Oh, For Pity's Sake ...

[Guest TheProudDuck]

Bush drops 'crusade' from Eisenhower's D-Day message

Wed Jun 2, 2004 14:50:03 ET

President George W. Bush compared the war on terrorism to World War II on Wednesday but trimmed one famous Allied message and dropped the word "crusade."

In a speech at the US Air Force Academy graduation, Bush recited part of General Dwight Eisenhower's message to troops ahead of the D-Day landings but carefully quoted around the term, which has deeply negative connotations in the Muslim world.

"'Soldiers, sailors and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force,'" Bush quoted Eisenhower as saying. "'The eyes the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you."

Eisenhower's original message to the troops opened with: "Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months.

"The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you."

Now let me get this straight. It's okay to use the word "jihad," because liberal Muslims have reinterpreted it to mean some kind of nonviolent inner struggle, but "crusade" is off limits? Even in a sixty-year old quote, from one of our greatest historical messages?

I swear, the West's condescension towards other cultures, by refusing to hold them to the same standards we hold ourselves, knows no bounds.

[Guest Taoist_Saint]

[Guest Taoist_Saint]

:)

[Guest TheProudDuck]

But the point is that the word "crusade" was Eisenhower's reference, not Bush's. Any Muslim who thought Eisenhower's call for a crusade against Nazis was Bush's call for a holy war against Muslims, is not someone whose opinion I need to care about. He'd be a mouth-breathing moron who'd believe the most paranoid fantasies about us infidels regardless of what we did or said.

The reference to a "great crusade" was contained in General Eisenhower's message to the troops going in on D-Day, and it was an integral part of the message. Censoring history rubs me really, really, wrong, whether it's left-wing academics doing it to make America look as bad as possible, a conservative President trying to avoid giving offense to the easily offended, or Mormon practitioners of "faithful history." Truth, as the hymn goes, is the first and the last. Sanitizing Eisenhower's message presents a false, and therefore untruthful, view of history.

And I don't buy that "crusade" necessarily has more baggage than "jihad." Both words started out with the express meaning of a violent struggle in the name of God. The meaning of both words, over time, evolved to express any kind of noble struggle. If anything, "crusade" has undergone even more of this transformation -- there aren't any actual warlike Crusades going on, and haven't been since about the 14th century, while there's no shortage of Muslims who explicitly declare themselves to be waging jihad old-style.

And to the extent the Crusades "targeted Muslims" and were intended to conquer Palestine, that was only because the original jihad had conquered those places, along with half of Christendom, in the first place! The Crusades were a defensive reaction to the original Jihad -- and ultimately failed in any event. The Crusades left virtually no political fingerprint; none of the formerly Christian lands reconquered in the Crusades remained Christian, while the gains of the Jihad conquests (except Spain and parts of the Balkans) remained Muslim.

Yeah, the Crusades were brutal. Medieval warfare was like that. The Crusades were no worse in that regard than Muslim-on-Muslim and Christian-on-Christian warfare of the time. (The subsequent Mongol conquest of much of the Muslim world was a whole lot worse.) It didn't help that some of the first Crusader parties to march (contingents consisting mostly of peasants) got massacred, camp followers and all. That doesn't excuse the main-force Crusaders' later atrocities, but it does provide some perspective. As I've written elsewhere, once one side shows that a fight is to be to the death, the other side generally follows. It happened in World War II; at the beginning, Allied air force generals were skittish about bombing the "private property" of German munitions plants; by the end, after the Luftwaffe's destruction of Rotterdam and the Blitz of English cities, the Allies felt no compunction about absolutely rubbing out Dresden, Potsdam, and so forth. War does tend to brutalize both sides, no matter how clear-cut the ultimate issues are.

So suck it up, Muslims. If you get to use "jihad," I'm going to use "crusade." My "crusade" doesn't refer to a holy war. If your "jihad" doesn't either, great; if it does, I wish you a short and final meeting with the Marines.

[Snow]

Originally posted by TheProudDuck@Jun 2 2004, 12:04 PM

Now let me get this straight. It's okay to use the word "jihad," because liberal Muslims have reinterpreted it to mean some kind of nonviolent inner struggle, but "crusade" is off limits?

