Democrats are using George W. Bush to troll the GOP – “Bush was right” that “Islam is peace.”
Republicans, particularly the presidential hopefuls, are pressuring President Barack Obama to be more aggressive on terrorism.
Donald Trump has called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, a national registry, and ID badges for Muslims. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) continuously berates President Obama and Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton for refusing to declare war on “radical Islamic terrorism.” Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has warned of a “civilizational struggle against radical, apocalyptic Islam,” making a distinction, at least, between ordinary Muslims and extremists. Ben Carson has stated that he deems traditional Muslims to be unfit to serve as president.
Under this mounting pressure from Republicans to declare war on “radical Islamic terrorism,” Democrats have turned to an unlikely ally for support – former president George W. Bush.
As the ultra-conservative website Breitbart reports, President Obama “regularly cites his predecessor’s refusal to demonize Muslims or play into the notion of a clash between Islam and the West. It’s a striking endorsement from a president whose political rise was predicated on opposition to the Iraq war and Bush’s hawkish approach in the Middle East.”
Speaking to a group of reporters at the close of the November G20 Summit, Obama spoke of being proud of Bush’s response to the September 11 attack:
I had a lot of disagreements with George W. Bush on policy, but I was very proud after 9/11 when he was adamant and clear about the fact that this is not a war on Islam. And the notion that some of those who have taken on leadership in his party would ignore all of that, that’s not who we are. On this, they should follow his example. It was the right one. It was the right impulse. It’s our better impulse. And whether you are European or American, the values that we are defending — the values that we’re fighting against ISIL for — are precisely that we don’t discriminate against people because of their faith. We don’t kill people because they’re different than us. That’s what separates us from them. And we don’t feed that kind of notion that somehow Christians and Muslims are at war.
Hillary Clinton cited Bush as well during the November 14 Democratic presidential debate. CBS moderator John Dickerson broached the subject of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. Noting that Republican hopeful Marco Rubio said that this attack showed that we are at war with radical Islam, Dickerson asked: “Do you agree with that characterization, radical Islam?”
Clinton responded “I don’t think we’re at war with Islam. I don’t think we at war with all Muslims. I think we’re at war with jihadists.”
Dickerson interrupted, noting that Rubio used the term “radical Islam,” and was not referring to all Muslims. Republicans have long criticized President Obama for eschewing the term “radical Islam.”
Clinton responded that it is important not to demonize the Muslim faith, citing Bush’s belief that the U.S. was not at war with Islam.
We’ve gotta reach out to Muslim countries. We’ve gotta have them be part of our coalition. If they hear people running for– president who basically shortcut it to say we are somehow against Islam– that was one of the real contributions– despite all the other problems that George W. Bush made after 9/11 when he basically said after going to a mosque in Washington, “We are not at war with Islam or Muslims. We are at war with violent extremism. We are at war with people who use their religion for purposes of power and oppression.” And yes, we are at war with those people that I don’t want us to be painting with too broad a brush.
In 2012, The New York Times wrote of the visit President George W. Bush made to a Washington mosque just six days after the attack, where he spoke eloquently against the harassment of Arabs and Muslims living in the United States and about the need to respect Islam.
After hailing American Muslims as “friends” and “taxpaying citizens” in his comments at the mosque, Mr. Bush went on to say: “These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. And it’s important for my fellow Americans to understand that.” He quoted from the Koran: “In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil.” Then he continued in his own words: “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.”
Providing some background on the speech, The New York Times reported:
As Mr. Bush recounted in his own book “Decision Points,” in the days after Sept. 11, he was disturbed by reports of bias crimes against American Muslims. And he had heard firsthand accounts of the Japanese-American internment from one of its victims — Norman Y. Mineta, a Democrat who served as Mr. Bush’s transportation secretary.
Out of that combination of historical perspective and visceral decency, Mr. Bush sent instructions to the White House’s Office of Public Liaison to arrange for him to visit a mosque. For the men and women in that office, the stakes were instantly clear.
“In the aftermath of 9/11, when every move the president made was being watched extremely closely, it was important to demonstrate that American Muslims were not the same people who attacked the U.S.,” said Matt Smith, the liaison office’s associate director at the time. “When you show that these people are Americans, it goes a long way.”
IMAGE: “President George W. Bush and Barack Obama meet in Oval Office” by White House photo by Eric Draper – http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/11/images/20081110_5e5u4007a-515h.html (Original, broken link: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/11/images/20081110_5e5u4007a-515h.html). Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.
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