Benghazi. Benghazi. Benghazi. For a week now, the angle to come at this has plagued me. What are we dealing with? What’s the story? A terrorist attack spawned by an anti-Muslim movie? An unchecked riot? A lie from the Obama Administration about what exactly happened? What’s the biggest thing worth covering here? Who cares, right Hillary?
In discussing this issue with my partner here at Freedom Cocktail, Alan J. Sanders, he encouraged me to ask why the Fourth Estate, the press, isn’t going after the Benghazi issue. Why is the Fourth Estate not upholding its check on government tyranny, largess and cover-ups? Why has the Fourth Estate failed in its duty to cover the Obama Administration’s lies about Benghazi? While I agree more hunting on this matter would be a positive thing, I think there’s a bigger, more neglected story here.
Then, this morning, on The Libertarian News and Commentary Facebook page, they displayed a picture of a car with this bumper sticker: Critical Thinking: The Other National Debt. Sometimes, the angle writes itself.
The most frustrating, yet enjoyable part about writing is the quest. Most writing isn’t done at the computer. Most writing isn’t done hunched over a leather bound journal. Most writing isn’t done on a yellow legal pad. Most of my writing is done while I’m driving, lying on the couch, staring out my window, watching my kids play in the front yard or wandering through a museum. These are the times when a writer plays hide-and-seek with the topic at hand. And once found, then, and only then, does he pick up the pen.
The story surrounding Benghazi is big. It is not just about Benghazi, this story spans back to American beginnings with war with the Barbary States. This story runs through America’s history culminating at its worst on 9/11. And it has most recently shown itself in Boston where two Muslims, taking the Qur’an at its word, caused chaos during the marathon.
This story is so big…and the Fourth Estate seems to care only whether or not Benghazi was the result of a terrorist attack or an uncontrolled riot and how far the Obama Administration went to cover up negligence.
Hillary Clinton may have been somewhat right regarding the Benghazi incident; in that, what difference does it make if it was “…because of a protest or…because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans?” In either case, what Benghazi was was a continuation of Muslims, holding to Muslim belief per se, going after the infidels. Yet the Fourth Estate remains silent about it. Instead they want to know if the Obama Administration covered up a terrorist attack by using a cover story about stirred up Muslims over a YouTube video. It kinda-sorta doesn’t matter. In either case, we’re dealing with stirred up Muslims who really believe.
Since its beginnings, the United States has had to bump and grind with Muslim, not extremism, but Muslim belief per se, as defined in the Qur’an. The Qur’an makes no mistake that unbelievers are condemned to be tortured, killed and maimed in the name of Allah. There are over one-hundred passages in the Qur’an calling it the duty of a good Muslim to wage war against the unbeliever, that the duty of a good Muslim is to “Slay them wherever you find them” Qur’an (2:191-193).
The banter over Benghazi, the fact that Muslim belief per se is the problem, is not being addressed by the Fourth Estate. I am quite sure the problem is that the press is scared to step on the toes of a religious belief and seem insensitive, while those very toes deserve to be crushed. The press is bogged down with whether or not the Obama Administration lied about what took place. And, while this is a worthy path to travel, the bigger, and neglected, story is that we still have a lot of medieval thinking fuckers out there with no regard for human life unchained by their Holy Book’s rules.
We are lucky that most Muslims don’t take every word of the Qur’an as action items. We are also very lucky that Jews and Christians have cherry picked the pleasant parts from the Old and New Testaments and conveniently forgotten (or ignored) the passages calling for forms of torture and butchery on par with the horrors in the Qur’an. Wouldn’t it be quite awful if modern Jews and Christians still stoned to death unruly children? (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). Or if they demanded a God-Given right to own slaves? We are lucky indeed, that the modern world of scientific findings and a maturing social collective has weeded out, for the most part, the practice of such ancient thinking and customs. We are lucky most people, even though they continue to call themselves Jews, Christians or Muslims, have chosen to remain friendly and civil to each other, to practice their customized versions of old religions and not infringe on their neighbor’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We are lucky that most people, regardless of religious belief or lack thereof, do practice critical thinking, reason and logic on a regular basis.
* Critical Thinking.
* Logic
* Reason
These attributes, if practiced regularly and routinely, can save us from future Benghazis, Boston Bombings and future Manhattans. If only the people responsible for those atrocities had thought it out critically, they might have seen how misinformed they were. These, attributes, if ingrained in youth, can save kids from gun violence through either neglect, misuse or out-right abuse. It can also save kids from taking candy from strangers or losing their lunch money to the latest playground scam. It can save adults from get rich-quick schemes, being taken by a “psychic”, falling for a charismatic leader with poor intentions or anything else in the Land of Woo. These attributes and these alone, should become habits, practiced in every aspect of life, and these alone will save you from being taken in by liars, deceivers and con-men. Even if they turn out to be members of the Obama Administration who spun Benghazi to put themselves in a better light.
The Fourth Estate should be showing the face of an authoritarian group of Muslims trying to bring back the Ottoman Empire. It should be exposing this for what it is: One group of people wanting to tell the rest of us how to live and committing violent acts when we don’t do so. Instead, we’re caught up in more trivial matters. Until we pull up our big-boy pants and address the real cause of Benghazi, Manhattan and Boston, we’re going to get hit again. It is here, I wish more journalists travelled. It is in these waters, the more serious truth seekers should be wading. It is in times like these, I truly miss journalists like Christopher Hitchens. We need more Hitchens.
Freedom Cocktail 