Let's see. Bush gave the altered quote so by "West" I assume you mean Bush. And, I also assume, that when you say "It's okay to use the word "jihad,"", you mean that Bush thinks it is okay to use the word "jihad" in a positive sense of motivating ourselves to bring justice to the world.

Right?

[Guest TheProudDuck]

Originally posted by Snow+Jun 2 2004, 05:28 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Snow @ Jun 2 2004, 05:28 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--TheProudDuck@Jun 2 2004, 12:04 PM

Now let me get this straight.  It's okay to use the word "jihad," because liberal Muslims have reinterpreted it to mean some kind of nonviolent inner struggle, but "crusade" is off limits?

Let's see. Bush gave the altered quote so by "West" I assume you mean Bush. And, I also assume, that when you say "It's okay to use the word "jihad,"", you mean that Bush thinks it is okay to use the word "jihad" in a positive sense of motivating ourselves to bring justice to the world.

Right?

You assume correctly. "West" means "Bush." And "straight" means "rutabaga" and "okay" means "parsnip."

Actually, what I meant was that Bush, in omitting Eisenhower's use of the word "crusade" in his D-Day message, was acting in a particularly Western tradition of deferring to the presumed sensibilities of other people to a degree we wouldn't insist upon ourselves if the tables were turned. In another context, Bush referred to a similar mentality as "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

The jihad/crusade issue is a perfect example. Our opinion-making elites fall all over themselves to assure us that "jihad" really doesn't mean "holy war" (actually, it's perfectly clear that this was the original meaning), but rather any positive struggle for good. The same elites then insist that it's terribly insensitive to use the word "crusade" -- which has a virtually identical meaning, and which has undergone an even greater softening evolution in its meaning.

I'm not sure that Bush, personally, buys into the "jihad means benevolent struggle" concept. (Although he did say Islam is a "religion of peace," which, considering the percentage of the world's wars that involve Islamic states or movements, seems to make the phrase meaningless.) In this particular case, though, he's paying way too much attention to the Lords of Condescending Tolerance, which I think is lame and counterproductive.

[Guest Taoist_Saint]

[Lindy]

Crusade.....Merriam-Webster second meaning:

2 : a remedial enterprise undertaken with zeal and enthusiasm

I will agree with PD...... we need to stop ###### footing around and act like the nation we are. What kind of choke hold does another nation(s) have on us if we have to act like a scared puppy and edit our nouns, so they won't be misinterpreted as a verb?

Oh my heck.....I was edited!

The word was referring to a cat.....you know a CAT walking softly

[Guest TheProudDuck]

In other news, Los Angeles County has just caved in to an ACLU demand to remove a cross symbolizing Los Angeles County's Spanish mission history from the county seal. The city of Redlands gave in to a similar threat about a month ago.

[Jenda]

Originally posted by TheProudDuck@Jun 3 2004, 09:50 AM

In other news, Los Angeles County has just caved in to an ACLU demand to remove a cross symbolizing Los Angeles County's Spanish mission history from the county seal. The city of Redlands gave in to a similar threat about a month ago.

Next thing you know, they will be demanding that LA change the name of the city.

[Guest Starsky]

Originally posted by Jenda+Jun 3 2004, 10:12 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Jenda @ Jun 3 2004, 10:12 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--TheProudDuck@Jun 3 2004, 09:50 AM

In other news, Los Angeles County has just caved in to an ACLU demand to remove a cross symbolizing Los Angeles County's Spanish mission history from the county seal.  The city of Redlands gave in to a similar threat about a month ago.

Next thing you know, they will be demanding that LA change the name of the city.

LOL...no kidding. Now if they were called Los Diablos....

[Guest Taoist_Saint]

[Tr2]

it could give them the impression that Bush has started a Holy War.

###### them!!!

[Guest TheProudDuck]

Originally posted by Taoist_Saint@Jun 3 2004, 12:51 PM

I am sort of neutral in this controversy about removing of Christian crosses, prayers, commandments etc. from public places.

I do not really think it is necessary to remove them, and I understand it would anger Christians.

