The bullies are in trouble. I love it. I don’t love bullies but I do love it when they get in trouble. And who is scolding them? None other than super-respected world cop: Gen. David Petraeus. He’s the world’s cop because every time the U.S. finds itself botching the mission to make a region safe for our economic interests or our way of life we call on Gen. Petraeus to bring order back to things.
See, our regular military operations have in the last nine years had more of a barroom-bouncer quality to them than a planned exercise. And when the situation deteriorates so much that we can’t tell the renegade military contractors from the angry insurgents, we send Gen. Petreaus in to straighten out the bouncers and the bar-room all at the same time.
He’s remarkably cool and calm considering the jobs he gets handed to him. I met him in Sen. Susan Collins’ office in D.C. He was waiting to speak with her, but she was in her office with me. I was impressed that the man who was about to become the leader of the U.S. mission in Iraq — this was back in January 2007 — was patiently waiting in the outer office while a senator spoke to a member of the media working on a project to help veterans in Maine.
Gen. Petraeus humbly introduced himself to me even though it was Sen. Collins, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, that really mattered. And despite the fact that he’s our modern-day Ulysses S. Grant — every time it looks like the cause is lost he’s able to get organized and turn it around — he didn’t rush past me to get to the decision maker. The guy’s got class.
Now I want the U.S. wars ended and I don’t want our soldiers endangered. I don’t want innocents endangered. And even though he’s been tapped to do jobs that I have despised since they began, I’m grateful that Gen. Petraeus constantly operates with our soldiers’ safety as a key part of his mission.
So the U.S. bullies who are making a huge issue out of things like Muslim prayer centers and who now plan to burn the Quran on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have lured this quiet “get ’er done” kind of general out in public to comment that their tactics are putting his soldiers, who by the way are our soldiers, in harm’s way.
According a report this week on CNN, the general issued a statement that all this anti-Islam rhetoric could have deadly consequences. Gen. Petraeus cautioned, “It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan.”
But the bullies here at home don’t care about our troops and they don’t care about the ideology that our troops are fighting to spread through the regions in which they are stationed. See, our soldiers — from the lowliest private to the general himself — believe they are standing up for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the freedom of worship our country was founded to protect. All these troops have agreed to die for these concepts if necessary.
But the Quran burners and mosque haters don’t care about religious freedom because they are the next in a long line of U.S. citizens that deny rights to others.
Whether it was the long history of KKK actions against Catholics, the 1930s federal maximum quotas on Jewish immigration — while those same Jews faced extermination in Europe — or the two-centuries-long denial of religious freedom to Native Americans, this country has a constituency that hates people who worship dif-ferently from themselves.
It’s actually ironic that Gen. Petraeus is fighting to prove American love of democratic principles when it wasn’t until the general was 26 years old that we actually outlawed the last remnants of religious persecution. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 made illegal the censorship of native rites and the practice of taking Native American children from their homes and forcing them to go to Christian schools.
Tragically, the planned burning of the Quran has put the general and our troops in the position of fighting to protect an American’s right to hate.
Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth is the author of “Left Out In America: The State of Homelessness in the United States.” She may be reached at PatLaMarche@hotmail.com.