Category Archives: Obama Administration

The surge be praised but pass the ammunition

Afghanistan, Election 2008, Iraq, Iraq War

The potential meltdown of Wall Street has brought the economy front and center as “the” issue in the closing days of the election cycle. Even Friday’s debate, originally planned to focus on foreign policy, started out on the state of the economy and looming bail-out plan in congress. But Iraq is not about to disappear from the news. If the only measure of progress in Iraq is the raw number of U.S. casualties, then the “surge” be praised, but keep passing the ammunition. Darfur is also out of the daily news cycle these days, but the killing there has hardly abated. Afghanistan does make the headlines, in part because U.S. casualties are rising dramatically this year.

So five years and counting after the shock-and-awe sweep through Iraq and the May Day announcement of “Mission Accomplished” by George W. Bush, the mission continues and the death toll keeps rising. Here is yesterday’s count from al-Jazeera:

Deadly car bombs rock Baghdad Continue reading The surge be praised but pass the ammunition →

A Strategic Error, a Tactical Mistake

Apocalypse Watch, Election 2008, Luke R. E. Publican

Last night Senators Obama and McCain squared off for the first debate, setting off a feeding frenzy among surrogate spinmeisters around the mediasphere. It was the Old Man and the Sea Change. So who won? Who landed the most blows? Who survived? If this had been a heavyweight bout, there would have been a decision ringside with judges who could tell real blows from low blows. The pandering of pundits only goes round and round with no “real” winner. The only way political debates ever matter is at the polls on election day. Of course, John McCain’s campaign knew ahead of time that he won. Even before McCain agreed at the last minute to honor his commitment to the independent debate commission and the American people (not to mention Ole Miss), his campaign (apparently not in suspension, just in free fall) put up an ad Friday morning on the Wall Street Journal that claimed McCain as the winner.

You could say it was a draw, although not with much blood loss. But there were a number of strategic errors and tactical mistakes. Continue reading A Strategic Error, a Tactical Mistake →

Anti-Obsession Medicine

Election 2008, Film and Video, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media

[As reported in an earlier post, the Islamophobic pseudo-documentary ‘Obsession’ has recently been sent out in key states on behalf of the Palin/McCain/Lieberman campaign. Now there is a website devoted to debunking the film’s prejudicial claims and slanted propaganda. This is called Obsession with Hate, a project of the “Hate Hurts America” campaign. See the website for details, but here is an excerpt…]

What is ‘Obsession’?

Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West is a 2005 anti-Muslim propaganda film put together by controversial anti-Muslim figures to further the perceived divide between Western and Muslim audiences. 28 million copies of the DVD were recently distributed by a mysteriously-funded entity by the name of the Clarion Fund with the help of 70 US newspapers in a curious and unprecedented campaign. This large distribution, particularly given it was targeted to swing states in the current elections cycle, piqued the interest of many, especially civil rights watchdogs.

Why is ‘Obsession’ a hate film, can we deny that radical violent Muslims exist? Continue reading Anti-Obsession Medicine →

The Push to ‘Otherize’ Obama

Apocalypse Watch, Election 2008, Islamophobia


Examples of the Islamophobic hate campaign against Senator Obama

[Webshaykh’s Note: The following op ed column by Nicholas Kristof should set off alarm bells in all concerned citizens, especially Muslims. The ugly Janus of racial prejudice and religious bigotry is on full display. I invite comments on what we as concerned citizens and scholars can do to combat this Islamophobic hate, which will not go away after the election, no matter who wins. To paraphrase a wise saying, the only thing needed for such Islamophobic evil to prevail is for the rest of us to do nothing. I invite all who read this to send me comments on how best to counteract this hate. If you know of good resources online or in publications, please let me know.]

The Push to ‘Otherize’ Obama

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, The New York Times, September 20, 2008
Here’s a sad monument to the sleaziness of this presidential campaign: Almost one-third of voters “know” that Barack Obama is a Muslim or believe that he could be.

In short, the political campaign to transform Mr. Obama into a Muslim is succeeding. The real loser as that happens isn’t just Mr. Obama, but our entire political process.

A Pew Research Center survey released a few days ago found that only half of Americans correctly know that Mr. Obama is a Christian. Meanwhile, 13 percent of registered voters say that he is a Muslim, compared with 12 percent in June and 10 percent in March.

More ominously, a rising share — now 16 percent — say they aren’t sure about his religion because they’ve heard “different things” about it. Continue reading The Push to ‘Otherize’ Obama →

Making America Stupid

Election 2008, Journalism and Media

Making America Stupid
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, The New York Times, September 14, 2008

Imagine for a minute that attending the Republican convention in St. Paul, sitting in a skybox overlooking the convention floor, were observers from Russia, Iran and Venezuela. And imagine for a minute what these observers would have been doing when Rudy Giuliani led the delegates in a chant of “drill, baby, drill!”

