DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Top US commander: Burning Quran endangers troops

By KIMBERLY DOZIER, AP
51 minutes ago


KABUL, Afghanistan — The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warned Tuesday an American church's threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book could endanger U.S. troops in the country and Americans worldwide.

Meanwhile, NATO reported the death of an American service member in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday.

The comments from Gen. David Petraeus followed a protest Monday by hundreds of Afghans over the plans by Gainesville, Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center — a small, evangelical Christian church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy — to burn copies of the Quran on church grounds to mark the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States that provoked the Afghan war.

"Images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence," Petraeus said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Muslims consider the Quran to be the word of God and insist it be treated with the utmost respect, along with any printed material containing its verses or the name of Allah or the Prophet Muhammad. Any intentional damage or show of disrespect to the Quran is deeply offensive.

In 2005, 15 people died and scores were wounded in riots in Afghanistan sparked by a story in Newsweek magazine alleging interrogators at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay placed copies of the Quran in washrooms and flushed one down the toilet to get inmates to talk. Newsweek later retracted the story.

Responding to Petraeus' comments, Dove World Outreach Center's senior pastor Terry Jones acknowledged Petraeus' concerns as legitimate.

"Still, we feel that it is time for America to quit apologizing for our actions and bowing to kings," Jones said in a statement released by his church. "We must send a clear message to the radical element of Islam. We will no longer be controlled and dominated by their fears and threats. It is time for America to return to being America."

The church, which made headlines last year after distributing T-shirts that said "Islam is of the Devil," has been denied a permit to set a bonfire but has vowed to proceed with the burning. The congregation's website estimates it has about 50 members, but the church has leveraged the Internet with a Facebook page and blog devoted to its Quran-burning plans.

The American's death brings to at least six the number of U.S. forces killed in Afghanistan this month, along with at least four other non-American members of the international coalition.

Engagements with insurgents are rising along with the addition of another 30,000 U.S. troops, bringing the total number of international forces in the country to more than 140,000.

At least 322 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan so far this year, exceeding the previous annual record of 304 for all of 2009, according to an AP count.

Petraeus is asking for 2,000 more trainers and field troops for the international force, NATO officials said Monday. It was unclear how many would be Americans.

Also Tuesday, authorities confirmed the ambush killing of a district chief by suspected insurgents in the northern province of Baghlan on Monday afternoon. Nahrin district chief Rahmad Sror Joshan Pool was on his way home after a memorial service for slain anti-Soviet guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud when rocket-propelled grenades hit his vehicle, setting it on fire, said provincial spokesman Mahmood Haqmal.

Pool's bodyguard was also killed in the attack, and one militant died and two were wounded in the ensuing fire fight with police, Haqmal said.

Five children were killed and five wounded in Yaya Khil district in the southern province of Paktika when an insurgent rocket fired at an Afghan army base hit a home Monday evening, provincial government spokesman Mokhlais Afghan said.

Kidnappers also seized two electoral workers and their two drivers in the western province of Ghor, according to deputy provincial police chief Ahmad Khan Bashir. Insurgents have waged a campaign of violence and intimidation to prevent Afghans from voting, especially in rural areas, while some pre-election violence has also been blamed on rivalries among the candidates.
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Just another religious group that doesn't get the message, and puts a black mark on religion in general.

Burning books is dumb.
Burning the Quran is even dumber.
Burning the Quran knowing that US soldiers may die in retaliation of your actions is unconscionable.

Wouldn't it have been neat if just this one time the mainstream media had thought.. "They are going to burn Qurans on 9-11.. that's an idiotic thing to do... I have an idea, let's not cover it. then these freaks can do whatever they want but nobody will know." But alas, the vehicle of idiots had to run in and make a big deal out of it...

Amen to that one DC.

I second that.

The mission of the church, and I mean the church worldwide was clearly defined by Christ. Go into the world and spread the gospel. Not protest, not demonstrate and not to make fools of that mission.

If all pans out as biblically defined, these types of people will answer and pay for misrepresenting Christs defined mission.

"Narrow is the gate that leads to the kingdom of heaven" begins to be clearer when we see these types of church's.

The death was a U.S.Marine from The Hilltop area of Columbus,....

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Well, all one has to do is think of what they'd feel if someone burned thier bible?

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I would feel sad for the person that did it. I would feel sad that the person was so empty in their soul and so threatened that they felt that was the correct response to anything... However, the absolute last thing it would generate in me is a violent reaction against that person or people like that person..

