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Now that Obama has inched closer to out-and-out announcing that he is going to run for President, it seems that the right is cranking up the talking points. We were shocked, and frankly a little dissapointed to read this piece on Illinoize by Bill Baar. Although his political leanings aren't immediately evident, and probably are more complex and nuanced than simply left or right, you would be hard pressed to find something like The American Prospect or The Nation linked in his blogroll.
Baar's posts on Illinois politics are usually cogent and thoughtful, even when we disagree with him. But his thoughts on Obama have gotten increasingly bizarre of late, and we wonder what he's getting at here. To say that Obama is selling out Muslims and that these "Muslims" are somehow our allies is ludicrous. In fact, in defending these outrageous statements in the comments section of his blog, he doesn't bother mentioning any of these Muslim allies, except perhaps Al-Sistani. For all his grandstanding and seeming grasp of historical footnotes and minutiae, he paints with a broad brush when talking about the war in Iraq. It reads suspiciously like a talking-points memo from a neo-conservative think tank.
As the national election season gets underway, we hope that this is an anomaly and not a preview of what is to come.
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The starry-eyed media have done their best to "center" Barack, and lots of people are falling for it. We can talk about "nuance," but what counts is how he votes; that is how laws are made. American Conservative Union gives him an 8 out 100. If you vote like a liberal, you are a LIBERAL.
Baar is a total right winger. Almost all of the bloggers on Illinoize, with one or two exceptions range from Right Wing to Hard Hard Right Wing. Bloggers like Baar routinely play gotcha politics, and genrally drag the level of discourse down a few notches. If you read into the subtext of some of these right wing bloggers like Baar, it's pretty clear a lot of them are just plain Anti-Muslim, and really would love to see a global war of Christians Vs. Islam. Pretty scarey stuff.
Um, open eyes... what's wrong with being a liberal? I mean, we've had a "conservative" now for eight years, and are we really better off now than 2000? Maybe it's time to change horses.
Illinoize, in my experience, is the home to the more moderate GOP'ers in this state, with a (very)few lefties who post. I think Illinoize would like to be balanced, but this state is kind of lagging in terms of lefty bloggers. "So Called Austin Mayor" and Archpundit are the big ones, but they have their own blogs. Plus there is a left oriented group blog already, which was Soapblox/Chicago, and is now Prarie State Blue.
Now, if you want the crazy right wingers, try hitting up Illinois Review. They make Illinoize look downright liberal.
Anyway, taking the post at face value, Barr makes a not unreasonable point, and that is that though we are fighting muslims, we are also intractably allied with muslims. Its a big part of why the Bush admin has so completely f'ed up its middle east policies. We don't understand the politics and religion (which are strongly related) of the middle east. Shia, Sunni, Leftist Nationalist, Right wing Islamist, Kurd, Persian/Iranian, Arab, Palestinian.
There is a major disconnect. In broad terms, we are long-term allied with the Sunni Saudi Arabia state, and long-term opposed to the Shia Iran. Both are ruled by religious fanatics. Both harbor great dislike of each other. But in Iraq, we have been more closely allied with the Shia, and opposed to the Sunni (which is the faith of Saddam's area of Iraq).
I have to...
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