The following is an excerpt from a review of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, a book by supposed "scholar" Mahmood Mamdani..
Mamdani‘s perspective on America also leads him to uncritically accept others’ attacks on American actions, for example the use of depleted uranium munitions in the Gulf War. He describe DU as “radioactive and highly toxic,” claiming that it is responsible for a huge increase in cancers in Iraq. That, however, is implausible.
He notes that U-238 has a “half-life of four and a half billion years,” but fails to appreciate what that means: The shorter an element’s half-life, the more energy is gives off; the longer an element’s half-life, the less energy it gives off. The half-life of U-238 is as long as the age of the earth because it gives off so little energy.
Essentially, these shells are no more radioactive than the Lead shells which have been used for decades (or any other heavy metal for that matter).
Now, apparently I have one friend who recommends this book, and another who is now reading it (seriously). Ok, you say, seems an innocent enough mistake, considering the book is widely perceived a credible thesis by a credible author concerning the supposed American roots of Islamic terror. But given that such a perception exists, it is not MORE important to independently verify the claims made within, and not LESS? This is an acceptable mistake for a high school history student, not a Columbia professor. In fact, I would go further and make the claim that such an egregious error from a scholar of such repute ought to be taken not as a simple misunderstanding of nuclear physics, but as a betrayal of the author's allegiance to a widely held school of modern leftist thought: anti-Americanism. In plainer words, he seems to be able to say anything as long as it supports the claim that the United States of America is responsible for all the evil in the world.
During the 20th century, these treasonous types chose America's opposition to Socialism and Communism (two related and truly evil ideologies) as their prime focus, but in more recent years it is the American opposition to Islamo-fascism which has been the target of their wrath. This opposition (unlike what Dr. Mamdani suggests) did not begin with the Cold War, but was in fact the theater of some of our earliest military operations. In the early 1800s, the Muslim Barbary pirates of North Africa were waging a relentless war against the Western powers.. often invading and taking entire Irish villages, and European and American naval crews as slaves. Until this point, Thomas Jefferson had fervently believed that this violence was retribution for Christian crusade tainted European Imperalism. Why on earth would they attack ships of the newly independent United States? Imagine his shock at the following events....
From wikipedia:
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to negotiate with Tripoli's envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman or (Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja). Upon inquiring "concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury", the ambassador replied:
""
It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every muslim who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once. ""
It was this that ended his innocence about the nature of the non-European powers, and eventually convinced him to launch the Barbary Wars when he ascended to the Presidency. (the most important outcome of which is the only official US document which mentions the Christian religion: "the United States is not, in any sense, a Christian nation.")
It is more important than ever that this neglected history of American-Islamic relations be revisited in light of the modern world. Especially by people such as Dr. Mamdani, who would otherwise believe that the United States has brought this Islamic violence upon itself by its own actions. It is extremely important to note, that the violence we see from fundamentalist Muslims today is NOT a reaction to perceived injustices, but rather an extension of standard Islamic views on the nature of world power. Islam contends that IT IS the last and final revelation of God, and this revelation INCLUDES the entitlement to world dominance under Shariah law. It is for this reason, that we do not see, for example, terrorists from Cambodia, Laos, Chile or Vietnam (nations which would in any just view have equal entitlement to feel slighted by American actions during the cold war).
Anti-Americanism, as exhibited by Dr. Mamdani, is a cute rebellious ideology, but it is fundamentally flawed in its implicit thesis that without American commitment to individual freedom, the world would be a better place. If America has any wish to remain a prosperous nation of free people, it must realize and directly confront the nature of the beast which faces us: religious bigotry of the highest order.
