Is Obama serious about human rights?

There's a humanitarian crisis in Iraq?!?!?!

Quick!! Everyone, we need to go in, remove the people in power and replace them with friendly, democratically elected human rights loving leaders. This will surely stop religious fanatics from oppressing Christians. They'll be so shocked and awed, they won't even remember how.

The problem here is political correctness. To address the issue of arab/muslims killing arab/christians we would have to acknowledge that the muslims tend to murder with far greater frequency than any other widely held faith on the planet.

The Iraq was showed us that muslims will kill with abandon if they think that it will advance their political agenda. Its the only war I know of where America's enemy sought our defeat not by killing our soldiers, but by killing their own people.

No, the PC infestation afflicting America today would never allow someone as PC steeped as Mr Obama from uttering anything negative about the Muslim faith. Oh no. What a hate crime that would be!

We won't address this because we would prefer to live in a sterile bubble where bad people aren't really bad, they are just misunderstood. Kinda like the Jets in that broadway play. Yeah, that's the ticket.

So when Bush invaded Iraq there were according to you 1.4 million Christians there. Now, there's about half that number and they're in hiding, but somehow or other, that's Obama's fault!

How did you miss getting hired by Dick Cheney?

It's really amazing that most of the foreign policy problems you bring up have their genesis in the actions or inactions of the Bush administration and yet because of your myopia; you blame Obama. (that excludes Israeli-Palestinian relations which are not the fault of any US president).

Skip, long time observer, first time responder.

No.

First in response to this jem "Its the only war I know of where America's enemy sought our defeat not by killing our soldiers, but by killing their own people." I give you the Kamikaze (not just a refreshing cocktail)

Second ... Hindu's and Muslims kill each other (India, Kashmir, separation of India and Pakistan). Christians kill jews (Holocaust), Muslims kill Jews (middle east), Jews kill Muslims (middle east part two), Christians kill Muslims (Bosnia and whatnot) etc etc etc and on and on and on.

Now if we're making moral judgments based on the total body of each religion then I'm all for it.

As Stalin said, you kill 1 its a tragedy, you kill 10,000 its a statistic (or something like that). Maybe we could come up with some sort of body count statistic .... similar to the Value Over Replacement Player of baseball ... like Kills Over Replacement Religion.

We could discuss current events based on the KORR stat. I like it.

lets make this happen

Yes, the President is interested in human rights.

THAT'S WHY HIS FIRST INSTINCT has been to stop the settlements, help the apartheid laden Palestinians throw off the savage occupation-murder-land grab
yoke by the Jews in Israel.

The whole world is trying to solve that problem. And doublt since the Flotilla Massacre. Next question?

ELA5 writes:
"I give you the Kamikaze (not just a refreshing cocktail)"
How exactly did the Kamikaze kill "their own people"???
Maybe you need a definition of the Kamikaze: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze

Just want to add a side note here: Muslims were persecuted by Christians for a good 1,000 years.

If were going to talk about religious tolerance, it needs to be said that the big 3 monotheisms are all guilty of religious persecution(Judaism, Christianity, Islam)

That being said, religious beliefs cannot be considered valid political issues. Just because one country is primarily X, doesn't mean they get to pick on the little y's and z's.

The human rights agenda does have to grow some human balls and say STOP KILLING PEOPLE!

I hate that we help the Middle-East and yet are "white devils" to the people. The blame can't all lay with the ignorant Muslims that have no concept of Americans and who they are. We're just spoiled devils to them. And why? Because that is what their governments want them to think.
If they want US aid and US money, then there should be mandatory education programs regarding America and Europe and the rest fo the world for that matter.

Education is the key to ending religious intolerance!!!

Bottom line, Muslims kill. With abandon. Tell me when the last time the hindus performed a raid of the magnatude of Mumbai. I'm all ears.

the kamikazis were already members of the military. The muslims in Iraq (and A stan) killed civilians. I suspect you knew that but needed the smarm to gloss over a weak argument.

