Unfinished Business in Egyptian Revolution. A story on AOL News addressed violence by the Egyptian military against a crowd in Tahrir Square who want the head of the military removed from power. Not surprisingly, the anti-Moslem, anti-Obama crowd of Radical Right propagandists descended upon the comments area following that story. So I countered some of their vicious propaganda. I present below 33 of my comments, comprising some 1,700 words. You can infer most of what I was replying to, but in some places I have clarified that in brackets. The distinct comments are separated by *. (I am working on a major post to draw together various strands I have been puzzling over for a long time, as to what lies behind the viciousness of political and religious discourse in the United States today, but that is not yet ready.)

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All lies. Egypt is NOT in the hands of Moslem terrorists and mullahs, and your quote is completely misleading: >>Here is the accurate and more complete quote: "Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow this easy pattern. In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."<< (http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/o/obama-books.htm) So it has nothing to do with Moslem terrorism or extremism of any kind, nor even with anything outside the United States. Kindly stop falsifying what the President has said.
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I have already shown your quote about Moslems as false and misleading. Let me now address your fatuous remark that the President's days in power are numbered. Of COURSE they are. We have fixed terms and a two-term limit to EVERY Presidency. POTUS is a temp job. For everybody.
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We see where your loyalties lie. Americans side with democracy and the United States, not military dictatorship and Israel.
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The only mention of [the Muslim Brotherhood] was a protest against Israeli attacks upon Gaza, so Liberals are completely content to have the inhuman behavior of Israel pointed out.
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The militia at Concord and Lexington were "rabble" in the eyes of King George III. Egypt needs elections, not military rule. Military rule does NOT create order, nor justice. Egypt had decades of "emergency" rule. Now it needs democratic elections. If after internationally monitored, "free and fair" elections, demonstrators or rioters still refuse to accept the legitimacy of the government, that would be an entirely different situation from what we are seeing now.
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Yes, I knew you RadRite racist[ ] loons would blame Obama. Not a sparrow falls from the sky but Obama shot it down.
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The Egyptian democracy movement PAUSED to let the military run the country after Mubarak left, but ONLY long enuf for the country to hold elections. The elections have not yet been held, and a field marshal who was part and parcel of the Mubarak regime is still in charge. Of COURSE Egyptians want him out.
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Obama has been very measured in regard to what [Middle Eastern countries' demonstrations and democracy movements] to involve the U.S. in, and what to stay away from. Many pro-democracy Americans, of all parties and persuasions, want us to promote democracy in the most effective way.
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The bulk of planet Earth has ALWAYS been ruled by despots, local or national or imperial. The demand for democracy in a region that has never had it is very good news, and we should do everything in our power to promote its best practices and goals.
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Obama is on the side of democracy. What side are you on?
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Stop lying. We have NO "self avowed King".
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Many established democracies would have had a new national government in place by now, if the former government/administration had been ousted. Egyptians do NOT want a caretaker military government to turn into another dictatorship. Who can blame them?
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So you think that not rushing to conclusions is a bad idea? that we should always rush to conclusions? "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread "Meaning "The rash or inexperienced will attempt things that wiser people are more cautious of." (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fools-rush-in-where-angels-fear-to-tread.html)
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The Egyptian military did NOT act in Bahrain. That would be the Saudi military, under the control of a King, not a military government installed after a popular uprising in Egypt. The U.S. military engagement with the Egyptian military has, over the long term, starkly reduced dictatorial temptations in that military force. I see absolutely no connection between Gates and any of this. Even if he was installed by a Republican, he serves a Democratic President who is forcefully on the side of democratizing the Middle East. But so was Bush. So rarely do we have bipartisan, Liberal/Conservative agreement that we should welcome democracy movements in the Middle East.
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Islam started 600 years after Christianity. What was the Christian world like 600 years ago? Hint: there were NO democracies in Christendom. Not one. The United States was the first modern democracy, and we were ALONE in the world in that. We are no longer alone, and the democracies of the world are now in position to help create other democracies, which we should be glad to do.
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You don't wonder any such thing [if the demonstrators wish Mubarak were still in power]. I have seen NO ONE demonstrating for the return of Mubarak.
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If Obama were [really] a dictator, you'd be dead.
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The Moslem Brotherhood is not in charge of Egypt, so we need not wonder if your characterization of what the Moslem Brotherhood wants is accurate or slanderous propaganda.