I'm sorry I guess I do not have the capacity to understand the mindset that says.. "They say we are zealots who easily resort to violence.. so when they do something stupid, like burn a book, let's do something violent to prove them right." I don't get it..

Disclaimer: I could apply the same logic to those who burn down houses to protest for the environment or blow up abortion clinics to promote "life".. I don't get it..

Exactly, doesn't make sense how something like this would make them become violent (well, "more violent"). But if burning these books cause X numbers of US soldiers to die that otherwise wouldn't have died, then it's worth not burning them. To me anyway.

And great idea on the media not covering this crap. Does a tree make a sound if noone is there to hear it fall? Awesome.

If people in Florida, USA burning Quran's is enough to make some Muslims in Afghanistan willing to kill US Soldiers, then they were willing to do it anyway and were just looking for an excuse...

http://www.doveworld.org/ this is their website, in their blog section they explain 10 reason to burn the Koran. Funny thing is all the reasons they give can be turned to say the same about Christianity based on perspective.

But then it's equally pathetic to think that since our government doesn't agree with the way their government governs, that it is ok for us to take over and force change.

Uh, sure.

Extrapolate whatever you want.... saying that someone doing something in Florida is hurting people in Afghanistan is absurd.

I Wonder if the same constitutional rights that allow for those who want to build a building containing a mosque near Ground Zero apply to these folks who wish to burn some books?

"Inappropriate" covers both.

"I don't like it" covers both.

"They have a Constitutional Right to do it" covers both.

The only consistency I am seeing here is a near-constant demand to cater to the wants and desires of a fringe group of distant religious fanatics. IMO we should give as many as possible the chance at their 70 virgins.

Until mainstream Muslim clerics denounce the terrorists utterly and completely, I will regard them with the same disgust as the Catholic church, which actively promotes child molestation. To hell with all of them.

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the Catholic church, which actively promotes child molestation.

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Wow !! That is funny ...warped but funny .

I figure this could go in here. I know it's from HuffPo but I think it's a very good and worthwhile read.

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From a small right-wing church in Florida, there has gone out a call to burn copies of the Quran on September 11. Instead of being ignored as clearly cuckoo, this call won national media coverage.

As the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine wrote almost two centuries ago, "Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people." The theater piece for which he wrote those words, called "Almansor," was addressing the Inquisition's burning of the Quran. In 1933, university students in Heine's own beloved homeland burned his books, along with many others. They burned people soon after.

Many American religious communities and organizations, as well as secular groups like Common Cause, have condemned this call for burning. The road to burning people is by no means so open here, now, as it was in Germany in 1933.

But still, we need to face the question: How did we get to the point where some Americans would burn a sacred book, and many more oppose the building of a sacred mosque in their own town--not only in Lower Manhattan, but in many other neighborhoods?

It would be easy to start with the aftermath of the terror attacks against the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. But hostility and ignorance of Christians toward Islam goes back centuries earlier. And the hostility of Jews toward Islam, on top of the ignorance of almost all European and American Jews about Islam, goes back at least to 1948.

Step 1: The Old Hostilities

There are perverse and paradoxical spiritual roots to the hostility between Islam and Christianity. All the great religious traditions--not only those we call monotheist, but Hinduism and Buddhism and Shinto and Wicca and for that matter what we call "secular" traditions like socialism and liberalism --are rooted in the profound effort to make loving contact with the ONE. One God, one historical dialectic, one Web of life in soul and body on our planet--ONE.

Once a community has begun to reach out toward the ONE, it begins to create the metaphors, the rituals, the languages, the practices in daily life, the festivals to embody this searching toward the ONE. And then the community bumps into another community that also claims it is in contact with the ONE, and has its own quite different set of metaphors, rituals, languages, and daily practices, with which to make this contact real.

There are often two responses to this discovery:

One is to say with surprise and delight, "You have shaped a different path from ours! Of course there must be many ways of lighting up the Infinite, unfolding truth. How could the great Infinity reveal itself except through sacred diversity? Let us learn from each other!"

The other response is to say: "We have unearthed the one way to the ONE, and any other path must be a false one. And worse than false--since you claim falsely to have made contact with the ONE, you must be lying. Corrupt. Deceitful. Worth killing."