Let's look at things in terms of total carnage, shall we? How many christians are inspired to mass murder in America? When was the last time a devout christian was inspired by his faith to create an ugly bomb out of a car and park it near a gathering of muslim faithful?

Nothing quite like exploding a car full of propane tanks and nails to show Allah your true devotion, n'est ce pas?

Were the nazi's inspired by a christian theology? Somewhere in heaven Dietrich Bonhoeffer is weaping.

This is just a very poor attempt to deflect us from reality. The world today suffers from continuous assaults at the hands of devout muslims. It is a murderous, exclusive theology that is basically poison to the world. Absent a reformation (and I don't see one in the offing) the cultural conflict will rage on.

Further, the exodous of christians from the region that gave birth to faith is a signal failure on the part of we christians.

Mr Bush asked the muslims if there were good stewards of the holy land. Clearly they are not.

So spare me the sneering, snide cynicism. It does nothing to improve your very weak "argument" while at the same time it cements the impression of you as a PC infused, know it all liberal blow hard.

why not address the issue raised by the author? Why isn't this administration adressing the issue? My theory is PC inspired constraints.

Your theory is a fundamental restatement of the good old computer axiom GIGO. You've got the GO part down pat.

Congrats.

Rubin cares SOOOOO about the christians all over the world You betcha.

And, by the way, the Saudis ARE our allies.

And, if the zionist JEWS ONLY policies aren't the most 'criminally intolerant' in the world, the rest of the world is mistaken!
This column must be written only for the
most radical; it won't make sense to anyone else.

this is well said:
===================
ELA5 writes:
"I give you the Kamikaze (not just a refreshing cocktail)"
How exactly did the Kamikaze kill "their own people"???
Maybe you need a definition of the Kamikaze: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze
============================

This is a good point that I completely missed. The kamikazes killed themselves, but they did not kill japanese civilians as a mean of defeating their American enemies.

I like that rubin is drifting to the right, particularly after that last chump brought in as a conservative blogger.

Obama's post-progressive perspective is based essentially on cowardice. He doesn't want to offend any one, which means keeping his mouth shut and not "imposing" western values on the east. If people like us, the thinking goes, no one will hurt us. No one with such a naive perspective should be responsible for the wefare of hundreds of millions of people.

Side note: kamikazes didn't kill innocent japanese civilians, i think that's what the reference was to. Id go even further and say that the world has never witnessed such suicidal butchery.

skip:

Was the big one directed to me? If so I lost your point, which may be my fault.

So what do you want to DO about your hatred of Muslims? Remember Muslim outreach didn't start under Obama (though I will give you he's really, really bad at it), but under Bush in the days shortly after 9/11 for which he was applauded by both sides of the aisle.

The difference is that no matter how many mistakes Bush made, he has "street cred" in the fundamentalist Christian and Jewish communities that Obama lacks.

So tell me where you think we go next.

If you have to ASK, then the answer is obvious.

Skip,

I'm sorry I was flippant in my response, I really just wanted to throw that KORR stat out to the message board to see what the response was.

I was only flippant because I assumed you were too. It seems entirely absurd to say that the existence of Muslim fanatics to characterize all of Islam as "murderous, exclusive theology that is basically poison to the world"

I mean seriously, there are 1.5 billion muslims in the world. How many suicide bombings have muslim individuals committed?
If 1% of muslims were brutal blah blah blah, we'd be up towards 1.5 million bombings.

You don't really care though because there isn't much room for gray in your world view so you discount it as political correctness. You clearly cannot fathom the concept that out there are 1.5 Billion people who may share a religion, but may interpret that religion in vastly different ways. Especially if that religion has no central power structure and the people of different sects all look to different religious leaders.

It boggles my mind that people that understand the difference between Catholics, Protestants, Mormons and Orthodox Christians choose not to believe that a religion that spans 3 continents, over 20 countries with political features varying from dictatorships (Libya, Pakistan) to democracy (Turkey) to monarchy (Saudi Arabia)to Islamic (Iran) to anarchy (Yemen, Somalia) might have different incarnations with different traditions, beliefs, rituals and all those other things that go into culture.

