ThinkTanked finds one of the strangest op-ed pieces I have ever read:
The Washington Times published an unusual piece in their Commentary section–a declaration of principles-type of piece called “Restoring ‘Peace Through Strength'” by Edwin Meese and a group of other think tankers (Elaine Donnelly, Frank Gaffney, Brian Kennedy, Herbert London, Cliff May and Herman Pirchner).
[…..] [T]he text outlines ten points where the U.S. can improve “Peace through strength” which includes everything from nuclear deterrence to the concern over the spread of worldwide Shariah law to border security.
I realize that the Moonies publish a lot of weird stuff, but this is quite possibly the weirdest grab bag of unrelated policy proposals I have ever seen and I don’t know why it required seven wingnut welfare recipients to write it.
Update. The whole piece is so strange it’s hard to know what to quote but I’ll go with this:
4. A nation free of Shariah, the brutally repressive and anti-constitutional, totalitarian program that governs in Saudi Arabia, Iran and other Islamic states and that terrorists are fighting to impose worldwide.
Isn’t talking about the US ending up under Shariah law a little 2005?
Maude
The amount of drugs taken by those 7 must be unbelievable.
Hunter Gathers
It reminds me of movies with 7 screenwriters getting credit. An un-intelligble mash of stupid.
ChockFullO'Nuts
Didn’t The Knack cut the record “My Sharia”?
Oh wait, shit, never mind.
dmsilev
Is it really correct to call someone a member of a think tank if there is no detectable thought involved?
dms
cleek
wingnuts and douchebag dems love them some manifestos and Statements Of Principle.
i guess some people get giant boners from drawing lines in the sand.
cleek
moderated? but why?
Norwegian Shooter
This isn’t a Moonie thing. Ed Meese was one of the main promoters of the Manhattan Declaration. He probably thought, I got a distro list of crazies from that, why not use it for foreign policy? Jeopardy answer: Ed Meese, Christian anti-gay agenda and “peace through strength”. Question: Name three things that never left the 80’s.
sherifffruitfly
It’s funny because those same people have no problem whatsoever with the US being under totalitarian Christian law.
me
I’m fairly sure Ed Meese is a fan of theocracy as long as it’s white theocracy.
Chyron HR
Oh no, the terrorists are going turn our fundamentalist theocracy into a slightly different fundamentalist theocracy!
Tom in TN
Re: Shariah Law in the US
They’re probably referring to the way some banks will make use of Islamic lending methods when necessary to avoid offending their Muslim clients. It’s basically a way of charging interest without calling it interest (“fees”) because they’re forbidden to pay interest.
It’s another version of “we speak English here,” in order to get scare off people who do things differently.
Guster
Well, it’s not all bad: they take a pretty courageous stand against unlawful enemy combatants. And they somewhat counterintuitively recommend a ‘foreign policy that supports our allies and opposes our adversaries.’
geg6
Oh, Ed Meese is fine with sharia law. It’s just that pesky Islamic Sharia law that he has a problem with.
Gawd, do these assholes ever die? Ed Meese? Seriously? Ed “Porn will kill us all” Meese?
Jeebus.
debg
Is it just me, or does their slogan remind anyone else of V for Vendetta’s ruling junta?
me
Apparently, they have no problem when the (Republican) President takes a shit all over the Constitution. Or maybe just that pesky 4th amendment.
cleek
wingnuts love them some Manifestos and Statements Of Principle.
who could forget such classics as The John Doe Manifesto and the Euston Manifesto, and PNAC ?
my Line In The Sand is all-powerful!
Ash Can
I wonder which of those seven head cases brought the ‘shrooms to the party. It appears to have been quite a trip.
thomas Levenson
Following Maude at number one, I’d say I want whatever it is they’re snorting, but on reflection, bad acid flashbacks would explain much of the last eight years, and I’ll pass, thank you very much.
thomas Levenson
Following Maude at number one, I’d say I want whatever it is on that sugarcube they’re licking, but on reflection, bad acid flashbacks would explain much of the last eight years, and I’ll pass, thank you very much.
frankdawg
Anybody know if there is actually a single document that lays out sharia law? Or is it like the American Taliban’s bible-based law: Whatever I believe is in the bible should be law?
