my conservative uncle decided that Muslims are trying to set up a caliphate in America

[clyrc]

I've gone from furious to amused to angry. Has anyone else heard this?

[The Magistrate]

1. A Hundred Fifty Years Ago, Ma'am, The Pope Was Going To Move The Vatican To Mobile....

Real Native Americans girded their loins for the struggle to fend off the Popish invasion.

These people come from a long line of idiots....

[Forkboy]

"girded their loins"

That's just 19th century talk for locked and loaded! :)

[pinboy3niner]

19. LOL!

Good one, Forkboy!

[The Magistrate]

36. That It Is, My Friend

[JVS]

2. Wouldn't it be easier to set up a caliphate in a predominately Muslim country?

[clyrc]

5. One would think

It seems beyond crazy to me

[kestrel91316]

3. The RW has been saying this for years. When they aren't saying that the

Hispanics are trying to set up a Greater Mexican Empire for "La Raza". I'm confused.

[pinboy3niner]

13. You're right--this is old stuff promoted by PNAC

The neocons at Project for the New American Century predicted a great war between Islam and Christianity by the middle of this century. Their pre-emptive strategy was to try to defeat Islam now by projecting U.S. power into the Middle East, and they succeeded with their first objective--the unjustified U.S. invasion of Iraq. Now they're pushing for war with Iran.

Their plans require that they characterize Islam as a global threat, and these negative and threatening charactizations have infected the RW blogs and media outlets and have been spread on the internets through viral anti-Muslim e-mails. Like most good propaganda, they contain a kernel of truth--a minority of Muslim extremists pose a real threat. But to carry out the neocons' agenda, they demonize ALL Muslims as conspirators in a grand terrorist plot for world domination.

[Douglas Carpenter]

14. I noticed that two of the key speakers at the big anti-Muslim rally in NYC on 9/11/10 include John

John Bolton and Newt Gingrich who will be sharing the stage with the likes of the notorious Dutch Parliamentarian bigot and anti-Muslim extremist, Geert Wilders - an event sponsored by an organization that calls itself, Stop Islamization of America:

http://sioaonline.com/?p=452

Obviously, if one really did want more military interventions in the Middle East with some sort of imperial ambitions, they would rationally want to win allies and build at least some support in the Arab and Islamic world - not do everything humanly possible to alienate them even more.

Just imagine the lunacy that many of the same people who advocate more wars in the Middle East are the very same people trying to whip up anti-Muslim hysteria in the U.S. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would conclude that they are intentionally trying to drive America into more wars in the Middle East which they intentionally plan to lose - while hoping to provoke more terrorist attacks on America - to grant them the ability to suspend all considerations of constitutional rights and impose their fascistic order.

But, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I think these people don't have the where-with-all to recognize the self-destructive course they are trying to push America toward. I Think they are just plain nuts.

[pinboy3niner]

18. I don't think they're nuts--they're just plain wrong

They'e not looking for allies in the ME--they see everyone there as enemies or potential enemies, and they want to take them down. And in their mindset, they don't plan to lose--they think they can win.

They remind me of Nixon's dirty tricksters--guys who came out of college campus politics, where they played their juvenile games. Only now they have grandiose dreams and grandiose schemes. They think they're the puppetmasters who can tinker with the global status quo and change it and the future.

What better way to justify and impose a fascistic order than through a decades-long war?

:hi:

[Douglas Carpenter]

34. well its pretty fucking CRAZY if they really think that they can drive America into anti-Muslim

hysteria and then militarily defeat the world's 1.3 billion Muslims. I was wondering if they were just cynically playing domestic politics in America with total disregard for the consequences for their actions beyond potential short-term political gain.

I know that most American right-wing fundamentalist leaders have a crazy eschatology that claims the need to intentionally provoke the Arab and Islamic world into the "Battle of Armageddon" in order to usher in the second coming of Jesus Christ. But I don't think that is where the likes of John Bolton and Newt Gingrich are coming from. Rational imperial ambitions would recognize that they cannot possibly militarily subdue the entire Arab and Islamic world while contemptuously insulting them and openly declaring Islam and in effect the entire world's 1.3 billion Muslims to be the enemy. If they really do think they can and should do this - that is pure insanity and they represent a threat to all of humanity far, far, far greater than Al Qaeda and their small handful of followers.