I’ll tell you what they would have been doing: the Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan observers would have been up out of their seats, exchanging high-fives and joining in the chant louder than anyone in the hall — “Yes! Yes! Drill, America, drill!” — because an America that is focused first and foremost on drilling for oil is an America more focused on feeding its oil habit than kicking it.

Why would Republicans, the party of business, want to focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century technology — fossil fuels — rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology — renewable energy? As I have argued before, it reminds me of someone who, on the eve of the I.T. revolution — on the eve of PCs and the Internet — is pounding the table for America to make more I.B.M. typewriters and carbon paper. “Typewriters, baby, typewriters.”
Continue reading Making America Stupid →

Obsession: Potent, Powerful, Provocative

Danish Cartoon Controversy, Election 2008, Film and Video, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media

Potent, powerful, and provocative. That’s what Nordstrom department stores have to say about Obsession, Calvin Klein’s cologne for men. These qualities are shared, no doubt, by another Obsession, a DVD currently being distributed by the Clarion Fund (http://clarionfund.org/), a nonprofit shell organization devoted to propagandizing against Islam. Subtitled “Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” copies of Obsession have been distributed as “paid advertising” in dozens of American newspapers, including the Charlotte Observer and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Desperate for cash, traditional print media are not very fussy about their advertisers these days. Ann Caulkins, the publisher of the Charlotte Observer, told the paper’s religion reporter that the DVD met the newspaper’s criteria for ads: “We’re all for freedom of expression, freedom of speech. This is in no way reflecting our opinions, but it is something we allow,” she said, adding that the newspaper would not allow material that is racist, profane, or “offers graphic images of body parts,” which at least distinguishes the paper from anything in the CSI television franchise. Continue reading Obsession: Potent, Powerful, Provocative →

Pro-McCain Group Dumping 28 Million Terror Scare DVDs in Swing States

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Election 2008, Film and Video, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Israel, Terrorism Issue


Sally Lopez of Lemoyne, PA displays a copy of the DVD that came in the mail.

by Erik Ose, The Latest Outrage, September 12, 2008

This week, 28 million copies of a right-wing, terror propaganda DVD are being mailed and bundled in newspaper deliveries to voters in swing states. The 60-minute DVDs, titled “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” are landing on doorsteps in a campaign coinciding with the 7th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Funding is coming from a New York-based group called the Clarion Fund, a shadowy outfit whose financial backers are The program was originally shown on Fox News in the days leading up to the 2006 mid-term elections, and right-wing activist David Horowitz toured the country screening the film on college campuses during 2007. Mainstream religious groups have called Obsession biased and divisive. It cuts between scenes of Nazi rallies and footage of Muslim children being encouraged to become suicide bombers. Continue reading Pro-McCain Group Dumping 28 Million Terror Scare DVDs in Swing States →

Strait Talk from Palin

Election 2008, Luke R. E. Publican


GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin was interviewed on ABC, noting that she can handle foreign policy with Russia because from her state of Alaska she can actually see Russia. Perhaps not from her major’s office in Wasilla or capitol office in Juneau (which is off the map shown above to the bottom right)…

In the past month or so this blog has shifted emphasis from the large swathe of posts covering some aspect of the study of Islam or the Middle East to the current presidential election in the United States. In large part this is because the political game overrides the “united” part with a partisan division into red and blue states. The candidates have specific stands, as well as generic punch lines for the public, on a range of these issues. Certainly the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which daily claim American military lives and many more civilians, are a major part of the electoral mix. Before the conventions it was John McCain, the proud war-first-not-country-first candidate vs. Barak Obama, who had the judgment to say going into Iraq was a big mistake.

But McCain surprised everyone (including party pooper — and I mean that literally — Joe Lieberman, no doubt) by choosing a VP candidate with zero foreign policy experience, who had never left the country (outside of tourist visits to Canada and Mexico) until a ceremonial trip to visit the Alaska National Guard troops (which she has no authority over when outside Alaska) in Kuwait, and who thinks being next to Russia across the Bering Strait makes her a specialist on post-Cold-War policy making. What I want to know is how strong the binoculars are from Juneau, where you can sure see Canada on a clear day, or Anchorage. It may not matter if the hottest governor in the nation is prepared to get even hotter and go to the gates of hell to look Putin (apparently she does not know how to pronounce Dmitry Medvedev’s name) in the face with that pitbull smile of hers. Of course, after all, as she stated, from her state of Alaska she can actually see Russia. If seeing is believing, Palin is the poster child for Republican optical illusions. Continue reading Strait Talk from Palin →