Shock & Blog
Conveying the idea and, thus, promoting the perception that we hate Muslims and Islam is dangerous and a nationaly security threat. The more Muslims think we hate them, the more likely they will be to fight us.
This does not mean that we abuse them or their Korans and demand that the media avoid telling the story. Freedom of the press, as protected by the first amendment, is essential to any successful democracy. We should not relinquish our freedom as a result of terrorism lest they accomplish their goals.
What this means is that we try to show respect to the detainees and their religion. You must not have read the several reports that treating prisoners like enemies only makes them less likely to provide information. The best method of pursuading captives to talk is to treat them as friends. The information that they provide could save American lives. Simply put, everyone is benefitted by mutual respect.
By the way, Jinx, if officers in the US military were urinating on Bibles, you would hear of it. Your bogus claims that the media would not report on this kind of treatment if it happened to Christians are only believable to a few paranoid people with no common sense. The fact remains that equivalent US military abuse of Christians HAS NEVER HAPPENED. You have no reason to believe that such treatment would go unnoticed. Clearly, you invented this charge in your imagination. This is not about a media bias against Christians, except in your paranoid universe.
I'll say it again, Jinx: stop making things up.
I completely agree with your first post, Brandon, but I would add that media outlets like Newsweek that have worldwide distribution have an obligation to check the facts behind the rumors their sources feed them. Had Newsweek bothered to do that with the Koran flushing story, they'd have discovered that it was not Americans who committed such a disrespectful act, but Muslim prisoners themselves. Also, you (and most of the MSM) fail to mention that of the five abuses by Americans that actually occurred, not all were deliberate. And whether or not the abuses were accidental or deliberate, the persons responsible were appropriately punished and amends were made for the affected prisoners.
As for your second post, Brandon, I was not specifically refering to Americans abusing Bibles. In anti-Christian countries like Saudi Arabia and China, Bibles are destroyed on a regular basis. This has been going on for years, but never does the MSM report on it. Why is that?
Quite frankly, the Koran abuses that happened at Gitmo were rare, isolated events, not a systematic pattern. Five cases among thousands of prisoners over two years is virtually a non-story.
The Koran abuses are not only a threat to our country perpetrated by the very people commissioned to protect it, but this is indicative of an overall trend in the government and military policy toward prisoners that also puts our security at risk.
Our government is disappearing people and abusing them, defending our abuse by simply screaming that it is not abuse. Often, in a practice called "extreme rendition", prisoners are flown to foreign countries to be imprisoned. The policy is supposed to let other countries deal with their own criminals, but they are never given trials to determine whether the accusations are true. It is assumed and widely known that these prisoners are tortured and put to death by unusual means. None of this is good PR for us in the Muslim world.
I'll admit that much of what I just wrote seems a bit like a red herring, but I think it is important nonetheless.
To answer your question about why the media does not report on the many abuses of Christians throughout the world, I would have to say that such a story would not sell. This is not to say it is not important; it is that people already know that there is a great deal of abuse against Christians and other religious people throughout the world. It is a story that is as old as humanity.
The War on Terror is what sells these days because it is what is on people's minds. Thus, when our own military is caught doing something that seems to confirm to many otherwise peaceful Muslims throughout the world that we may actually be "The Great Satan" after all, it is a big story, regardless of whether or not it was a systematic pattern. We should be glad that it wasn't systematic!
Clearly, Saudis burning Bibles will never get us killed.
Dude,
Jinx is my mother's name. It's a chick's name. Why are you going by a woman's name if your a dude?
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