If these people like Bolton and Gingrich really do get into the position to execute such a plan of madness and depravity, "then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."

[pinboy3niner]

37. I agree with you--they're not nuts, just delusional

In their view, all of Islam can't withstand American military power. They don't disregard the consequences--they just have a hopelessly unrealistic assessment of them.

I agree , too, that the major players aren't acting under the influence of some apocalyptic religious view (though they welcome and actively cultivate the support of Christian extremists).

To us, it's insane. To them, it's a horrendous, long-term war which they think they can win. They consider themselves worldly, wise and realistic. It's not insane--they have some very smart guys. They've just learned nothing from Vietnam, or from Iraq. They actually believe they have a "winning" strategy.

I don't see them succeding in implementing their plan, but there is a danger that they COULD. The frightening prospect, if they're not stopped, is that Churchill could be proved right.

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. Goes well before PNAC

I remember the we are trying to retake Califoornia back in me college days.

SO I answered... goody! We get good roads and Disneyland! How's your Spanish Hermano?

Sent that rightie off into the stratosphere!

Oh that was in 1985 by the way.

[pinboy3niner]

32. I don't remember concerted anti-Muslim bigotry in the '80s

But I do remember the struggles of Hispanics in the early '70s.

Even in the '60s, a HS buddy of mine chose to spend his summer vacation in the produce fields with Cesar Chavez. At the time, I didn't appreciate it as much as I should have--but my friend became one of my heroes for what he did.

In the '70s, after serving in VN, I couldn't relate to my fellow college students who were into Trojan football and campus politics and guides to find "mickey" classes. The only student I had any affinity and respect for was a classmate who was spending as many hours as he could volunteering at the La Raza office. I'm sorry I never told him at the time. But to me, what he was doing really MEANT something.

[nadinbrzezinski]

39. Well if it helps

we had quite a bit of Antisemitism in this country back in the 40s, fifties, and sixties.

What you saw was the creation of the other. Today they are doing it with Muslims (ironic that some people who should know better are joining them, the hate mongers that is)

But that is what I am talking about. PNAC didn't start that. It is part and parcel of the American way, as in the darkest corners of her history.

As a funny aside, we know a holocaust survivor, and we saw the deed. The original owners had on it that you could not sell it to Irish, Jews, or Negros... well we hit two out of three... so in a very cold dark humor we laughed. She is Jewish and she got it well after the original owners were dead. (And for anybody getting knickers in a bunch over the use of the N word, that is what the deed says)

And yes, La Raza did and still does important work... it will be their turn to be the other soon.

One reason why I went to INS and went... ok, been here long enough with a Green Card, where are my papers to file for citizenship was Proposal 98... and all that mess in California. That is one of the responses that people are shocked about at times.

ed for clarity

[Critters2]

4. I heard something about it on Faux News (where else?).

Something to do with the name "Cordoba House", and Cordoba being the first Caliphate in Europe or some such BS that some "expert" pulled out of his ass. But yeah, I heard it.

[clyrc]

6. Ah ok

He was trying to say he had done some research, and I wondered if maybe he was just spouting something he had heard.

[Mariana]

20. Most likely he was spouting something he had heard.

Remember, in their minds, listening to Faux or Limbaugh or Palin IS doing research.

[EmilyKent]

7. Meme of the week.

They got it from here.

Caliphate of Córdoba

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliphate_of_C%C3%B3rdoba

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. the _________________are trying to take over has been a common mime for a long, long time

Yes unfortunately I have heard the line that the Muslim are trying to set up a caliphate in America and I would say that is almost a mainstream opinion in right-wing circles these days.

