Also Sprach Obama

by Hugh Fitzgerald (May 2009)

Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy do not see eye-to-eye on Turkey. Sarkozy does not want Turkey admitted to the E.U. Nor does Angela Merkel. Nor do the leaders of Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, or Great Britain. Nor, one suspects, does any leader in any of the member-states of the E.U. What about their citizens? They, too, seem distinctly unenthusiastic about admitting, as what would be the most populous member of the E.U., a country that is not only 99% Muslim, but that is becoming less Kemalist, and more truly Muslim, every day.

But Barack Obama, and those who advise him, possess the o’erweening presumption to attempt to tell the people and nations of Western Europe that, because Turkey is a “moderate Muslim state,” it needs to only be further “anchored” in the Western world. Those worried about 80 million additional Muslims in Western Europe, free to move about from country to country without a visa– and how many others, assorted Muslims from outside Turkey, will be able to slip in disguised as Turks while the hopelessly understaffed border patrols of Western Europe have no idea how to distinguish a Turk from, say, an Azeri from northern Iran, or even from an Arab from northern Syria or northern Iraq. The problem that European nations now face – those endless boatloads of people, Muslims and sub-Saharan Africans – crossing the Mediteranean, that is coming by sea – would be increased with immigrants flowing in, ceaselessly, from Turkey, by land, without even that sea as a minimal barrier.

What would any American government think if the government of France told it that it had a “duty” to open its southern border to anyone and everyone from Mexico, because that would “anchor” Mexico in the North American sphere, and then not only would thirty million Mexicans cross the border, but so too might tens of millions of others, from elsewhere in Latin America, who could more readily pose as “Mexicans” just as, in the case of Turkey in the E.U., many non-Turkish Kurds, Azeris, Arabs, and other Muslims who might appear in France, or Italy, or England as “Turks,” with even greater ease, and in even greater numbers, than they manage to do, with such impunity, today. 

And Obama speaks with equal certitude when, in speaking to the world’s Muslims, he announces that, “The trust that binds us has been strained.” 

What “trust” is it that “binds us”? The “trust” that Pakistani generals, ramrod-straight, Sandhurst-educated, terry-thomased moustachioed, pukka-sahib fly-whisks in hand, would forever be true-blue friends of their counterparts in the Pentagon, and would never ever betray the trust that the Americans showed over so many decades, supporting Pakistan ever since the days of CENTO. CENTO, some amy need to be reminded, was a fiasco as a military pact (with Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Pakistan supposedly offering a “Muslim” version of NATO where the United States and Great Britain would supply the money, the weapons, the training, and our loyal Muslim allies the manpower), that first tied the American and the Pakistani military together. Was it the “trust” that allowed the ISI to divert American aid from what it was given for, to A. Q. Khan’s little nuclear project? 

Was it the “trust” that made Jimmy Carter hail Khomeini as a “fellow man of faith” without him, Carter, bothering then, or bothering in the thirty years since, to find out what that “faith” – the faith in Islam – inculcated? 

Was it the “trust” that caused American policymakers to assume that Turkey would remain on the Kemalist path, and to ignore, underneath the bright young officer corps that remained in the Kemalist line, the primitive masses of Muslims in Turkey who were ready for Erbakan, and Erdogan, and Gul? 

Was it the “trust” that allowed the Americans to overlook, for decades, what Saudi Arabia was like, what its textbooks and clerics taught (and teach still) about Infidels, what vast sums the Saudis and other rich Arabs gave for the spreading of Islam all over the West, and also to corrupt, through armies of Western hirelings, the policy-making apparatus of the Western world, and to delay the day of recognition of what Saudi Arabia, and Islam, meant for the West? 

Was it the “trust” that American policymakers keep putting in Egypt, another “staunch ally” that is in fact a world center of antisemitism, at the center of Arab League machinations to prevent any effective halt to Arab operations in Darfur, Egypt with its renewed persecution of the Copts, and a population eager to pocket American aid, but at the same time deeply hostile to America? 

Was it the “trust” that America had in Jordan, and its plucky little king, Hussein, as he was formulaically known, a country which, like Egypt, will take what it can get from the Americans but whose population remains – and will always remain – as deeply hostile as are the Muslims of Egypt?

Was it the “trust” that the American government put in Karzai, the ineffective, corrupt ruler of Afghanistan, who is quick to go on the attack against the Americans, whenever it suits his purpose, whenever it can gain him domestic support at home? 

Was it the “trust” that the Americans have put in the Muslims who have been allowed to come to America, and who have become, as all over the Western world they have become, sources of domestic disruption, of campus anti-Israel and antisemitic activity, of security risks in the government, of the exploitation of power by Muslims to manipulate the system in order to further the cause of Islam in the West (as in the case of the Boston Mosque and the below-market-value sale of city land arranged secretly by a Muslim member of the Boston Redevelopment Association)? 