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You are exactly wrong. The crowds' demand is for more change, and the military has not asserted its right to govern in perpetuity.
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Military government in Egypt is supposed to be for the short term only. The people need to keep pressing for elections.
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Perhaps you need to stop looking into a crystal ball, and stop hoping for a self-fulfilling prophecy. The mere fact that you say something means absolutely nothing in the real world. But you don't like the real world.
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So one incident undoes a mass movement, does it? Why are you people so quick to rush to judgment and project huge conclusions from trivial incidents?
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Obama helped oust a dictator. Radicals have NOT taken over Egypt, and there is precious little reason to believe they ever will. But the Radical Right -- speaking of radicals -- is HOPING that Egyptian democracy will be crushed, so they can beat up on Obama. And all because they can't stand a black man being in the White House. If innocent Egyptians must suffer so you can 'justify' your unjustified, racist hatred of President Obama, then innocent Egyptians must suffer and die -- because that's what you want for them. That is contemptible.
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No one should rely upon YOUR statements about the Moslem Brotherhood, nor Marxism, nor President Obama's mother, nor the President's upbringing. Your history (be it accurate or fanciful and slanderous) of the Moslem Brotherhood and any given member of that organization is IRRELEVANT to discussions of events in Egypt at this time, since the Brotherhood does NOT control Egypt and has modified some of its stances in recent years, long before the present democracy movement. As for whether President Obama will be "kicked out of office", re-elected along with a Democratic House and Senate in a landslide, or anything else will have to await late 2012. You will be 'heart'broken if Egyptians succeed in creating a democratic, multireligiously tolerant culture, and we can hear the hope for bad things to happen to Egyptians in all the comments from the Radical Right. Shame on you.
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Note the negative votes [to excerpts from Wikipedia about the Moslem Brotherhood]! There are indeed none so blind as those who will not see. But all this discussion of the Moslem Brotherhood is aside from the issue of the present pro-democracy/anti-military dictatorship movement.
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Few people have as yet seen how everything fits together in the complicated and highly sophisticated drive of the obscenely rich to reduce everyone else to slavery -- wage slavery and debt slavery. They promote division, so we are all fiting among ourselves -- white against black against Hispanic; middle class against poor; straight against gay; Protestant against Catholic against Moslem; and on and on -- while they take everybody's money, and future, and reduce us all to penury. All, that is, but the rich.
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You are MAKING ALL THAT UP. There has been no imposition of shariah law, no stonings, no governmental virginity tests, nothing of the sort. You're just MAKING IT UP.
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The American Revolution killed more people, per capita, than just about any other conflict in our history. Revolutions are untidy affairs, and not everyone is so lucky as to have a dictator thousands of miles away. Even after our Revolution, the British ruling class stirred up the Indians in our frontier areas, and otherwise fomented a second war, the War of 1812. They lost that one too, since its intent was to break up the United States and take us over again. They also lost the Civil War, in which they tried to destroy the United States AGAIN. We managed to overcome all that violence and move on. I hope Egyptians can too. But it seems to me that a lot of people in this comments area want Egyptians to fail. I want them to succeed.
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The article does NOT say the anti-Israel demonstration was 100% Moslem Brotherhood, only that it included "a large contingent of Muslim Brotherhood members".
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Whether the Moslem Brotherhood aspires to overthrow incipient democracy in Egypt is not yet established. Nor is it certain that an attempt to do so would succeed. I can't see into the future. You can't either.
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Human rights and civil rights are just two different names for the same thing. So there is no legitimacy to suggesting we need to forget about our civil-rights past and ignore the human rights of Egyptians or other people around the world. Liberals hold to basic principles entrenched in, among other places, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and our Bill of Rights. None of those documents is passé or irrelevant today.
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Actually, I try to balance a discussion that always turns unbalanced when the Radical Right descends upon an AOL News comments area to attack Obama, Moslems, etc. There are some people who don't understand that much of what they see here is a campaign of disinformation by the Radical Right to mislead casual visitors into thinking that the United States is dominantly Radical Right. I don't know exactly how these "wingnuts", as you call them, know which stories to descend upon. I'm certain that many of them are in independent contact with each other, as by email. What I don't know is if there is some kind of master email list that sends out the day's target articles and provides talking points and suggested language. I wouldn't be surprised.
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You know NOTHING about George Soros but what you have been told by your puppetmasters.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,446 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:46 PM