However, I think that if they keep those things up, then minority communities should actively try to get their symbols, scriptures, etc. displayed in public.

Why don't American Hindus get some funding from their community to build a big statue of Shiva in a public park? Why don't we see Buddha statues sitting outside hospitals?

That would be a demonstration of true religious freedom.

Actually, here is a good question...

Is it ok to put up a new religious symbol in a public place, or is it only ok to leave alone the ones that are already there?

That's a great question. I would actually be disinclined to put overtly religious symbols on public seals or property -- but it REALLY frosts me when people try to remove existing ones. It just strikes me way too much of Stalin airbrushing Trotsky out of official Party photographs. And I'm not going to be convinced that the crusade to make the public sphere kreuzrein isn't motivated at least in part by a bit of bad will, of gleeful thumbsticking in the eyes of religious people. I've affiliated with way too many ardent secularists to believe otherwise.

[Guest Taoist_Saint]

[Guest Taoist_Saint]

[Guest Starsky]

What I don't understand is why someone who isn't religious, who doesn't believe in the commandments, who doesn't believe in God...cares what historically has been present in court rooms, parks, on buildings....on money....why it bothers them...if they don't believe in it..

Imagine going to the Greek Isles or Rome and have everything that had to do with mythology taken out/removed because people didn't believe it was true or right, or whatever....

Good grief...to me...their desire to have these things/symbols of religious belief only proves they do believe there is validity to them, that they do represent truth and they just can't deal with their own guilt!

Just tell me...what could be more valid in a court room than a statement: Thou shalt not kill

Thou shalt not steal

THOU SHALT NOT BARE FALSE WITNESS

Thou shalt not commit adultry ( really

good for divorce court..)

[Guest Taoist_Saint]

[Guest TheProudDuck]

Tao --

Of course, if we do not remove them, then we are saying it was ok to put them there in the first place.

I think it was OK to put the symbols there in the first place. It was a different country then, and there was less occasion for people to be offended. For one thing, there were fewer people of other faiths; for another, the religious minorities that were present, weren't nearly as indoctrinated with the idea that public expression of a religious symbol or concept that a person doesn't hold is offensive. In short, what would create excessive displeasure now, wouldn't have caused the same problem fifty years ago.

In addition, I don't agree that "if we do not remove them, then we are saying it was ok to put them there in the first place." Right now, next to the Upper Newport Bay ecological preserve a few hundred yards from my house, there are the remains of a salt evaporation operation that used to exist there. The local feudal lord (the Irvine Company, which owned and developed half of Orange County) built an industrial plant right in the middle of a beautiful tidal wetland, a major migratory bird stop. Heck, no, it wasn't OK to put the saltworks there. Most of the plant got washed away in a flood in the late sixties, but some dikes and basins remain. The fact that they haven't been removed, doesn't mean it was OK for them to be there in the first place. It means that removing them would either do more harm than good (by disrupting the ecology that has adapted to the landscape as it stands) or not be cost effective.

Or consider what happened in eastern Europe after World War II, or in coastal Turkey after World War I. Borders got shifted around wildly; millions of people were driven from their homes. It simply wouldn't be productive to try to set these historical wrongs right. It would do more harm than good. Making that judgment doesn't mean that the long-past wrongs, weren't wrong.

Those may not be great analogies, but I hope you see my point. Creating something in the first place may be seen, in retrospect, not to have been a good idea -- but removing it may do more harm than good. In this case, editing out a significant part of the past suggests a kind of animosity to that part of the past, and gratuitiously sticks a thumb in the eye of people who value it.

I was not saying that we should not put the 10 Commandments in a courtroom. I was saying we should also post other scriptures there to make things fair.

I disagree. The Koran, the Vedas, or the Doctrine & Covenants played virtually no part in the development of the American concept of the rule of law. Biblical law did, even if the route was indirect, and the Constitution itself is a secular document. The concepts of natural law, a rational universe, equality, the innate worth and dignity of the individual and his resulting right to liberty are part of a tradition that stretches back from Jefferson, Adams and company through Montesquieu, Locke, Aquinas, and Augustine to the Hebrew metaphysical tradition, though of course with liberal borrowings from Germanic tribal traditions and Roman law. So a display of the Ten Commandments would seem to be a monument to law, while a display of a law code that had nothing to do with the foundations of the American legal system (like the scriptures of other religions) would only be a monument to religion, which might violate the constitutional establishment clause.

