Who are the racists?
Webster's defines a racist as being "a person who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward people on the basis of their membership in a particular race or ethnic group." There is an additional part of that definition which we will return to later. But, for now, the definition does not parse a distinction between which race the racist belongs to.
And therein lies a crucial point. A racist can, in truth, be a person of any race. But, ultimately, the definition rests upon someone being antagonistic toward another because of race. For the leftists in today's America, hardly a day goes by without them, and their reliant media, trumpeting claims of racism to criticize virtually every statement written or uttered against any progressive interest.
The latest example, but by no means the last one, is where President Donald Trump made a brutally honest social media post which directly said that if certain unnamed Congressmen truly hated America, they were free to return to their "home" and reform it for the better and then return to America to show us how they made things better. While unnamed, one could reasonably conclude the post was principally aimed at Ilhan Omar, who, as a young child, immigrated to America with her parents, eventually becoming an American citizen, and then was elected to the US House of Representatives.
The left immediately leapt to claims of racism against Trump. But, nowhere did Trump make an observation based upon race. Rather, the observation was simply addressed to those in Congress he deemed to hate America. So, in that light, lets look at just some of Omar's recent commentary.
Omar sat in an interview and laughed when detailing her reaction to one of her college professors, who, in her view, foolishly emphasized the name of al-Qaeda, in a manner that was worthy of her contempt, and then added that he wouldn't refer to "the Army" with such emotional inflection. One can conclude she meant the US Army. Her inability to comprehend the evil of al-Qaeda was reinforced in another address she made to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), where she described the 9-11 attack as being a day when "some people did something," while immediately saying the 9-11 attack instantly resulted in the civil rights of American Muslims being abridged. In her mind, it was clear that it was more important and noteworthy that Muslim rights were being abridged, than in a mass murder of American civilians. She converted her rhetoric to action by publicly urging leniency regarding a group of American born ISIS members who were put on trial. In Omar's mind, it is clear she has more affinity for the concerns of terrorists than for American concerns over Islamic terrorism.
Her statements regarding American reaction toward Muslims in general are outrageous lies. Given the evil of the 9-11 attack, it is instead rather remarkable how the vast majority of Americans remained objective and non-judgmental regarding Muslims living in America, and reserved their righteous outrage toward members of the Islamist sect of Islam, those who's public actions encourage the Islamofacism exhibited by such groups as al-Qaeda. President George W. Bush made it a point to enter an American mosque immediately after the 9-11 attack to make a point of widespread harmony between Muslim-Americans and American interests. Apparently, Omar never heard about this!
As insulting as Omar's comments are, she made another comment that is far worse. Omar claimed that the US military engaged in widespread war crimes in Somalia, particularly during the violent Battle of Mogadishu. Omar replied to a social media post that spoke about the American casualties in that battle. In her reply to that post she wrote, "in his selective memory, he forgets to also mention the thousands of Somalis killed by the American forces that day!" These are slanderous lies!
For the record, our military was there to protect the Somali people from the evil violence of the Somali war lords, who regularly stole humanitarian aid to sell on the black market, to raise funds to purchase weapons and finance their militia forces. In one particularly brutal action, these thugs massacred a large group of Pakistani UN peacekeepers in order to help facilitate more such aid thefts. This massacre prompted the UN to formally ask the United States to put a special forces team into Somalia to combat the Somali war lords, and to protect humanitarian aid. The Battle of Mogadishu resulted from an attempt by our special forces to capture the war lord who's militia carried out this atrocity. During this mission, two Blackhawk helicopters were shot down by Somali milita.
Michael Durant was the lone survivor of the second helicopter shoot down. For years he maintained that he was beaten senseless by a Somali civilian who hit him over the head with a club as he laid helpless from grievous wounds. Years later, in his autobiography, Durant explained that, to avoid upsetting the public, he chose to initially fib about a singular fact of that incident. Years later, Durant admitted in his own book that it was not a club that was used to beat him to an unconscious state, it was instead the arm of one of Durant's own helicopter crew! The Somali civilian, in an evil state of mind, deliberately cut off a dead US soldier's arm, and then used it, as if it were a club, to repeatedly bash Durant in the head! Not content with this singular act of brutality, other Somali civilians then dragged US soldiers' corpses through the streets of Mogadishu! Apparently, none of this has ever concerned Ilhan Omar!
Ironically, it was Somali militiamen who prevented this civilian from beating Durant to death with this severed arm! And, these civilians were the very people our military were there to help! This shows the decrepit amorality our military had to deal with. Despite this degree of savagery, the most liberal of estimates place the total death toll during the Battle of Mogadishu as being under 1,000, with most of those Somali deaths being the result of the war lords' actions, not the US military's. The principle Somali war lord, Mohammad Farah Aidid, himself claimed that only 315 total Somali civilians and militia were killed. In fact, prior to the introduction of US forces into Somalia, the actions of the war lords resulted in the deaths of an estimated 500,000 Somali citizens! Apparently, Omar doesn't care much about this fact either!
Omar's outrageous lies ignored the 500,000 needless deaths caused by civil war in Somalia, and instead inflated by about 20 fold the actual deaths caused by US military actions, which themselves were acts of self-defense against attack during military hostilities. This is clear proof that Ilhan Omar harbors extreme hatred of the United States, our military, and our basic way of life!
Trump's posts were direct and bold, but they were written in response to Omar's hateful and clearly anti-American statements, which are numerous and fabricated. It is not racist to attack demagoguery! It is not racist to condemn hate! Nor is it racist to challenge the integrity of those who write such slanderous lies. The racists are therefore those whom Trump addressed, who leap to false claims of racism to protect themselves against the truth.
Today's leftists try to pretend that racism only exists by actions of white men against so-called minorities. This alludes to the second part of Webster's definition, which reads, "... antagonistic toward people on the basis of their ... particular race, typically one that is a minority or marginalized." But, that falls flat. In truth, all people are capable of racism if they succumb to the temptation to analyze all things by racial considerations, vice individual character and merit. Ilhan Omar is to be condemned because her beliefs lack character and merit, not because of her race or national origin.
-- Ken Stallings
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