Last time I checked it was the U.S. that is occupying and supporting the occupations of Muslim countries and maintaining massive military fire power throughout and on the boarders of much of the Islamic world - not other way around.

[clyrc]

10. I guess it never has to make much sense

Muslims can't even unite where I live, in the middle east, so what on earth makes anyone think they would be ok with being ruled from America?

[salvorhardin]

12. I hate those common mimes

Loitering about on the street gesticulating wildly... have they no decency? ;-)

[mmonk]

9. Yes, right after 9/11.

Many, some credible and some not, have said that is what the terrorist organizations want. Islam in general, nah. It's all to rachet up fear. They would have to get rid of all those US bases first.

[Xipe Totec]

11. At this point, that would be a slight shift to the left

To the left of Mussolini, but still...

[Forkboy]

15. Got to give him props for using the term "caliphate" if nothing else.

Leave it to me to accent the positive. :P

[clyrc]

16. that was one of the things that tipped me off that this wasn't coming from him

He isn't an enthusiastic student of history.

[pinboy3niner]

21. OK, they can spell it--but can they pronounce it?

:evilgrin:

[Forkboy]

23. Good point!

:rofl:

[dkf]

17. Apparently the Bush Administration was pushing this in 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/world/americas/11iht-letter.html

White House Letter: Watchword of the day - Beware the caliphate
Elisabeth Bumiller
Published: Sunday, December 11, 2005
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WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it in a speech last Monday in Washington and again on Thursday on PBS. Eric Edelman, the under secretary of defense for policy, said it the week before in a roundtable at the Council on Foreign Relations. Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, said it in October in speeches in New York and Los Angeles. General John Abizaid, the top American commander in the Middle East, said it in September in hearings on Capitol Hill.

Vice President Dick Cheney was one of the first members of the Bush administration to say it, at a campaign stop in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, in September 2004.

The word getting the workout from the nation's top guns these days is caliphate - the term for the seventh-century Islamic empire that spanned the Middle East, spread to Southwest Asia, North Africa and Spain, then ended with the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258.

Islamic specialists say the word is a mysterious and ominous one for many Americans, and that the administration knows it.

"They recognize that there's a lot of resonance when they use the term 'caliphate,"' said Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst and now a scholar at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, said that the word had an "almost instinctive fearful impact."

[pinboy3niner]

22. Thankyou

That's actually a good contribution here. :hi:

[mike r]

24. Scary. Cuz our guvmint is gonna look like this:

But, are they gonna make us speak Mexican too or just Mooslim?

:sarcasm:

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. Yeah my brother

and he don't even live in the US.

I think every family has the famous conservative that drives the rest of us off the wall.

I've gone to the point that if he sends email, it gets deleted.

Ok, I admit curiosity overtakes me every so often, and I am reminded why I delete them.

[clyrc]

27. Most of my family is conservative

in one way or another. I'm the crazy liberal who took off to live among the enemy,so my opinion can't be trusted. I've lived in the United Arab Emirates for 7 years now, but no one thinks I can tell them anything about Muslims. It's kind of funny, really.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. Ah you fifth columnist you

:hi:

Ok so your family has the crazy lib, while ours has the crazy (don't even live in the US) Con... I guess it balances out.

[clyrc]

29. In this instance I would rather not have balance

:hi:

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. Trust me I get it

[Critters2]

33. Yep. In our mostly Progressive family, the obligatory Conservative nutcase

is a retired Air Force Colonel. And a PhD engineer. Was a test engineer on the GPS project. And yet, somehow, doesn't believe in evolution. Just thinking about that gives me a headache.

[nadinbrzezinski]

40. Actually Intelligent Design is somewhat common amongst engineers

:-)

So that does not surprise me.

[saltpoint]

31. Has he actually seen any caliphates going up in his

neighborhood?

We drove around on errands this morning and didn't see a one.

[EstimatedProphet]

35. Has anyone told the Muslims about their plans yet?

They really should be included. Fair is fair.

[Orsino]

38. You'll be hearing a lot of this until after the election.

Your uncle is being driven to the polls to vote against your interests.