Oh, the fun stuff you find on the intertubes

Via Moonbootica, in comments at Eschaton, comes this:

Praise be unto the only God. In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. O ye Moslems. O ye beloved sons of the Maghreb. May the blessing of God be upon you.

This is a great day for you and us, for all the sons of Adam who love freedom. Our numbers are as the leaves on the forest tress and as the grains of sand in the sea.

Behold. We the American Holy Warriors have arrived. We have come here to fight the great Jihad of Freedom.

We have come to set you free. We have sailed across the great sea in many ships, on many beaches we are landing, and our fighters swarm across the sands and into the city streets, and into the wide country sides, and along the highways.

Light fires on the hilltops; shout from your housetops, and from the high places, and say the sound of the drum be heard in the land, and the ululation of the women, and the voices even of small children.

Assemble along the highways to welcome your brothers.

We have come to set you free.

Speak with our fighting men and you will find them pleasing to the eye and gladdening to the heart. We are not as some other Christians whom ye have known, and who trample you under foot. Our soldiers consider you as their brothers, for we have been reared in the way of free men. Our soldiers have been told about your country and about their Moslem brothers and they will treat you with respect and with a friendly spirit in the eyes of God.

Look in their eyes and smiling faces, for they are Holy Warriors happy in their holy work. Greet us therefore as brothers as we will greet you, and help us.

If we are thirsty, show us the way to water. If we lose our way, lead us back to our camping places. Show us the paths over the mountains if need be, and if you see our enemies, the Germans or Italians, making trouble for us, kill them with knives or with stones or with any other weapon that you may have set your hands upon.

Help us as we have come to help you, and rich will be the reward unto us all who love justice and righteousness and freedom.

Pray for our success in battle, and help us, and God will help us both.

Lo, the day of freedom hath come.

May God grant his blessing upon you and upon us.

- Roosevelt

That's Franklin D., by the way.

October 1942 was the moment when British forces stopped Hitler’s Afrika Korps at El Alamein; for the first time in two years, the Allies felt confident that they would keep the Germans out of the Middle East, and they sought to take advantage of this change in fortune to win Muslim favor. Roosevelt’s appeal was part of this effort.

Combine that with this much more interesting interview on NPR yesterday with the author of Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present, in which we learn, among other things, that Arab nationalism which so plagues US foreign policy today is a direct result of American Universities being established in the "Middle East" for the purpose of inculcating "Western values" among the people there.

What's that line about being careful what you wish for?

So, we didn't always consider the "Arabs" as radical dangerous "Muslims" who would like to kill us all. Once in a while, we've actually respected their culture.

Well, when it seemed to be to our advantage. But then there's another line, about flies and honey and vinegar.....