On a tangential note – what if all the lib-left howling about Kagen is just cover so the Dems can punch the hippies while voting for a real liberal?
calling all toasters
I’m surprised they didn’t find room for “a government headed by a native-born citizen” in their list.
Zifnab
@debg: Or just your old school 1984 “War is Peace” slogan running.
Steve
I have never heard anyone call for the importation of sharia law into the United States… well, other than Blackwater, of course.
Scott
Yeah, the only people I know who want anything like sharia law are white christian conservatives. I’m amazed they don’t work a lot more closely with the Taliban — the only difference between radical Islam and radical Christianity is what they call their Glorious Sky Bastard…
Giroro
Maybe they were thinking of Shariah Palin?
ok it’s lame.
Craig
I interpreted #8 as “keep Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in place
Culture of Truth
A nation free of Shariah, the brutally repressive and anti-constitutional, totalitarian program that governs in Saudi Arabia, Iran and other Islamic states and that terrorists are fighting to impose worldwide.
Damm right! If anyone is is going to impose a brutally repressive and anti-constitutional, totalitarian program on Americans, it will be other Americans!!
Butch
@ChockFullO’Nuts: No, you’re thinking of the Four Seasons, Shariah Baby.
sukabi
when they get done banning Sharia law, can we get back to work on our own “separation of church and state” thing and get our own whacked fundies out of our government?
toujoursdan
And where are we supposed to get the money to pay for this and keep the tax cut gimmick thingy going? I always love when you read propaganda like this that is never costed out.
Tea Party Jesus
Weird. A lot of it’s standard conservative boilerplate wishlist stuff. But then you get to the Sharia law thing. Are they under the impression the US is currently considering the implementation of Sharia law?
MikeJ
@Tea Party Jesus: They just elected a muslin who wasn’t even born here!
Paris
Egypt uses Sharia courts and last I knew we were still sending billions of tax dollars their way.
ChockFullO'Nuts
@Butch:
Doh!
El Cid
None of them give a shit about what they wrote — it’s all just a call-out to today’s Birch-tards so that they can run around in 1990s style militia/shortwave fear that the Kenyonesian usurper in the White House is planning to invite a Saudi-Iranian-Al Qai’da coalition to occupy the U.S. and impose a Caliphate, surrender to the North Koreans, Hugo Chavez will be in charge of our social spending, and the Sandinistas might re-invade, all the while fighting New Aztlan in the entire Southwest.
Yadda yadda yadda…
Comrade Dread
No, not for neocons, because Americans are apparently all so stupid and weak and tolerant that they’ll be happy to let the secret stealth Muslims make us all give up hot dogs, the Bill of Rights, and push up bras rather than fight.
Pangloss
Everything old is new again. Look at the resurgence of John Birch Society-level paranoia in the GOP. Good times.
Citizen Alan
I would like to see some comprehensive definition of what sharia law means in practice. These assholes are just using it as a boogeyman, as in “if we allow sharia law here, all the Christians will get decapitated.” I imagine that a significant percentage of fundamentalist Christians would be quite pleased if we went back to lopping off a hand as penalty for stealing — many of them openly favor chemical castration for a variety of sex crimes even now. Of course, the absolute worst thing about sharia law as far as Repukes are concerned is that it bans (or at least purports to ban) usury. Our banking industry would collapse overnight if we had real reform of usury laws.
aimai
We are all Kenyaniesians now.
aimai
Bob
Those folk just go ape shit for empire.
(Sorry apes.)