In the various British colonies that became the United States, this bitterly hostile response was embodied in the persecution of one or another faith community (e.g. Quakers, Jews, Roman Catholics), by one or another of the original colonial governments. The uncertainty of who might get persecuted in the nation as a whole was one of the factors leading to adoption of the First Amendment, and much of the hostile reaction was then muted by the existence of the First Amendment. If no religion could wield state power and violence against another, this reaction was less likely.

Native American religions and Mormonism did not "count" in this context; state power or pressure was used against these religious communities. And there was public pressure in the 19th century against Roman Catholicism, and in the 20th century against the "Nation of Islam" (a racially focused variant not accepted by any other Muslims as truly Islamic).

Step 2: The 9/11 Attack

Until 2001 in America, both hostility and interfaith exploration were quiescent, in regard to classical Islam. Then a tiny proportion of the more than one billion Muslims of the world, claiming they were acting on behalf of Islam and God, murdered about 3000 people.

Again, there were two responses:

There was a wave of rage against Muslims and anyone who looked as if he might be Muslim. Some were attacked, a few were killed. Officials arrested hundreds of Muslims out of fear, almost always utterly unjustified, that they were would-be terrorists. Some of them were held for months without access to families or attorneys.

And during the same weeks and months, some Americans-- often religiously motivated Christians and Jews--rallied to protect Muslims and their mosques. Some stood guard to prevent attacks, some created vigils, some brought together Jews, Christians, and Muslims under " The Tent of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah."

Step 3: The Wars with Islam

Soon after, the government of the United States began wars against two Muslim-majority nations. It quickly became clear that what began under the banner of "liberation" actually became conquest and occupation. Yet the wars dragged on, bringing death to thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians. And meanwhile, there were deadly US military attacks on Pakistanis, threats of war against Iran, and a continuing close alliance with the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

There is a process that researchers in psychology have uncovered and call "cognitive dissonance." People who begin with one opinion but act in a way contrary to that opinion change their ideas more than their behavior. After almost a decade of American wars against a number of Muslim-majority societies, and several actual murderous attacks by self-proclaimed Muslims against civilians in various countries allied to America, some Americans who had begun with few opinions about Islam in general began to view it with anger and disgust:

"If we are killing lots of them and they are killing some of us, there must be something evil about them."

Step 4: The Great Slump

Meanwhile, Americans experienced a disastrous economic slump. The last time that rates of disemployment and of home foreclosure had been this high, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, one of the reactions was a great wave of anti-Semitism across America. Father Coughlin on radio, Henry Ford through the Dearborn Independent, were reaching millions of Americans with fear and hatred of the Jews.

So now, in another time of economic trauma -- and now also of unwinnable wars and a deep sense of cultural dislocation -- there was seething not quite visible below the surface of American culture and society a current of xenophobia. Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, became suspect. And Muslims.

Step 5: Crystals of Bigotry

And then into this hyper-saturated solution of fear, suspicion, and hatred came some who chose deliberately to drop the poisonous crystals of bigotry .

In December 2009, the New York Times--a liberal leader of opinion--and Laura Ingraham--a conservative leader of opinion-- carried articles and interviews about plans of American Muslims to establish Cordoba House, a community cultural center in Lower Manhattan. There was no fuss, no fury.

Not till May 2010 did the ultra-right-wing anti-Islam blogger Pamela Geller and organs of Rupert Murdoch, the right-wing publisher who later gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, begin to carry inflammatory stories about what they call the "Ground Zero Mega-Mosque."

And then, step-by-step, the crystal they sowed precipitated the super-saturated solution into a noxious brew. Right-wing blogs and talk-radio programs described the Cordova House as an insult to the dead of 9/11, a triumphal celebration by Islam of its victory in the attacks on the World Trade Center's, anything to arouse fear and hatred of Islam.

Even Jewish organizations that claimed their mission was to prevent "defamation" not only of Jews but of all religious and ethnic groups, or claimed their mission was to promote "tolerance," spoke out against the planning for Cordova House. "Yes," they said, "Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan have every constitutional right to place their mosque or cultural center two long long New York City blocks from Ground Zero, but it is not ethically right or spiritually wise to do so. It would offend the sensibilities of the survivors of the 9/11 dead."

These assertions ignored both an important fact and a crucial principle. The fact was that hundreds of 9/11 survivors, in the organization called September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, had endorsed the placement of Córdoba House. The principle was that the constitutional right of freedom of religion has no reality if a wave of hostility from "private" citizens, sparked by great media empires and backed up by public officials, can prevent the fully legal placement of a house of worship.