Is all that the kind of “trust” we once had, we Americans and the world’s Muslims, and somehow we, the American side, allowed that trust to evanesce, because of nearly ten thousand terrorist attacks, and millions of attacks daily in other, nonviolent ways, as attempts are steadily underway to slowly and steadily subvert the workings of, and the Western support for Infidel legal and political institutions. Just look in Denmark and The Netherlands, at the attempts to suffocate the exercise by Western men of their own freedoms, guaranteed in their own countries, if such exercise is believed by Muslims to get in the way of the spread, and then the certain dominance, of Islam.

What “trust”? The “trust” of those who practice taqiyya and kitman? The “trust” due to those who believe that Muhammad was the Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil, worthy of emulation in all things, for all time, the same Muhammad who said, so celebratedly, that “war is deception”? 

Which trust is that that binds us? 

“The United States and Europe must approach Muslims as our friends, neighbors and partners in fighting injustice, intolerance and violence, forging a relationship based on mutual respect and mutual interests,” Obama told the summit.

“Moving forward toward Turkish membership in the EU would be an important signal of your (EU) commitment to this agenda and ensure that we continue to anchor Turkey firmly in Europe,” he told EU leaders.

Why “must” the United States and Europe approach Muslims as “our friends” and “partners in fighting injustice, intolerance and violence”? Does Islam teach Muslims that they can be “friends” with non-Muslims, or does Islam inculcate the idea that Muslims must not “take Jews and Christians and friends”? And does Islam not further teach that a Muslim may feign friendship, for the greater good of Islam, with non-Muslims, but cannot offer real friendship? 

Is not Islam based on the very idea of a permanent state of war between Muslim and Non-Muslim, Believer and Infidel? Does it not impose as a duty, central and not tangential, on all Muslims some kind of participation in the “struggle” or Jihad to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam, not only in Dar al-Islam, but in Dar al-Harb, the Domain or House of War, where Infidels as yet have not succumbed to Islam?

Does Barack Obama know any of this? Does he know it, but not believe it?

Does he know it, and does he believe it, but do both he, and those advising him, possibly think it best to pretend otherwise, and to collaborate in a dangerous strategy of misrepresenting Islam to Infidels, including those imperiled in Western Europe by the previous acts of nearly criminal negligence on the part of their own political and media elites, that allowed so many Muslims to settle deep behind what Muslims themselves are taught to regard as enemy lines? 

At best, Obama is a naif. At worst, he and those advising him are a shallow calculators, tinhorn Machiavels who are simply not up to the task of defending the Infidel world against Muslims, against Islam.

And besides, when he utters such nonsense — so easily disproved — he increases distrust, by Americans themselves as well as other Westerners,  of American government, and causes not only American, but European Infidels, to become confused, and demoralized.

An unacceptable statement, untrue in every particular except one: geographically, some Muslim states — e.g. Turkey — are indeed the “neighbors” of some Infidel lands. In just the same way, Germany under Hitler was a “neighbor” to Poland and to France. And the Soviet Union was a “neighbor” to the countries the Red Army subdued in Eastern Europe. And Communist China is a “neighbor” to Tibet. So what? 

“The United States has been enriched by Muslim-Americans,” the president said. “Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country. . . . I know,” he said, “because I am one of them.” Thus Obama in Istanbul.

And this great O doth lead to th’other, that is to Othello, who unlike Obama was not an American, but did “have Muslims” in his family and must surely “have lived in a Muslim-majority country” in his youth. For Othello was a Moor, that is a North African of indeterminate but dusky hue, albeit one who must necessarily have been a Christian convert, for he could not otherwise have been a military leader of Christian (Venetian) forces against the Ottoman Turks.

Obama just today requested another $84 billion to fund the follies, those expensive attempts to bring stability, and prosperity, and unity (in differing, and ever-diminishing, hoped-for amounts) to Iraq, to Afghanistan, even to Pakistan.

Perhaps this O could be reminded of that O’s expressed desire to say “farewell” to “triumphal pomp” and the “big wars.”

Perhaps this O could be reminded of that O’s proud memory of how, summarily and violently, he dealt with the Muslim enemy, as in Aleppo once, where –when a malignant and a turban’d Turk dared to beat a Venetian, and traduced the state — then he, that mighty O, Othello the Moor of Venice, took by the throat that circumcised Muslim dog and smote him, thus.

So that’s the lesson. Farewell to the big wars. But be ready to smite the enemy. Thus. And thus.

And only: thus.

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Hugh Fitzgerald contributes regularly to The Iconoclast, our Community Blog. Click here to see all his contributions, on which comments are welcome.