But hey, if you want to decide all Muslims are this that and the other thing when simple math would tell you that 99.99% of Muslims aren't, go right ahead. Enjoy

ELAS:

Glenn Beck said just the other night on his show that 10% of Muslims were terrorists. But whats the difference of 150 million people or so among friends, right?

"Were the nazi's inspired by a christian theology?"

Yes. Count the number of times Hitler called on God in "Mein Kampf" What did the belt buckles of the SS troops day? "Gott mit Uns"

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the few church leaders who stood in courageous opposition to the Fuehrer and his policies. One of the few.

Oh my, the PC police are out in full force.

Mr Numbers person: you spend a fair amount of your time whining about the choices Bush made. Why not join us in the modern Era? Oh yeah, that's right, with a Democrat in the oval office it is the other side that must now do the criticizing. The complaints of the former critics are muted now that Obama is basically retaining Bush's tools.

And in reference to your nonsense about "hatred" tell us here on the comment thread, have you stopped beating your wife? What a joke.

And to the other know it all, well all I can say is that you really should enroll in a remedial reading course. Your lack of comprehension is obvious. So is your confusion. For example, you have confused snottiness with argument. And you've also confused repetition of talking points with solid insight.

both of you have basically proved my point. the PC minions won't allow honest discussion of those they believe are "protected". I've seen this among liberals for quite a while now. the two most common examples are the unwillingness to face facts about Islam and the unwillingness to face facts about America's blacks. Both are on the protected groups list and therefore nothing bad, even if it is true, can be said about them. How sad for us that this silly stifling of speech prevents us from confronting real issues and attempting real solutions. Instead we get the mealy mouth routine as the two folks here so amply demonstrate.

And spare me the "math". that's not the point and again, I suspect you know that. The point is that not some percentage, it is that the world is suffering from an assault that is inspired by Islam.

Stick you head in the sand (or some other place equally deficient in sunshine) if you chose. the adults among us are required to understand the threat and act to assuage it. Those people, who I can imagine you cordially despise, protect even the likes of you.

And the point of the essay remains un noticed by either of you blow hards. The muslims are demonstrating religious intolerance. You can't speak of that because the speech codes with which you were programmed doesn't permit it.

I don't mind confronting the truth, and I don't much care what weenies like you guys think of me. Your opinion of me matters not.

Oh and lensch, please provide an example of a german christian clergyman leading a nazi military or secret police unit. Who is comparable to Nasrallah in your view?

The worst thing the US could do for mid-East Christians would be to appear as their sponsor.

It's precisely because of the US threat that Christians who had been safe for centuries in Iraq are now being persecuted.

Why do you think the Armenians got massacred in 1915? Because they were taken under the ostensible protection of Russia, a mistrusted power with a history of invading Ottoman lands. They came to be seen as a dangerous fifth column inviting foreign intervention.

Frankly, if I were a citizen of a Muslim-majority country, and I thought my Christian neighbours might be in any way inviting or encouraging the destructive Americans to interfere in my country, I might take action against them myself.

That's right: I'd attack my Christian neighbours if I thought they might bring on my home what the Americans brought on Iraq.

Did you ever think Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003 was about morality and the installation of a democratic government?

Naive...

"I've seen this among liberals for quite a while now. the two most common examples are the unwillingness to face facts about Islam and the unwillingness to face facts about America's blacks. Both are on the protected groups list and therefore nothing bad, even if it is true, can be said about them. How sad for us that this silly stifling of speech prevents us from confronting real issues and attempting real solutions."

Just for fun, then, why don't you tell us your real solution (final solution?) to the "problem" of Islam and its 1.4 billion believers?

I'm guessing it doesn't involve a whole lot of human rights.

