Right Wing Islam Obsession at the Values Voter Summit
Source: The Daily Beast
If there was one dominant theme at this year’s Values Voter Summit, the right-wing confab organized by the Family Research Council, it was that President Obama is endangering the United States by coddling radical Islamists. “[W]hat we’re watching develop before our eyes today are the direct consequences of this administration’s policy of apology and appeasement across the globe,” Michele Bachmann said of the attacks on American embassies and consulates in the Middle East.
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Given the resonance of such language at the Values Voter Summit, Mitt Romney’s recent rhetoric on the Middle East makes more sense. His claim that the Obama administration’s “first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks,” has been widely criticized, even by some staunch Republicans. The base, however, ate it up—when pundit Bill Bennett quoted Romney’s words in his speech introducing Paul Ryan, there were sustained cheers and applause.
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There is a grotesque irony in the way speakers at the Values Voter Summit kept invoking the deaths of the four American officials in Libya to argue that the United States needs to adopt a more belligerent stance toward Muslims. Describing what’s at stake in the election, Ryan said, “We’ve all seen the images of our flag being burned and our embassies under attack by vicious mobs. The worst of it is the loss of four good men, including our ambassador to Libya.” From these speeches, one would never know that at least two of the dead were deeply devoted to fighting the sort of politics that the Values Voter Summit represents.
A former Peace Corps volunteer, Libya ambassador Chris Stevens was, by all accounts, a passionate advocate for engagement with the Islamic world. As Robin Wright wrote in The Washington Post, “He was not among those declaring that the Arab Spring had only made the region worse. Quite the reverse.” Former Navy Seal Glen Doherty, meanwhile, was on the advisory board to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that fights Christian fundamentalism in the armed forces.
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Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/15/right-wing-islam-obsession-at-the-values-voter-summit.html
Mikey Weinstein, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s founder and a close friend of Doherty, told the Daily Beast reporter that Doherty would not have wanted his name and death used that way at the Values Voter Summit. Doherty "hated the way right-wing Christians, particularly those in the military, promoted Islamophobia."
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militant fundamentalist Muslims. Both want to deny lots of other people basic human rights, and are willing to embrace violence to achieve their goals.
