Oh, the Hypocrisy!

In a week where ISIS released propaganda footage showing the immolation death of a Jordanian pilot, the biggest uproar seemed to be reserved for President Obama and his comments at a National Prayer Breakfast.  Invoking the historically documented savagery of many of the movements over the years that have utilized religion, mostly Christianity, as moral justification for their heinous actions, pundits and politicians couldn't resist the urge to claim utmost offense from this speech.  Let that sink in for a minute.  Footage of a living person being set alight, and dying what was surely a horrific and awful death, took second billing to the President reminding the nation and the world that we are not without fault when it comes to brutality.  From the Crusades to the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, religion, again Christianity for the most part, has been used as a cloak for justifying brutality on a scale equal to or greater than any that ISIS or any other Muslim group has felt compelled to unleash on the populace.  And if religion isn't the cited justification, one needs to only look at what has transpired since the events of September 11, 2001.  A war on terror, an infinitely open ended one at that, led us to believe it was okay to waterboard suspected terrorists and take humiliating pictures of them arranged in the most sexually graphic poses and in states of sheer terror and fright all in the name of protecting our inherently good democracy.

As if that amount of hypocrisy wasn't enough, one needs to only look to the calls for revenge against the ISIS terrorists that utilize the very tactics listed above.  Somehow, in some morally justifiable way, utilizing waterboarding on ISIS suspects is condoned.  An eye for an eye will be the generally given reasoning.  At the same time, it's unclear to anyone calling for this that it's exactly what the President was invoking in his speech and trying to demonstrate to the world that even though we are not without guilt ourselves regarding these matters, we certainly will not resort to such brutality in order or exact revenge.  We're supposed to be more civilized than that.  Showing no waver in the face of, what seems like, unimaginable savagery is supposed to one of the reasons why America is afforded the ability to take the moral high ground on so many issues.  Calls for such retaliation would not only squander the little amount of good will we actually have in this world; it would also serve as ideal recruiting fodder for these groups and would thus only expand their ranks when we're desperately trying to shrink them.

At this point, there's very little the President can say that won't be greeted with the same knee-jerk reaction that it's either intentionally offensive or blatantly false.  Having historical facts questioned and simply reminding the world that we also have blood on our hands, some spilled very recently, is perhaps a poignant reminder how hard his job really is.