Annie
1. Blah, blah, blah,
2. Continue handouts to defense contractors
3. Blah, blah, blah
4. American exceptionalism — detain, torture, detain
5. Blah, blah, blah
6. Keep building cold war weapons systems — see no. 2
7. Blah, blah, blah
WereBear (itouch)
I do wish they would keep their fantasies to themselves.
YellowJournalism
Loving this one:
This is just a jumbled mess of everything from requiring that recruiters be allowed on high school and college campuses to teaching a truly whitewashed, pro-America-only version of history while bowing down in awe of elected officials. Of course, only the ones in that case that follow the pricipals of these nutjobs. But what I really get from number 10 here is that schools serve no purpose other than training camps for the military.
I also liked how they threw their own “drill, baby, drill” in there at number 6.
cyd
Peace through Strength, and Strength through Joy.
Scott P.
There is division on what should be included in Sharia law (just the Qur’an and the Hadith, or including jurisprudence and learned opinion, etc.). Within Islamic jurisprudence, there are four major schools of interpretation: Hanafi, Shafi’i, Maliki, and Hanbali, all of which disagree to a greater or lesser extent with each other.
Booger
Meh. The crazies are just phoning it in these days.
Mike in NC
In Stupidity there is Strength!
Ed Drone
@Zifnab:
Arbeit Macht Frei
Also, don’t they call the wind ‘Shariah?’
Ed
wrb
@Tea Party Jesus:
Well then why did they install a Muslim president?
The plan isn’t obvious to you YET?
These are the real concerns of everyone who paying attention.
Lurking Canadian
Shorter #9: “Nice country you got there. It’d be a shame if anything happened to it.”
scarshapedstar
Oh, sure, like the Madrassah-schooled Kenyan usurper, who was sworn into the office on a Koran and keeps a prayer rug in the Oval Office and shaves his beard just like the 9/11 hijackers did, doesn’t want to impose Sharia law.
Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.
wrb
damn
clipboard fail
the intended quote:
QuaintIrene
War is Peace!
Jay C
I guess the Moonie Times decided to go with a group-effort for this rehash Op-Ed on the idea that with seven contributors, they might get a document that didn’t read like the new Maine GOP platform ; i.e. simple-minded extremist sloganeering in place of real ideas.
Well, more FAIL! for that: I guess the notion that tough-talk cliches and jingoistic bombast are an adequate substitute for actual policy prescriptions ain’t dead yet; but still clinging to a zombie-like half-life at the fringes of discussion…
Just like the Washington Times!
ecks
Does it have to fall to the non-American to point out that in Saudi Arabia and Iran Shariah is not unconstitutional, because their constitutions say different things than America’s.
Honest to goodness, I sometimes think that even the non-wingnut Americans secretly believe in their heart of hearts that “constitutional” means “according to the irrefutable and universal principles by which all countries are really run,” as opposed to, you know, “according to this one document that one particular country wrote as its particular and idiosyncratic set of high laws.”
asiangrrlMN
@ecks: You put too much thought into this. That’s your problem. You think too much. Fuck yeah, America!
Uloborus
@Lurking Canadian:
Hmmm? I thought this was transparently code for ‘Support Israel by backing it in a war of genocide against Islam so that the Rapture can happen faster.’
I mean, I wish they DIDN’T use code like that, but they do. Have they ever made any kind of deal about ‘supporting our allies’ when they didn’t mean Israel? And by supporting Israel, acting as pro-war cheerleaders for it?
Uloborus
Okay, I just actually read the list. God bless, what a lot of war porn. All we have to do is act tough and be macho, and America’s glory will be restored! And the intellectual dishonesty is terrifying. Surely they know that America is not going to achieve or even get close to energy independence by exploiting every last fossil fuel as fast as we possibly can? That Shariah law in the US and international treaties limiting the US constitution are nonexistent bugaboos? That they’ve not only wildly misrepresented the illegal immigrant problem by linking it to drugs and terrorism, but proposed a solution that’s impossible?
I do think #8 is ‘Let the military do whatever it wants, except repeal DADT.’
