Friday, September 10, 2004

Ah, the American school system, bastion of "Blame America First"

Fifth grade teacher Bob Peterson at Fratney Street School in Milwaukee is teaching his students about the root causes of terrorism. Is he teaching them about radical Islam? Nope. Theocracies versus democracies? Nope. A geopolitical lesson on the thousands of years of turmoil in the Middle East and the clash of cultures between Islam and the Judeo-Christian West? Nope. Bob is using cookies to help kids understand that terrorists kill us because we refuse to share our cookies with them. According to USA Today:

Bob Peterson teaches students that overpopulation and poverty help make it easier to recruit terrorists for attacks like those on Sept. 11, 2001.

Bob is being awarded for his teaching methodology.

Another teacher, Masato Ogawa of Ontario (Ore.) High School , has an even more PC lesson plan…

Ogawa's students discuss the Patriot Act and the U.S. government's treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II and consider whether the government should extend the limits of its authority during wartime.

No mention is made of Islam in the article. Shocking!

Terrorism is not an issue of have's and have not's. Where do these terrorists come from? The heart of the radical Islamic movement is Saudi Arabia, a land with natural riches beyond belief. They pick up their cookies in Mercedes Benz and BMWs. Those who are impoverished in Saudi Arabia are so because they live in a theocratic dictatorship, not because Americans have more cookies.

The problem with terrorism is not a lack of cookies or an uneven distribution of them. The Saudi's do nothing to help their poor oppressed fellow Muslims in politically and strategically insignificant places. It is the Christian missionary worker that is bringing food, education and medical supplies to these people.

Is this the role of public education? Teaching our children at a young age to be ashamed of being American and blaming the victims for the terrorism that takes their lives? There are unfortunately poor starving people all over the world, but it is only from Islam that we get suicide bombers and atrocities like 9/11/01 and the murder of Russian children in Beslan. No plight of poverty provides an excuse for killing 10 year old school children in the name of Allah. As Victor Davis Hanson points out in NationalReview.com, these terrorists are not "screaming "Hail Mary" when they machine gun children in the back, slit the throat of airline stewardesses, or blow pregnant women up on buses across the globe."

Why would a wealthy scion of a rich Saudi family turn into the most hunted terrorist in the entire world, with the blood of thousands of innocents on his hands? Why would gunmen shoot children in a school and laugh at their terror? Why would young men throw away their lives crashing planes into buildings full of innocent people who just want to go about their business? Why would teens strap explosives on themselves to blow up busses in Israel? The only common thread is Islam, and it is past time pretending that it is not.

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