An Army of None

If you had "less than 24 hours" in the over-under for how long after the Fort Hood shooting it would take for someone to make the knee-jerk suggestion that all Muslims be barred from serving in the U.S military, congrats -- you win.

Oh, and feel free to kick a couple of bucks of that pot to the good, God-fearing folks at the American Family Association, since you owe them.

From the AFA's website:

"The more devout a Muslim is, the more of a threat he is to national security. Devout Muslims, who accept the teachings of the Prophet as divinely inspired, believe it is their duty to kill infidels....

Of course, most U.S. Muslims don't shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine. As soon as Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates, we'll go back to allowing them to serve. You tell us who the ones are that we have to worry about, prove you're right, and Muslims can once again serve. Until that day comes, we simply cannot afford the risk. You invent a jihadi-detector that works every time it's used, and we'll welcome you back with open arms...

It's time we all got over the nonsense that all cultures and religions are equally valid or worthy. They most certainly are not. While Christianity is a religion of peace, founded by the Prince of Peace, Islam is a religion of war and violence, founded by a man who routinely chopped the heads off his enemies, had sex with nine-year old girls, and made his wealth plundering merchant caravans."

So to recap: Christianity -- the warm and cuddly guys who brought you the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, abortion doctor murders and whose indifference aided in the systematic murder of six-million-plus people during World War II -- that's a religion of "peace and love." But Islam, well it's crazy and dangerous.

While I actually do believe and have mentioned here before that there has to be concession to some very ugly realities when it comes to how we deal with the kinds of threats generally being aimed in the direction of the West these days, it goes without saying that you can't issue a blanket ban on Muslims in the military. Only an idiot -- or in this case a religious fundamentalist from the other side of the fence -- would fail to see the irony of putting a rule in place that goes against every freaking thing our men and women in uniform are supposedly fighting for in the first place. Yes, Muslim extremism in an of itself is dangerous and a threat to the United States, but the true faith adherents to one ridiculous set of fairy tales taking it upon themselves to call for broadstroke intolerance of those who believe in an equally ridiculous set of fairy tales is a laughably arrogant conceit.

The fundamentalist brand of Islam is indeed obscene and barbaric, and even at its best the religion is hopelessly ass-backward -- but that's only because its thinking never moved beyond the period of its creation: the sixth century. In this respect, guess what? It shares a somewhat common trait with almost every other faith-based religion on the planet, including and especially Christianity. They all strictly adhere to an irrational belief system founded by people who literally knew nothing about anything. What obviously separates Islam from many other religions is that the most ferocious of its True Believers tend to want to see the enemies of Allah -- the ones who've subjugated and humiliated his faithful servants -- driven into the sea at all costs. And yes, it may be politically incorrect, but it's not outrageous to wonder out loud if there might be some way to tell the difference between these jihadist psychopaths and the average decent, hard-working Muslim citizen, since lives may depend on it.

The problem of course is that there isn't a "foolproof" means of discerning a traditionally religious person (amusingly, an almost universally positive designation in our culture) and a guy who wants to blow up a building or shoot up an army base because his god told him to. Would it be wise to put Muslim enlistees in the U.S. military through rigorous psychological testing considering that we're currently fighting two wars against largely Muslim enemies? Yes, that's common sense -- and the irony of the fact that the Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was an Army shrink likely isn't lost on anyone. But for someone to call for the comprehensive exclusion of those who subscribe to a specific religious belief system from the volunteer force that defends this country? That's staggeringly un-American.

Especially when the ones doing the calling believe in just as much ridiculous nonsense as the people they're so terrified of.