Another Day, Another Lie

So here's yet another in a long line of "the Moooslim Brotherhood in the White House" sacks of crap circulating the agnotosphere, even though the "event" actually occurred nearly a full year ago:

A course for U.S. military officers has been teaching that America's enemy is Islam in general, not just terrorists, and suggesting that the country might ultimately have to obliterate the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina without regard for civilian deaths, following World War II precedents of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima or the allied firebombing of Dresden.

The Pentagon suspended the course in late April when a student objected to the material. The FBI also changed some agent training last year after discovering that it, too, was critical of Islam.

The teaching in the military course was counter to repeated assertions by U.S. officials over the last decade that the U.S. is at war against Islamic extremists — not the religion.

"They hate everything you stand for and will never coexist with you, unless you submit," the instructor, Army. Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley, said in a presentation last July for the course at Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va. The college, for professional military members, teaches midlevel officers and government civilians on subjects related to planning and executing war.

Dooley also presumed, for the purposes of his theoretical war plan, that the Geneva Conventions that set standards of armed conflict, are "no longer relevant."

Since then, Lt. Col. Dooley has been fired, in no small part thanks to letters of protest from dozens of organizations representing various cultural and ethnic organizations, who all have Islam in common. So naturally, the folks who see an exploding turban under every bed and/or the creeping threat of sharia law being mandated in the heartland have taken all this to mean complaisance or outright complicity on the part of Obama and his eeeevil minions, whose poorly-hidden mission it is to convert, whether by legalistic trickery, the sword, or some sort of jabbery hocus-pocus. Booga-booga!

Folks, there's no denying that political Islamism is no friend of western democratic principles. It is openly and overtly hostile, not only to the past century of Anglo-American meddling in the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia, but even to relatively benign cultural mores, such as women being allowed to drive, vote, and not be forced by threat of violence to wear sweltering tents whenever in public. Extreme Islamists flip out over the mildest of slights, from cartoons to books. You could not write, produce, and perform a Book of Islam musical, without riots and murders. There's no getting around it, they're dicks and goons. They need to go.

But to insist that a religion with over a billion adherents in dozens of countries is (to indulge in legalistic jargon) jointly and severally responsible for the vile actions of a statistical sliver, is just nuts. And if the excerpts that have been shared from Lt. Col. Dooley's seminar are accurate, then in fact he is striking a needlessly provocative, antagonistic stance, one that will only serve to further polarize the massive impasse between the two cultures.

I'm not going to claim to have some sort of inside scoop on how to get a handle on this situation. I actually agree with Dooley that there are some (unfortunately commonplace, it seems) mores within Islamic cultures that are regressive, even barbaric. Saudi Arabia is indeed among the worst offenders in that regard, in its treatment of women, in its anti-Semitic propaganda, and in its barely concealed support of murderous terrorism.

Which makes it all the more puzzling why there's no effort at all -- indeed, little more than longstanding resistance and scorn -- to the idea of increasing renewable energy capacity. Automobiles are getting more efficient all the time. Photovoltaic energy generation and storage continues to improve, and like computer technology, will only continue to do so the more it is utilized and supported.

I remember getting my first computer in 1998, fifteen years ago. If I recall correctly, it was a mid-line model, like a 486 processor and a 2GB hard drive. Pretty hilarious, right? But that's what happens when you make tech feasible and incentivize it -- it improves exponentially, even logarithmically, rather than merely linearly. Linearity is for suckas, fool. Innovators think big. Create enough solar and wind power to support buildings and houses, and see how much petroleum is freed up for automobiles.

America used to think big. We put a man on the moon -- hell, we're still the only people to do so. But at the rate we're going, any manned mission to Mars will be joint at best, because we get distracted by bullshit pissing competitions like this "jihadis is takin' away muh freedumz!" crap. And it doesn't have to be that way.

If the past ten years should have taught us anything, it's that invasions and occupations are cost-prohibitive, unless -- or really, even if -- you're willing to go scorched earth and kill unconscionable amounts of people. Instead of using all this money, brainpower, and effort to bring the majority of Muslims around to addressing their monsters, why would you go out of your way to antagonize every last one of them, to chase down those small numbers?

Now, does this mean that Dooley wasn't railroaded or tossed under the proverbial bus? Hell no, the military is infamous for that. But that doesn't automatically translate into the direct implication of Obama, the meme of the closet terrorist at the levers of power.

Look. If Obama's a socialist or a communist (I'm not kidding when I say that I sincerely hope that the ignorant fucking cow in the linked clip dies, and hard), he's pretty fucking terrible at it. I don't know if you saw, but the Dow passed 15K yesterday. And as always, the banksters continue apace. Nice going, comrade. Similarly, his perhaps earnest efforts at ecumenicism serve, for his foresworn enemies, a convenient casus belli to stoke their imaginary grievances.

Ockham's Razor is of use here; maybe the simplest explanation is the correct one. Maybe it's just that Dooley's course was too antagonistic, which makes it useless and actually harmful in the geopolitical landscape of 2013. Protest groups protested, as they are wont to do. The top-heavy Army brass decided to cover their asses, as they have done since the beginning of recorded history. This is not that complicated, nor is it some sort of conspiracy to Islamize (or de-Christianize) the American government, as it is being portrayed in the idiot circles.

Don't worry folks, I'm sure the next dozen preznits will continue to preen and genuflect for Billy Graham IX, or whoever the Grand Deacon is fifty years down the road. We love our toys and food, but we love our empty symbolism infinity more. Bottom line is that Lt. Col. Dooley got his dick caught in a wringer, and things got out of hand, as things do. Pro-tip for you budding war professors out there:  consider the possibility that mass killing based on ideology is not necessarily Option A in a campaign to win hearts and/or minds.

On the other hand, if you just get off on smokin' towelheads and converting them en masse, whether by firebombing or nucular, then just say so already. But don't be surprised if that doesn't quite square with the vision of a more globalized world, one that doesn't just replace "Nazi" or "Russky" with "Haji".

Going back to the notion of true energy self-sufficiency, I guaranfuckingtee you that were we and other great powers to do so, these tinpot petrocracies would dry up tomorrow, and they would straighten their shit up with their "culturally conservative" populations toot-sweet. They claim to be radicalized by our incessant meddling, then let us pull out with a quickness, like Ron Jeremy. Improving renewable tech would take far less of an investment of blood and treasure than invasion and occupation, and be more reliable and longer-lasting in the bargain.

In the meantime, maybe not deliberately antagonizing the most volatile segments of a vast, sprawling culture might be a place to start. That and not falling for the bullshit.