Complications Grow for Muslims Serving in U.S. Military

[groovedaddy]

Abdi Akgun joined the Marines in August of 2000, fresh out of high school and eager to serve his country. As a Muslim, the attacks of Sept. 11 only steeled his resolve to fight terrorism.

But two years later, when Mr. Akgun was deployed to Iraq with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, the thought of confronting Muslims in battle gave him pause.

He was haunted by the possibility that he might end up killing innocent civilians.

“It’s kind of like the Civil War, where brothers fought each other across the Mason-Dixon line,” Mr. Akgun, 28, of Lindenhurst, N.Y., who returned from Iraq without ever pulling the trigger. “I don’t want to stain my faith, I don’t want to stain my fellow Muslims, and I also don’t want to stain my country’s flag.”

Thousands of Muslims have served in the United States military — a legacy that some trace to the First World War. But in the years since Sept. 11, 2001, as the United States has become mired in two wars on Muslim lands, the service of Muslim-Americans is more necessary and more complicated than ever before.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/us/09muslim.html?th&emc=th

[Lefty48197]

1. Can anyone say "internment camps"?

.

[ZombieHorde]

2. Many DUers are very accepting of FDR's internment camps.

I have been insulted here many times for claiming the internment camps were highly unethical.

[Sinti]

3. They were unethical.

I think it has to do with the way they're taught history. It seems people are willing to suffer just about any loss of freedom in some quarters for a false sense of security.

[Christa]

4. K & R nt

[rd_kent]

5. If we were at war where the majority religion was xtianity....

would xtians "feel like it was a civil war" and think twice about fighting?

[DeSwiss]

6. Throughout the history of wars.....

...every advantage, especially racism was used to solidify the troops for battle. In America, the purposefully multi-racial nation where anyone theoretically could become a citizen as long as they weren't the wrong color, this was always somewhat problematic. Not just when the enemy was of someone's native land, but the former allies, religious and family connection that crossed ever-shifting borders in the wars that were constantly dividing and re-dividing up Europe's regal realms.

The reality was that Germans, Japanese, Mexicans, blacks and Puerto Ricans were all watched at some time or another, for possible seditious behavior. And even when approved for duty, restricted in their involvement in America's wars to mainly non-combat roles. That is until the complaints of mistreatment and racism, and the old standby of rejection of a race's manhood which apparently could only be proved as a dead man on a battle field fought for bankers interests. But when it got loud enough or the cannons had begun to use up more fodder than was expected they realized, amazingly, that bullets were colorblind.

In the end, those same characteristics the Army was prepared to eschew, helped the American's cause greatly by decoding messages and making our own impenetrable, as when the Navajo Indians Code Talker confused the shit out of the Japanese forever. They still hadn't figured out what was being said to this day, and thought it was an American ruse until the bombs began to fall. I've always said that if America ever falls, it will be the result of a suicide. We're stupid that way.


- Sometimes its like we don't know shit from shinola......

K&R