Wednesday, March 04, 2015

Obama And The Term Islamic Terrorism

Recently I stumbled across the New York Post article entitled "Obama was as clueless about 9/11 as he is about ISIS" (February 28, 2015).

The essay points out that, in 2004, Obama added a new preface to his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father.

Excerpt from the above article (emphases mine):
That President Obama won’t call it Islamic terrorism; that he believes we shouldn’t be on a “high horse” because America and Christians have done bad things; that Muslims are victims of “bigotry and prejudice”; that his State Department says it’s the lack of jobs, not religion, that fuels ISIS, should come as no surprise.

After all, he said the same thing about 9/11.


In 2004, Obama released an update of his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, with a little-noticed new preface about the attacks.

“This collective history, this past, directly touches my own,” he added. “Not merely because, as a consequence of 9/11, my name is an irresistible target of mocking websites from overzealous Republican operatives. But also because the underlying struggle between worlds of plenty and worlds of want…is the struggle set forth, on a miniature scale, in this book,” which at its core is an indictment against Western imperialism, racism and colonialism.

Obama goes on to say he identifies with the “desperation and disorder of the powerless,” and how they can “easily slip into violence and despair.”


[...]

Had the media examined Obama’s ideology a little more closely in the 2008 election, perhaps we wouldn’t have a president who holds the US to equal scorn as its enemies.

“The Muslim world has suffered historical grievances,” Obama last month asserted while hosting his “Summit on Countering Violent Extremism.” He blamed the rash of global terrorism in part on “a history of colonialism” in the Mideast, Africa and South Asia....
Read the entire essay HERE.

I shall soon have in a hand a copy of the 2004 edition of Dreams from My Father. I want to see that preface with my own two eyes!

If that preface is as Mr. Sperry as described in his essay, then we have written evidence from which we may be able to discern on the basis of Obama's own words why he plays such word games with regard to Islam.  Obama doesn't see Islamic terrorism as terrorism at all, but rather as postponed, long overdue justice?  Is that it?

I managed to access a portion of the preface at Amazon, but not the entire preface. However, I did notice that Obama used the phrase "my brethren" in reference to the ummah in general.

5 comments:

Nicoenarg said...

The preface:

"What has changed, of course, dramatically, decisively, is the context in which the book might now be read. I began writing against a backdrop of Silicon
Valley and a booming stock market; the collapse of the Berlin Wall; Mandela—in slow, sturdy steps—emerging from prison to lead a country; the signing
of peace accords in Oslo. Domestically, our cultural debates—around guns and abortion and rap lyrics—seemed so fierce precisely because Bill
Clinton’s Third Way, a scaled-back welfare state without grand ambition but without sharp edges, seemed to describe a broad, underlying consensus on
bread-and-butter issues, a consensus to which even George W. Bush’s first campaign, with its “compassionate conservatism,” would have to give a nod.
Internationally, writers announced the end of history, the ascendance of free markets and liberal democracy, the replacement of old hatreds and wars
between nations with virtual communities and battles for market share.

And then, on September 11, 2001, the world fractured.

It’s beyond my skill as a writer to capture that day, and the days that would follow—the planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slowmotion
cascade of the towers crumbling into themselves; the ash-covered figures wandering the streets; the anguish and the fear. Nor do I pretend to
understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another’s
heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.

What I do know is that history returned that day with a vengeance; that, in fact, as Faulkner reminds us, the past is never dead and buried—it isn’t even
past. This collective history, this past, directly touches my own. Not merely because the bombs of Al Qaeda have marked, with an eerie precision, some
of the landscapes of my life—the buildings and roads and faces of Nairobi, Bali, Manhattan; not merely because, as a consequence of 9/11, my name is
an irresistible target of mocking websites from overzealous Republican operatives. But also because the underlying struggle—between worlds of plenty
and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a
set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies
cruelty toward those not like us—is the struggle set forth, on a miniature scale, in this book.

I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the
same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago’s South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily
they slip into violence and despair.

I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder—alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when
the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military
hardware—is inadequate to the task.

I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all.


And so what was a more interior, intimate effort on my part, to understand this struggle and to find my place in it, has converged with a broader public
debate, a debate in which I am professionally engaged, one that will shape our lives and the lives of our children for many years to come.

The policy implications of all this are a topic for another book. Let me end instead on a more personal note. Most of the characters in this book remain
a part of my life, albeit in varying degrees—a function of work, children, geography, and turns of fate."

I have the book in PDF. AOW lemme know if you're interested in not wasting your money on this piece of crap since the guy is an extremely poor writer. Horrible!

Nicoenarg said...

PS: That's not all of the preface. I can paste it all if you want. The rest is just some drivel about him becoming a Senator against all odds as he likes to think.

Always On Watch said...

Nico,
Thank you.

I am not buying the book, but rather getting a copy at my local public library. No way am I buying the book!

I should have the book in my hands on Saturday.

Anonymous said...

In the pasted segment of this preface, notable is the multiple references to Nairobi (capital of Kenya).

I hope to witness the day this imposter's identity and full history is revealed.

******
Breitbart: Shots fired at NSA building, suspect arrested
A lone gunman responsible for several shootings in the Washington, D.C. area, including near the National Security Agency headquarters early Wednesday, has been arrested, the FBI said.


****funy how this is the first I'm reading about "multiple" random shootings which remind one of the Malvo terror over a decade ago.

Always On Watch said...

Anonymous,
Interesting how now until today these shootings connected by law enforcement.

Very little coverage of the shootings until the NSA was ambushed.

And, yes, reminiscent of the D.C. Snipers back in 2003. At first, nobody connected the dots.