By George Neumayr on 10.15.09 @ 6:09AM
Obama listens to his political advisers, not soldiers or
chaplains.
Polls consistently show that soldiers do not want the armed
services turned into a laboratory of social experimentation. But
a president who spends more time in the company of Oprah than his
generals has no intention of listening to them.
Whatever "consultation" precedes Obama's change to the
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, it won't include soldiers and
generals who object to its repeal. Were Edward Gibbon writing
about America's decline and fall, he would surely note as an
advanced stage of decadence and absurdity that its political
culture expended more energy on matters like "Don't Ask, Don't
Tell" than troop levels.
Symbolic of this administration's unseriousness is that it
would attach a "hate crimes" amendment to the Senate's defense
spending bill this week. Will the Taliban be added to the list?
America's enemies at this rate may end up as a protected
category.
In the midst of conducting two wars, what is one of Obama's
top priorities? It is to make sure that someone, somewhere
doesn't say something the "LGBT" community considers offensive.
Using a defense spending bill as a Trojan horse to mollify gay
activists surpasses even Clintonian levels of cynicism.
But the Washington Post appears to
have found a new hate criminal close to home: a Camp David pastor
"who has Obama's attention,"
Carey Cash, the great-nephew of Johnny Cash.
"Although Cash was assigned to Camp David by the Navy, the
president really likes the guy," declares the
Post. That is, until he reads this
article.
Those whom the PC gods would destroy they first put in a
passive-aggressive Post profile. The piece
is full of ostensible praise -- quoting colleagues of Cash about
"his deep faith, warm manner and forceful sermons" -- but what
seems to have really piqued the paper's interest is that a pastor
whom Obama recently commended ("I really think he's excellent")
has an "unflattering assessment of Islam, which Cash views as a
flawed faith."
Cash has written that Islam "from its very birth has used
the edge of the sword as a means to convert or conquer those with
different religious convictions," and that "grace is often absent
in Islam." Uh-oh.
"The White House declined" to comment on Cash, said the
paper. Nor did it "make Cash available for interviews, saying it
wished to keep the president's religious worship at Camp David
private. Cash's family also declined to speak on instructions,
they said, from the White House."
Also problematic from the Post's
point of view is that Cash takes his own religion
seriously.
It reports: "Cash has drawn criticism from the Military
Religious Freedom Foundation, a watchdog group that monitors
Christian proselytizing in the military, for his participation in
Campus Crusade for Christ's Military Ministry, a program for
evangelical chaplains to 'help every troop, every leader, every
family member hear and receive the life-saving message about
Jesus.'"
Chris Rodda, a foundation spokesman, told the paper that
"any chaplain" who supports a group like this "is a
problem."
So much for Cash's career as an Obama chaplain. Clearly in
Obama's America these are not acceptable thoughts, and
particularly not from a Camp David pastor. America, as Obama
often says, is not at "war with Islam." The only religion that
Obama seeks to reform is his own.
Despite its intermittently breezy praise of Cash, the
Post seems proud of itself for finding,
post-Jeremiah Wright, a right-wing pastor who could cause Obama
trouble. The White House will now have to scurry to find a new
pastor, one who not only supports Obama's regard for Islam but
also his repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
topics:
Islam, Gays in the Military, Hate Crimes
