America's True Enemy

I just received word that the U.S. is moving 2 warships toward the Libyan coast following the uprising and murder of Americans at the Consulate there.  Can this situation get anymore absurd?  Please, can we just take a second to look sanely at this entire ordeal?  First of all, a film was made that some Libyan and Egyptian Muslims perceived as being disrespectful of Islam.  They then blamed the U.S. for it and attacked the Consulate as a result.  Now our government is preparing a show of force. 

I haven’t seen this film and I’ve heard that the nutjob pastor, Terry Jones, was involved in its promotion.  And the Islamic nutjobs are the ones who stormed the American Consulate.  So it’s the battle of the insane and the rest of us are the victims.  Now as I said, I haven’t seen the film, but if any Muslims were offended by it I want to offer my sincerest apologies on behalf of the American people.  In the United States, we value religious freedom above anything else.  And even though I don’t believe in a god, I respect people who find that their religion makes it easier for them to promote peace, love and harmony.  I offer my sincerest support to people who find enough strength in their faith to choose peace or peaceful means of voicing their displeasure.

For all the others, I would like to offer you this food for thought:  if you find that you must go out and perpetrate violence in order to defend your god, or incite others to violence, then what you are really saying is that you don’t really believe that your god is strong enough to defend him/herself.   You don’t have enough faith to trust that your deity will punish the wrongdoers adequately.  In short- you really don’t have faith.  You really don’t believe in this god you profess to love so much, because the cornerstone of love, is trust.  The cornerstone of faith, is trust.  If you don’t trust your god, then you really don’t believe in your god.

Now a message to my U.S. brothers and sisters who are calling for a show of force against Libya:  it's important to remember that MOST Libyans as well as the vast majority of Muslims do NOT condone the attacks on the Americans any more than Americans condoned the attacks on the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin.  These are a bunch of religious nutcases with a whole bunch of ignorance and very little faith.  Period.  They do not represent Islam.  They do not represent Libya any more than Wade Michael Page (the Sikh Temple shooter) represents the United States or Christianity. 

How about this for a change:  instead of going into a country with military action, why don’t we try peaceful means first?  Why not allow the Libyan authorities to find these people and bring them to justice?  What if, instead of going into countries with bombs, we went in with books and built schools and roads and bridges?  If we Americans want to point our fingers at bogeymen, those bogeymen are not Islam, or religious extremists per se.  They are ignorance and poverty.  As soon as we get rid of those two things, we will be able to know peace on a global scale.