Armchair General Bill O’Reilly has declared the war on terrorism a Holy War. And since President Obama doesn’t see it that way, O’Reilly wants “every cleric in this country” to tell their congregations to demand that Obama up his war game.
Never mind that, in his Talking Points commentary, O’Reilly noted that polling shows Americans oppose sending ground troops to fight ISIS 50-47%. “Talking Points believes that if ground action is defined as raids, not occupation, that number would go up quickly,” O’Reilly declared. Proving once again that to Fox, fighting terrorism is mostly a matter of semantics. At least to the chickenhawk pundits.
“History will show that President Obama made an enormous mistake by failing to leave a residual force behind in Iraq,” O’Reilly continued. While ignoring the even more colossal mistake that President George W. Bush made in invading the country in the first place.
“The Holy War is here and, unfortunately, it seems the president of the United States will be the last one to acknowledge it,” O’Reilly concluded gravely.
O’Reilly brought on clergy guaranteed to back him up. One was extremist (and Fox News fave) pastor Robert Jeffress. He’s got a new book out called “Countdown to the Apolocalypse: why ISIS and Ebola are only the beginning.” Jeffress has also accused President Obama of “paving the way for the Antichrist.” So we didn’t need to hear Jeffress say a word to know where he’d stand.
But who knew Jeffress is a military expert as well? Calling President Obama “the Neville Chamberlain approach,” Jeffress theorized that Obama has downplayed the threat partly because of “the influence of Islam on his own life.”
So Jeffress decided to take O’Reilly’s Holy War into his own hands.
JEFFRESS: Bill, I believe in the prophesies of the Bible, that things are gonna get worse before the Lord returns. But that is no excuse for fatalism. And I believe that Christians ought to be on the forefront of fighting this evil. …And that is why I, tonight, I am calling on Christians everywhere, Catholics and Protestants together, to join with our Jewish friends and demand that this president do whatever is necessary – including boots on the ground – to eradicate this cancer of ISIS and radical Islam before it destroys us.
O’Reilly liked the idea. “I think all Christians, Jews and secularists who love their country and want to protect humanity should email and call the White House and say, ‘Enough.’” It was a thinly-veiled suggestion that only someone who doesn’t love their country would fail to do such things.
O’Reilly’s other guest, conservative Father Gerald Murray was all for more death and destruction. He added, “We don’t maintain a military so they can stay in barracks. They’re supposed to go out and defend us. …I’m very happy that the Egyptians and the Jordanians took some action. We need to take action.”
O’Reilly concluded with a demand that every cleric go along with him.
O’REILLY: I’m gonna also make a call …for every cleric in the country next Sunday, Saturday, Friday in the mosques, with the imams, to address this with their congregation and to say enough, that we people of good faith have to tell our leader to get in gear. I’d like to see every cleric in this country do that. …Let’s make that happen. And I want every pastor, every priest, every rabbi and every imam to email me personally and tell me you’re gonna do that and I’ll read as many on the air as I can.
You can bet your No Spin Zone that O’Reilly will be attacking any cleric who doesn’t do his bidding.
Watch it below, from the February 17 The O’Reilly Factor.
;^)
Are they thinking Obama will suddenly say, “Oh you’re right. Muslims are evil! I will sneak up and destroy them next Tuesday at 4:00…Here’s how we’ll do it…” ???
It’s a scary world that gives uneducated laypeople equal time with experts. As if their misguided opinion carries weight.
It’s a bad idea to try to fight wars on TV.
“The Pentagon says that Mr. Baghdadi, after being arrested in Falluja in early 2004, was released that December with a large group of other prisoners deemed low level.
But Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi scholar who has researched Mr. Baghdadi’s life, sometimes on behalf of Iraqi intelligence, said that Mr. Baghdadi had spent five years in an American detention facility where, like many ISIS fighters now on the battlefield, he became more radicalized."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/11/world/middleeast/us-actions-in-iraq-fueled-rise-of-a-rebel.html?_r=1
General Chickenhawk O’Reilly is asking church leaders to push for war with ISIL (i.e. a ground war with US troops). Meanwhile, the right-wing media have been throwing a fit that the HHS recently asked churches to encourage their church communities to discuss healthcare (the ACA) one Sunday a month. So it’s not proper for HHS to ask churches to encourage the folks to protect the health of themselves/their families, their communities and their finances (because medical bills are the #1 reason regular folks have to declare bankruptcy) with the ACA but BOR of GOP TV, er, FOX “news”, thinks it’s just fine to call for all religious leaders to demand war from their pulpits? (eye roll)
Should the US end up sending in ground troops to fight ISIS (and some experts in this area believe that ISIS wants to draw the US into a ground war as Bin Laden did) and some of our brave troops get beheaded/burnt alive by the ISIS…OMG, the thought makes me shudder.
I said to myself if I could have been on that panel, that I would go along with everything O’Loofah said as long as he immediately enlisted and was in the first line of troops to go after ISIS. And if he could take the priest, the pastor and Chris Matthews along with him too. Nothing these imbeciles love more than throwing American troops at every problem in the world, as long as they and their own don’t ever have to lace up a boot.
You would have done better with, “The Spice must flow!”
Thank you & have a great day.