Why then did the right wing media and right-wing politicians like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich decide to light this conflagration? The spark would not have lit a fire if that there had not been gallons of gasoline beneath the surface, but why light the spark?

I think the answer is that the right wing was and still is hoping to split the vote of progressive Americans by using not just Cordoba House but also broader fear of Islam as a wedge issue, just as they used the issue of gay marriage--which now has little bite. They have used the fear of Hispanic immigrants in the same way.

Fanning fear and hatred of Islam has one major advantage over firing up fear of gay people or of Hispanics: it may offer the possibility of splitting the Jewish vote, which is, next to the vote of African-Americans, the most progressive voting bloc in the country.

Indeed, many Jews, outraged by attacks on Israel that are sponsored by two Muslim organizations--Hezbollah and Hamas--and by Holocaust denials from some leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, may be susceptible to an Islamophobic campaign. At the same time, of all American communities, Jews are perhaps the most likely to smell and taste the danger of bigotry against a religious minority.

So the American Jewish community is one of the crucial arenas of struggle over whether burning the Quran becomes a step on the path that Heinrich Heine prophesied toward burning people.

Out of this witches' brew of dark past and explosive present, there emerged not only bigotry but another wave of interfaith engagement. Those of many religious and ethical communities gathered to condemn the burning of the Quran and to affirm all sacred texts, all sacred gathering places.

The path America will take is still uncertain.

As for the Jews: Let us hope that a story from my own childhood echoes so strongly the memories and sensibilities of other American Jews that overwhelmingly, we will walk the path toward freedom and diversity:

When I was about seven years old (1940), my grandmother interrupted other Jewish women in line at the kosher butcher shop who were talking contemptuously about "the shvartzes" -- that is, Black people. She challenged them: "That's the way they talked about us in Europe. This is America, and we must not talk like that!"

We must not act like that, either.

With blessings of shalom, salaam, peace -- toward a Labor Day that reminds us that the disemployed need decent jobs at decent pay with decent hours free to rest and celebrate; toward a Rosh Hashanah that ushers in the sweetness of a New Year of good action; toward an Eid El-Fitr that celebrates both the abundance and the self-restraint God gives us in our relationship with earth.

-- Rabbi Arthur Waskow
The Shalom Center
http://www.theshalomcenter.org

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I don't understand what good burning a quran is going to do.

I don't understand how it could affect U.S. soldiers.

I don't understand how a 50 member church here in the U.S. can affect people in Afghanistan.

If they want to burn the quran, fine. Who cares? If muslims want to burn a Bible - fine, who cares?

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Disclaimer: I could apply the same logic to those who burn down houses to protest for the environment or blow up abortion clinics to promote "life".. I don't get it..

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Well, that's because you're not a crazy mf with half the MDA of brain cells rquired for rational human behavior...

For what it's worth, I don't get it either.


p.s. Apparently, these people have not concerned themselves at all with the all-important question: "WWJD?"

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p.s. Apparently, these people have not concerned themselves at all with the all-important question: "WWJD?"

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While I don't always profess to know the answer to that question because when the leading scholars of the day challenged Jesus and thought they had Him cornered and He would have to say something or do something to condemn himself, He was always smarter than them and often said and did things that appeared unconventional for the time...... so I don't always know what He would say or do right here and right now in 2010... but I can sure recognize some of the things He would NOT do... and this is one of them.

And I say that General Petraeus is full of it.

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IF IT PUTS OUR TROOPS AT A GREATER RISK OF BEING KILLED OR INJURED...YOU DON'T DO IT...pretty simple...put the soldiers lives first.

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Bullcrap. Not to the sentiment, but to Petraeus' assertion that this increases their risk.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that the book burning is pathetically stupid and beyond being in poor taste... but I'll simply reiterate/paraphrase what DC said so well above:



"Those that would get so offended over this so as to want to kill/harm American soldiers, are well more than willing to do it anyway, and are simply looking for an excuse to do it".

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What is really stupid...those who profess to be Christians, who believe that burning the Quran makes them a better Christian. Those who preach hatred are not Christians...they are hypocrites!

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I agree.

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Desecration of the Quran has repeatedly unleashed violence in the past. Some 15 people died in Afghanistan in 2005, after the magazine Newsweek wrote about Qurans being defiled in the US Guantanamo Bay detention centre. The report was later retracted.

