EDITORIAL:
I'm sure today that many will dissect Obama's speech in Cairo and find reasons to applaud his efforts to extend and olive branch to those who are holding swords over our outstretched necks. I'm equally sure that others will dissect his speech to find specific phrases they can endlessly repeat to ridicule the president.
I want to take a wider view, to gather in the entire perspective of what he has done. Here is how I see it.
First, as Obama surely knows having grown up on three continents in a family which had long Muslim roots, that Muslims do not see the world the same way Christians or Jews see the world. The Muslim faith calls for war against any non-Muslim. The dictates of their faith specifically say that Muslims have only three choices when it comes to non-Muslims, either convert them, kill them or keep a few alive to become slaves.
These are not my opinions, these are facts. This is the context of the Muslim world into which Obama stepped in order to deliver his speech. He had to know this. That is why despite the fact his audience was hand picked, they still gasped when he suggested that they become more tolerant.
Christians are much more charitable. In fact, it is only because of our Christian beginnings as a nation that religious freedom exists in the world. Our tolerance of other faiths is a uniquely Christian attribute. Muslims do not share that core value. Their religion teaches intolerance and justifies murder as a tool of that intolerance.
Therefore Obama's speech, his offering of the olive branch, appeals to his Christian countrymen, back home in a nation founded upon Christian principles. To the Muslim world intent upon converting, killing or enslaving all non-believers (infidels) Obama was showing weakness, vulnerability and provided them with an opening.
Reaching out to the Muslim world and asking them to accept our version of "peaceful co-existence" would require them to abandon their faith. Their devotion to their faith would never permit this, and so Obama's speech is likely to have no beneficial effects whatsoever.
He chose to ignore the real life example of how this approach has failed in the past. He should have asked our greatest ally in the world, Great Britain, about the consequences of the Muslim invasion. And he should have to look no further than the last two democratic presidents to see how the radical Muslims of the world have reacted when America comes to a knife fight armed with an olive branch. Jimmy Carter learned and so did Bill Clinton. The radicals acted during Carter's administration, they plotted without fear during Clinton's.
America would be well served to remember that it was upon our continent that our forefathers gave birth to this new nation not only fleeing here to escape religious intolerance in Europe, but coming here to evangelize as Christian missionaries to a savage world.
It would be one thing for Obama to have gone to Cairo and made a bold statement that continued murders in furtherance of the Muslim faith will not be tolerated by the United States, and that based upon their religious creed the world will never trust a Muslim nation to possess weapons of mass destruction. It would be one thing for our president to show strength and say that until the Muslim nations of the world could demonstrate a real and determined policy of religious tolerance within their borders that the world will never trust them to encroach upon any lands where liberty reigns supreme.
Instead, and though he stood erect, he bowed before the Koran, he bowed before Muhammad, and he telegraphed to those hell bent on destroying us, that based upon his special relationship with their religion, America will unclench its fist in the face of threatened harm.
Obama's speech has made the world a more dangerous place, make no mistake about it.