"Bottom line, Muslims kill. With abandon. Tell me when the last time the hindus performed a raid of the magnatude of Mumbai. I'm all ears."

You are very ignorant. Not only were there countless Hindu pogroms against Muslims under the last BJP government, some of which killed hundreds while police looked on and smiled, there are also ongoing Hindu-led campaigns against India's Christians, especially an ongoing pogrom in the state of Orissa, where about 10 churches have been burned (by Hindus), and Christian villages have been burned and plundered.

The 2nd greatest religious massacre of the 20th century was the Hindu massacre of Indian Muslims at the time of Partition - nearly one million murdered. The greatest, of course, was the Christian Nazis' genocide of the Jews.

And - oh yeah, Israel has laws and a constitution that formally, openly discriminate against non-Jews. Israel's current and previous govt are full of ministers who have publicly called for the deportation of Muslim citizens, for the crime of being non-Jews. Yet somehow you'll never hear any American pundit describe this as persecution. Why is that?

They say Jesus hated hypocrites. He can't like Christians much, then.

so jendray, basically you are justifying the current murderous behavior of the muslims on the fact that others murdered in the past. Yeah, that makes complete sense. Were'nt you liberals all about ending the cycle of violence?

Why not stop making excuses for the muslims causing the mayhem?

No one strong on human rights would have objected to the removal of Saddam Hussein. Obama did and that says it all.

The thousands of Christians who are the either the victims of persecution, or forced to flee their homelands are the collateral damage of a small portion of radical Islam, which has no comparable voice of Islam to counter or object, akin to Christians and Jews who opposed slavery and applied their Judeo-Christian ethic to inform their support for the Civil Rights movement.

The so-called Moderate Muslim, who risks their lives, treasures or reputations defending the oppressed and persecuted Christian, Jew and Hindu, are as rare as fiscally conservative Democrats, and are as ubiquitous as J.D. Salinger and Elvis sightings.

obama only reacts when muslims are killed...
he is not a Christian...
he is anything but a Christian...

"it is time for something new -- a foreign policy that projects both American power and our values. But, I suppose, for an administration obsessed with being "not Bush," that's a tall order."

Yes, Bush promoted our American values like "freedom" and "democracy" (my, what great bumper sticker slogans! even a 5-year-old can understand!) by dropping relentless freedom bombs all over a country that never threatened us in any way, murdering hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocents.

Just keep repeating freedom and democracy over and over again and you can really start to feel the patriotism flowing through you. Mmmmmm, you can almost taste it. America is #1, YEAH! Drop some freedom bombs on those primitive Iraqis! That'll show 'em!

"Why do you think the Armenians got massacred in 1915? Because they were taken under the ostensible protection of Russia, a mistrusted power with a history of invading Ottoman lands. They came to be seen as a dangerous fifth column inviting foreign intervention."
++++++++++++++++++
Interesting way to justify killings... What a BS...

Yes, President Obama reacts only when muslims are killed. He reacts by sending 30,000 more troops in to kill even more muslims. Why is he not committed to the war effort?!?!

More troops and no timelines!! We must stay in Afghanistan forever!! It's the smart thing to do!! Who knows how many more will turn terrorist once they see how many we've killed??

All of you are neck-deep in BS. The invasion of Iraq was THE EVENT that made life untenable for Christians in Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq was a human rights catastrophe- quite apart from being based on lies and being an international crime. Not only have Christians been driven out, half of the country's doctors have fled Iraq. More than a quarter of Baghdad's Sunnis have been driven from their homes. The entire Asian Cup-winning Iraqi football team lives outside the country. All of the sects that once lived together - yes, even under Saddam - now live in ethnically-cleansed enclaves that only communicate with each other by 123mm mortar.