Alright. Even the writers must know that some of these items are brain-dead yammering. I’m going to take this as another attempt by the Republican Party to bring the Tea Party conspiracy theorists back into the GOP fold. So far, they’ve had the effect of forcing the Republican Party into the Tea Party conspiracy theorist mold.
LD50
Yes, but the wingnuts were very very happy in 2005, so we can expect them to be reluctant to leave that year.
ecks
@asiangrrlMN:
How I learned to stop worrying and love the conitooshun.
cuz it’s conitooshunal, praise the blue-eyed lord!
Lurking Canadian
@Uloborus: Maybe your interpretation is better. But, since it’s already obviously better to be an ally of the US than an enemy, this sounds to me like “opposing us should hurt more than it does now”, which can be used to justify all sorts of things.
Lukeness
I wonder why they left off any mention of international money laundering?
Digital Amish
Maybe slightly of topic, but in light of your block quote and recent spewing about the Constitution based the the God of the Bible and the Ten Commandments– isn’t Sharia law closer to what the ‘Biblical Constitution’ nutbags are promoting than what the Founders Fathers laid down for us? I mean shit, wouldn’t Bristol Palin have been stoned to death for dishonoring her parents under the Mosiac Law? Isn’t the prohibition of images of Mohammad linked to the second Commandment? Being raised a Catholic, I really don’t have much Bible reading under my belt, but I seem to remember there was a lot of stoning to death for what is considered perfectly legal under U.S. law.
mai naem
I was listening to CSPAN radio and they had Eric Cantor speaking at some rightwing event and one of the questioners asked him about sharia law in the US and Cantor gave a long answer to that. He talked about not only banking but also general sharia law. I’m just wondering what Citi would say about the US refusing to deal with sharia law in banking being that they got a huge chunk of money from some mideast leader a couple of years ago.
ecks
@Digital Amish: My understanding (and I’m no expert, just what I gather from people who seem to be) is that Jesus at some point let Christians off the hook from all that old testament stoning and dietary restriction stuff, so it doesn’t apply anymore. Well except for the parts about not being teh ghey of course, because that’s in the bible so it must be true.
Digital Amish
@ecks: That’s kind of been my understanding also. (again going back to my Catholic upbringing) But I never see the Bible Constitutionalists reference the Golden Rule or the Sermon on the Mount or just about any other teaching of Jesus as a basis for U.S. law. Never any mention of mercy or forgiveness. It’s always the Ten Commandments and the “God of the Bible”. And man o’ man, that Yahweh was a merciless son of a gun.
Uloborus
@ecks:
Aaaaand welcome to biblical scholarship! Take a quote you like, discuss the wording, ignore the context! Oh, and if you’re a Protestant, also absorb a whole bunch of established Catholic traditions that don’t apply to you while claiming you’re an independent thinker.
SFAW
NNTTM
8. No poofters!!
Is there NO former-POW-Murrican-war-hero who will come forward to save us and deliver us from evil!
This is news how? Shee-it, if Jayzus came back, those bastards would stone him themselves, because he weren’t vengeful enough. Frickin’ pacifist!
jrosen
Cyd — you forgot “Work makes freedom”
(orig.: “Arbeit macht frei”
humbert dinglepencker
Putting that blithering idiot Cliff May’s name next to the word “think” even as in “think tank” is abominable.
Norwegian Shooter
Whoops, got my conservative manifestos mixed up. Mount Vernon statement was Meese’s.
Barney
It’s best when read in a deep, movie trailer voice, to instill a bit more fear, before the heroic Justice League of Thinktank Presidents unveil their solutions:
In a world characterized by growing threats to freedom and the U.S. Constitution, America’s exceptional role, and indeed our country’s very existence, is at risk. We believe such times demanda robust, comprehensive national security posture appropriate to today’s threats and tomorrow’s. Toward that end, we espouse and will work to achieve the following: …