Rep. Virgil Goode on House floor, February 15, 2007 (transcript from Think Progress):
When the commentary begins in the Middle East, in no way do I want to comfort and encourage the radical Muslims who want to destroy our country and who want to wipe the so-called infidels like myself and many of you from the face of the Earth. In no way do I want to aid and assist the Islamic jihadists who want the crescent and star to wave over the Capitol of the United States and over the White House of this country. I fear that radical Muslims who want to control the Middle East and ultimately the world would love to see "In God We Trust" stricken from our money and replaced with "In Muhammad We Trust."
While Crablaw is entirely prepared to believe that Virgil Goode (remember, the good Virginian one who freaked out that a Muslim Congressman would symbolically swear his oath on the holy text of his religion) is an uneducated dumbass, surely he must know that Muslims - liberal, moderate, conservative, radical - would never claim that it is in "Mohammed" in whom they trust. Muslims trust in God, which word in Arabic is spelled and pronounced "Allah" for Christian and Muslim Arabs alike. (The word is cognate in its linguistic root to the Hebrew and Aramaic "Eloh", "El" and "Elaha.") Muslims revere Mohammed as an outstanding example of human character, leadership and piety, comparable to the way that Jews and Christians (and Muslims) would revere Moses or Abraham. But they do not "trust in" Mohammed any more than Christians and Jews "trust in" Abraham. The very concept would probably be offensive to Muslims as dangerously close to
shirk or associating anything or anyone with God.
To the more general point, I am not at all convinced that "radical Muslims" will take our discussion of withdrawal from Iraq as a sign of weakness. The less radical of the radicals will look forward to the cessation of our occupation, as our presence is a cactus in the ass of every self-respecting Iraqi, just as an Iraqi or French or Brazilian army occupying the Mall and Potomac Waterfront in a walled-off compound and running patrols up and down Reisterstown Road in Baltimore and similar roads in many cities around the country would be a national humiliation for the U.S., growing stronger every week. The most extreme radical Muslims would view our presence as a happy, useful fact, an obnoxious irritant helpful in fomenting violent extremism.
If we leave, there will probably be a surge of violence in Iraq, let's not fool ourselves. But once we are gone, a lot of Iraqi who now bear arms will be more interested in feeding their families, their cousins, nieces and nephews in this very tribal society than in war. They will not be singing "Kum Ba Ya" but will be focusing on survival and taking care of their families, instead of coping with the dirty disgrace of a massive armed force squatting in the center of their country. The men whom al-Sadr and his Sunni counterparts now rely on to fight their fighting will look more to the government not as some civil model described by a former resident of Rep. Goode's district Thomas Jefferson, but as the tool to stabilize the country and for the distribution of funds, payoffs, and crude, corrupt stability once our comprehensively unnatural and hated presence has ended.
Now some will say that I am too optimistic, that greed and family needs and the hope not for good government, but for fairly bad but stable government won't take over once we are gone. But those people of good will who disagree with pulling out deserve a better advocate for their position than the likes of Muslim-baiter Virgil Goode.
Labels: Congress, Iraq, Islam