And no, I'm not justifying the persecution of Christians. I'm explaining it, but not based on other people doing mean things in the past. That's not my explanation at all, read it again. My explanation is that these unfortunate Christians are hated because of their perceived association with YOU. With DwightCollins, with StatistQuo, with LETFREEDOMRING2, with skipsailing28.
With Southern Baptist, rapture-ready, evolution-denying, war-loving, people-hating, ill-meaning, brain-dead American "conservative" neofascists and with your goddamned evil wars.

the only way to stop the terrorists from hurting us is to drop freedom bombs on them. who cares if you kill way more civilians than you do terrorists? it's not like we could be creating more terrorists by dropping freedom bombs for a decade....

What, Ilya3, I'm justifying the Armenian genocide now? So I'm not allowed to mention it or I must be defending it?

You say it had nothing to do with fear of Russia? The Armenians were murdered at the exact moment a Russian army was massing on the Ottoman Empire's border, right at the point were Armenians were most numerous. The Armenians had previously appealed to the Czar on several occasions and the Czar had told the Turks they were under his protection.

What's your explanation for the Armenian massacre? Those mean Muslims? You poor fool, go read some history.

The people who murdered the Armenians were the governing cabal of the Empire at that time, the "Committee for Union and Progress", a faction within the Young Turks movement. Does that sound Islamist to you? Get a clue. These were the founders of secular Turkey. They are the people who made it illegal for women to attend school wearing headscarves. They banned Muslim prayer caps. They banned Arabic script to stop people poring over their Korans. They hated Islam so much they actually banned beards in Turkey - true. You know nothing.

letfreedomring wrote:

"No one strong on human rights would have objected to the removal of Saddam Hussein. Obama did and that says it all."

Ummm, that's actually not even in the tiniest way the reason we were given for the invasion, were you out of the country at the time?

stthomas wrote:

"Did you ever think Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003 was about morality and the installation of a democratic government?"

Well, not according to George Bush and Dick Cheney, but what did they know!

JenDray wrote:
My explanation is that these unfortunate Christians are hated because of their perceived association with YOU. With DwightCollins, with StatistQuo, with LETFREEDOMRING2, with skipsailing28.
With Southern Baptist, rapture-ready, evolution-denying, war-loving, people-hating, ill-meaning, brain-dead American "conservative" neofascists and with your goddamned evil wars.

All Christians are not Southern Baptists, evolution deniers, lovers of war, haters, brain dead and ill meaning, but I bet you already knew that. I think, when Christians are persecuted by Muslims, it's because they're non-Muslims.

Guilt by association, terror by association, mass murder by association. You're cool with that? That's swell. Get a grip, JenDray. Your anger has clouded your judgment.

skip:

I'm disappointed because I love a good argument but you're not bringing anything to the table but invective.

"Mr Numbers person: you spend a fair amount of your time whining about the choices Bush made. Why not join us in the modern Era? Oh yeah, that's right, with a Democrat in the oval office it is the other side that must now do the criticizing. The complaints of the former critics are muted now that Obama is basically retaining Bush's tools."

So then you're in favor of a withdrawal from Iraq, Afghanistan and closing Gitmo? They are Bush's tools as you put it are they not? If Obama tries to leave any of those places you will be the first to call him names, or maybe the second after Jennifer

Actually I didn't think I was whining. I thought I was describing why Bush was the worst president on foreign policy since WWII, excepting Jimmy Carter of course, although that is an argument that could be made, especially on behalf of Israel, for whom Carter was a better FP president than Bush.

However you never bring any facts to this discussion, just calling everybody a liberal. Your are very correct that the Muslim world displays a high degree of intolerance, but you don't have any solutions, and you want to blame Obama for the situation he inheirited. I guess on the same level Vietnam was all Nixon's fault, and Koreas was all Eisenhower's fault. Glad we got that squared away.

When it comes to human rights we're going to need to put our own house in order first if we're going to have the moral authority necessary to preach to the rest of the world without being laughed at. Close Guantanamo. Give due process to everyone we're imprisoning. Indict and try the accused torturers among us. Walk away from any "allies" who are engaged in ethnic cleansing and collective punishment.

You know the drill. Practice what we preach.

