4496b7882f

Problems?

By and large, I think President Obama is doing and has done some terrific things, for sure, since gaining office this year.

Doing away with Guantanamo is an improvement for the country--re-establishing a nonpolitical Justice Department is huge, nominating Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court recently, the list goes on.

But there have been, as there always are, missteps.

Hey, they're all humans there at the White House but these missteps have seemed rather avoidable.

The first, I think, was the goofy gift he gave to Britain's Queen early this year.

(WTF?)

But that was really a minor problem or issue and we can all laugh about it and recover.

Then there was this odd oversight of the President's and French President Nikola Sarkozy's and Britain's Prime Minister. I mean, why would you NOT invite the one person to the D-Day commemoration WHO WAS THERE? (That being the Queen).

That just didn't make sense.

Now, in the very rare, overly-sensitive, odd and forever war-torn place that is the Middle East, the President made a very smart speech to the Muslim world and the rest of us.

In it, he said many wise, true and possibly difficult things.

He called for fairness and "give and take" from all sides involved. He asked for concessions from both sides and a lot more.

All good.

But one thing President Obama didn't do on this trip to the Middle East was include a stopover in Israel. I think that's a glaring omission and I'd love to hear an official explanation for it. I'm not saying he HAD to go or needed to go or that it was a huge mistake, at all.

It might possibly be one, though, and I'd love to know the reason he didn't make this stop.

(Link to story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090604/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama)

Where the President really hurts himself and his political party, though, is on spending, without doubt.

When now former President Bush proposed spending the trillions he said he wanted and needed to bail out the banks and support the economy, we all knew he was stupid and at the end of his Presidency.

For President Obama to continue this huge spending reflects especially badly on him and his Democratic Party because it makes it far too easy to paint him as the old cliche': "a tax-and-spend Liberal".

It's old but extremely effective and it makes a sort of "Achilles heel" for the President.

He needs to get away from this big, deficit spending, for the country's sake and his own.