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From the best information that I have.. in 2005,

2 Americans died in January
1 in February
6 in March
18 in April
4 in May
27 in June
2 in July
15 in August
11 in September
7 in October
3 in November
3 in December

So when did the Gitmo Quran desecration story break? Answer is mid-May... so how do they know how many deaths to attribute to it? The deadliest month of the year was following the story but the second deadliest month was before it.. so how in the hell do they know that the story had any effect?

Isn'part of the bible IN the QURAN?

It makes references to events that happened in The Bible but books as whole from the Bible are not included in the Quran.

Mac - are you trying to say that a church with 50 members - in florida - is capable of inciting muslims in afghanistan to kill american soldiers?

Have not these muslims killed american soldiers before this?

Burning the quran proves no point. But, just as the muslims have a right to build a mosque in new york, these 50 christians have a right to burn a quran, don't they? It proves nothing, but they can do it. It also does NOT put our troops at increased risk.

lol it does not? dude the freaking TOP US COMMANDER knows more than you about what puts his troops in danger...

They are over there fighting few ppl...not each and every iraqi...how would it look when on one hand you are saying we respect your country and your religion...and on the other hand they hear from the media who alway makes things 100x worse than it is...that they are burning qurans in america? They aren't going to know its just some 50morons in FLORIDA

If they don't burn the Quran then muslims won't kill our troops?

I don't guess I'm on any side of the fence here, but I just find it odd it we get just as, or more worked up, about this than we do burning The National Ensign at the funerals of fallen Americans who died in these Islamic nations.

I hate being confused,....

Don't be confused - there is a small, but vocal minority of U.S. citizens that think "well, muslims have every right to hate us, but if we just bow down to their wishes, they will like us".

Or, "Christianity is terrible and the root of all bad in the world, but if we just accept the muslim religion of islam, they'll like us. Meanwhile, we need to berate and belittle our troops, as they are getting what they deserve".

And these people call themselves Americans.

Some people need to wake up and realize that the freedoms they enjoy as Americans - the ability to speak out about anything they want - can and would get them killed in islamic nations. But they insist on sticking up for them, and not us.

And for the second time - burning the quran is stupid and gets nothing accomplished.

And for the 3rd time - burning the quran will not put our troops in any more danger than they were in last week.

I understand the commander says it will - and I also understand he knows a lot more than me. But I also understand that he is wrong.

What puts our troops at greatest risk is the rules they have to play by - and which the enemy does not.

the only people that these 50 wackos are gonna make mad are the extremist terrorists. they will just use that image of the us burning the quran to help recruit others.

sometimes you just have to pick and choose your battles. its like picking a feud with someone that has nothing, when you have everything. they have nothing at risk.

i'm not saying we should bow down, but why would we stoop to their level of wacko religious extremist

"Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people."
- Heinrich Heine 1821

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What puts our troops at greatest risk is the rules they have to play by - and which the enemy does not.

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I agree 100% it's such BS how their hands are tied over there. But alas, that is the price we pay for trying to fight a group of people who have no real base or home...they are everywhere and anywhere...among innocent people and civilians...and because we pride ourselves on not killing the innocent that is the nature of the beast.

Sorry but i see the big picture...and in that if the media shows ppl in the US burning the QURAN. I assure you it will be VERY counter productive to what the troops have acomplished so far over there. And the by product of that is that more people will come outof the woodworks and try and take out a US soilder, that otherwise might not have. These people are insane when it comes to religion, to the point where the will strap a bomb on themselves for god. burnig the quran is probably 100x worse then them burning the US flag.

Look, we're dealing with idiot extremists, okay? There is no action we, or the church in florida, can take, other than bowing down to them that will make them happy. And as someone else said - do we go shia, or sunni?

Hell, they've been fighting themselves for ever over just that. Then throw in sharia law........you wanna try to appease the nutcases? Go ahead.

If 50 people burning a quran makes them want to kill - that part of the religion needs to be killed off.

I can watch someone burn the U.S. Flag - I think they're stupid. I can watch people burn Bibles - I think they're stupid. At no time would I decide to kill people over it.

We're dealing with extremists - there is no possible way to appease them, so why try? They want to kill us - regardless of quran burning or not. Why can't you see that?

True, real muslims will look at burning the quran the way I look at people burning the Bible - what point does it serve?

There is no way this group of 50 incites muslims that were peace loving to all of a sudden decide to kill Americans. No way. That's stupid to even think.

And when you get right down to it, America has many muslims in her military...........