Much of the thread conforms to the liberal template that if there is Muslim on Muslim violence; Muslim on Jew violence and Muslim on Christian violence; the explanation and solution are still the same. The Jews and Americans and Christians and Bush I and Bush II are all to blame. Muslims are immune from accountability, responsibility or even an awkward moment of self-reflection. Sorry, not buying it for a nanosecond.

It is sad to read this story. Is this meant to be a fair analysis. How many muslims get killed everyday in Ethiopia o r Nigeria??? Do we still know how many muslims got killed in bosnia by coptic kosovos?

How do we know we need peace when washingtonpost laments this kind of post.

Please this whole pointing to Obama benefits only TEA party. We tried the Bush style, now we need a place for Islam to be free in America. Most of this junk post is left by real educated christians??? Sad.

Islam should be given equal status in America first before we point to others. Also, there are no christians in Saudi so let us no cause connfusion.

Islam is one and there Salafism. Islam is the only religion given to us in Quraan.

Let us not crate fear, America should not listen to TEA PARTY FOLLOWERS AND JEW LOBBISTS. Enough is enough, let Obama take the lead to finally free Muslims and by the same talken the christians from past bondage of Bush like think thank. Let us move America to the 21 century not to the style most people are advocating for America on this website.

Islam is peace and this is proven in the Muslim spain.

do human rights include the right of humans to live in a world without religion? religions of all flavours are given continual credence by their automatic inclusion into the basket of 'human rights', yet it is pianfully obvious that religions are responsible for the death, mutilation and abuse of countless humans. when is some intellectual 'leader' going to divorce human rights from religion? and how can a 'leader' of one religious persausion pretend to be accepting of another religion, particularly when the two big ones are, by their nature, mutually exclusive? all world 'leaders' cling to their own brand of fabricated mythology yet claim to take on the responsibility of defending human rights. how many centuries of carnage and lies do we need to witness before we smell the coffe? all claims of all religions have been proved over and over again to be fallacious and protecting religions in any form is tantamount to complicity in their abuses.

You're right, StatistQuo. It was an unfair generalisation on my part to suggest that all Christians love war and hate people. I should have said all AMERICAN Christians. I have nothing against Christians from other countries.

But I do have statistical proof that American Christians love war. http://www.gallup.com/poll/26677/among-religious-groups-jewish-americans-most-strongly-oppose-war.aspx

Christians, as polling showed, were wildly in favour of invading Iraq. Only Mormons were more hot to trot in 2003. Mormons, followed by Protestants, followed by Catholics. And those Proddies who called themselves "evangelical" or "born-again" got an especially bad case of war fever.

Jews and Atheists - in other words, the most educated Americans, the ones who accept modern science etc - opposed the attack on Iraq by clear majorities.

I deal with Americans all the time. It's impossible not to notice that all the most xenophobic, pro-ignorance, ultranationalist, irresponsible, ill-informed Americans are also the most Christian ones. Even their spelling is worse. For Christ's sakes, a survey the other day even showed that US atheists have better BIBLE KNOWLEDGE than US Christians. What could better demonstrate the stupidity and ignorance of American Christians than that?

I routinely see comments here in these pages calling for Mecca to be nuked, or for all billion-plus Muslims to be exterminated. I must have seen that one 20-30 times, calling for a genocide 200 times bigger than Hitler's. Who's making these obscene statements? Goddamned American Christian fanatics. Religion of peace my arse.

this says it all:
========================
You're right, StatistQuo. It was an unfair generalisation on my part to suggest that all Christians love war and hate people. I should have said all AMERICAN Christians. I have nothing against Christians from other countries.

==========================

Nothing quite as rare as an honest liberal. Here we have one such specimen openly admitting to rank bigotry.

wow, liberalism has strayed so far from its original standards that it is virtually unrecognizable. I'm no longer a leftie, even though I admired what they stood for in my callow youth. Mr Reagan got it right: I didn't leave the Democrat party, it left me.