Remember: We Are Not at War with Islam

[Obama] called on Muslims worldwide to “to explicitly, forcefully, and consistently reject the ideology of al Qaeda and ISIL.”

“Their propaganda has coerced young people to travel abroad to fight their wars, and turned students into suicide bombers,” Obama said. “We must offer an alternative vision.”

  Think Progress

Okay, number one: propaganda is not coercion. Not even close. And our propaganda has induced students to join up to go kill some Arabs. I don’t see much, if any, difference.

General Martin Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month: “ISIL will ultimately be defeated when their cloak of religious legitimacy is stripped away and the populations on which they have imposed themselves reject them.”

We could do with some stripping away of religious legitimacy cloaks in this country ourselves.

[O]ver and over again, past encounters show that horrific manipulations of religion are clearly best countered, first and foremost, by an alternative theology that dares believers to pursue divine justice — and peace — rather than terror.

So, we need to fight religion with religion? I think that’s part of the problem, isn’t it?

“Pursue divine justice.” Just how does one do that, assuming that one is not divine?

Obama seems far more dedicated than Bush to prioritizing alternative religious ideologies alongside military force, and his willingness to take religion seriously as a component of counterterrorism efforts is, at the very least, a promising sign. Like it or not, religion matters, and the President’s strategy may be the best hope yet for marginalizing — be it politically, spiritually, or both — the small, radicalized corners of the Muslim world.

Why the fuck do we have to alter someone’s religious beliefs? Why do we keep insisting that religion is what terrorist attacks are about? Because we made it that way? Starting with George W’s “crusade”? How did we get this whole thing so screwed around that Think Progress is talking about it as though it’s all about religion. I don’t care what Mr. Obama says, had we not insisted on keeping our soldiers on Saudi ground years ago, not supported extremists in order to mess up the Soviets, not sanctioned and then bombed, imprisoned and tortured our way through the Middle East, it’s not at all likely that we would be faced with terrorists now who happen to be Muslim. We made this a religious war, not them.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.