[Snow]

Originally posted by TheProudDuck@Jun 2 2004, 05:58 PM

In this particular case, though, he's paying way too much attention to the Lords of Condescending Tolerance, which I think is lame and counterproductive.

In this particular case I think he is paying attention to what happened that last time he used the word "crusade" in the context of current situation with Islamic countries and cultures - actually terrorism but it was viewed by some as meaning Islam generally - and he didn't want to get burned a second time one, by middle eastern countries with whom he wants establism or maintain a respectful relationship and two, by the media looking for another hot button baton with which to beat him.

[Guest Taoist_Saint]

[Guest Starsky]

I think putting some zen up around the courts would be wonderful....

I think putting up anything which promotes a better society should be constitutional....I don't see how commandments from one book can be played out as combining church and state.

Since when does 10 commandments of values constitute a church?

[Guest TheProudDuck]

Originally posted by Snow+Jun 3 2004, 05:14 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Snow @ Jun 3 2004, 05:14 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--TheProudDuck@Jun 2 2004, 05:58 PM

In this particular case, though, he's paying way too much attention to the Lords of Condescending Tolerance, which I think is lame and counterproductive.

In this particular case I think he is paying attention to what happened that last time he used the word "crusade" in the context of current situation with Islamic countries and cultures - actually terrorism but it was viewed by some as meaning Islam generally - and he didn't want to get burned a second time one, by middle eastern countries with whom he wants establism or maintain a respectful relationship and two, by the media looking for another hot button baton with which to beat him.

I do think President Bush was trying to avoid getting a new round of flak over using the word "crusade" -- although in this case, the omission seems even more obvious and eager-to-please, since it wasn't even Bush's word, but Eisenhower's, that was being quoted. It was about as obvious as the time I was hearing a men's special musical number in a singles ward, singing "Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy," and the guys made a point of singing the line "Some poor fainting, struggling seaMAN" (pronouncing it like "baa", not the usual flat "a" sound) to avoid the word sounding like, well, what the old Brethren would have called "the pure fountains of life." Which, of course, just brought that precise word to everyone's mind, and set them rolling in their chairs trying to stifle the juvenile laughter.

I'm just so sick of seeing decent people going out of their way to avoid getting cheap criticism from the indecent, that my first reaction is just to spit in their eye and ignore their wailings.

[Guest Taoist_Saint]

[Guest Starsky]

Originally posted by Taoist_Saint+Jun 3 2004, 06:57 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Taoist_Saint @ Jun 3 2004, 06:57 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--Starsky@Jun 3 2004, 06:47 PM

I don't see how commandments from one book can be played out as combining church and state.

I didn't say it combined church and state. I said that in the 18th Century we had separation of church and state, but it was not complete because there was still a Christian culture in our government.

Since when does 10 commandments of values constitute a church?

You are right...they don't...only the first 4 commandments represent laws unique to the Judeo-Christian tradition. If the first 4 commandments were converted to American laws, then we would then be crossing the line between Church and State.

I wasn't putting you as the one ...Tao...I was addressing the fouled up perspective of the ACLU and government bodies who constantly destroy historical placques of the ten commandments, prayers in public or governmental buildings, and other things.... all in the name of keeping church and state separate....

God doesn't constitute church. Even the word God doesn't constitute church....

Neither does edicts of moral behavior....even the commandment to love God can be and has been overtly interpreted on an individuals preferences of belief....or lack of it.

Can an athiest actually state his beliefs or lack of them without using the word or concept of God?

I just think the concept of 'separation of church and state' has actually been turned into a very focussed attack on the Christians...period. When in the beginning, the whole purpose was to keep the government from running the churches....and the churches from running the government......it had nothing to do with practicing religion in governmental places....only the running of them....

This has totally be lost in the perverted and twisted use to persecute the christian churches.

It has nothing to do with non-christian churches....