The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Every year Tulsa has a Veterans Day parade downtown. For nearly a decade my staff and I take a break and go down to watch the parade and cheer on the parade. Who doesn't love a parade?

The participation is wide and varied. From school marching bands, to classic car clubs, to motorcycle clubs, businesses, veterans groups, ROTC groups and church groups. I think last year even the Equality Center had a float for LGBT veterans. Ironically, I'm not sure there is ever any actual military presence - stupid Russians get all the cool military parades.

Anyway, ,this year CAIR, the Council on American and Islamic Relations, made an application for a float. And the interwebs (http://www.fox23.com/news/news/local/concern-tulsa-veterans-day-parade/npGS2/) lost its (http://www.worldreligionnews.com/issues/tulsas-controversial-decision-to-include-muslim-org-cair-in-veterans-day-parade) mind when (http://www.worldreligionnews.com/issues/tulsas-controversial-decision-to-include-muslim-org-cair-in-veterans-day-parade) it was confirmed (http://www.wnd.com/2015/10/vets-appalled-at-muslim-brotherhood-float/) that they were  (http://joeforamerica.com/2015/11/cair-to-have-float-in-tulsa-veterans-day-parade-why-is-the-enemy-in-our-parade/)granted entry. (http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/religion/tulsa-s-veterans-day-parade-participant-calls-muslim-group-s/article_be049c3f-11dc-5a74-a5c0-29b8e0f2152d.html) Not just local media, all over the place.

Discuss.

What's to discuss?  As usual, Tulsa/Oklahoma is the butt of the country's jokes.  Saddening reality.  We might as well live in Mississippi.

Rather than our usual Okie blanket ignorance and downright stupidity, there’s actually some basis for the concern or seeing their entry as provocative or disrespectful.  As long as there are web sites linking CAIR to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah there’s going to be a perceived negativity toward their presence at the parade.  Especially since we’ve had boots on the ground battling Muslim extremism for 13 years.

I’ve not really dug into CAIR.  Web sites and right leaning news organizations glom on to issues like the United Arab Emirates calling CAIR a terrorist organization and CAIR denies it.  Who is telling the truth?  How do we know? 

I’m with CF though, why can’t we have parades with guided missiles, tanks, and thousands of marching solidiers rumbling through downtown?

I think there were some personal links between the Muslim Brotherhood and Cair, as in the same people in both talking to one another. I don’t know how formal or real the links are or were.

Calling the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization is a big reach anyway, much less Cair. But The Muslim Brotherhood IS a very conservative and religiously extreme Muslim group and political party. Egypt’s military certainly wants us to perceive them as a terrorist group but military rule there has been far harsher than when the Brotherhood was briefly in power. I’ve not heard of the Brotherhood being behind any terror actions in Egypt. Al Qaeda and ISIS are active in the Sinai Peninsula but even with the military crackdown on the brotherhood Cairo and the rest of Egypt seem pretty peaceful.

I also don’t trust the governments that call them a terrorist group: Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Russia. When Russia is the most democratic, open and free country on a list, that’s a bad list. That’s not to say I want the Brotherhood here. They do have a goal of creating Islamic governments with strict Sharia Law at the center. I don’t think that’s a good thing, but them going about that goal peacefully and through democratic processes  doesn’t sound like a terrorist group to me.

We know Hamas as a terrorist group, and there is truth to that, but they also have schools, soup kitchens, government offices, road construction crews, etc., they are a defacto government in the region (most other governments in the area are also considered terrorists: the PLO, Hezballah, Syria, IS, Iran, etc.). To a lesser extent the same applies to the Muslim Brotherhood - but in the recent past they are just a political party. Albeit a conservative fundamentalist political party that wouldn't go along with American policies... but they were a duly elected political party (until the US backed Egyptian military imprisoned them). CAIR also certainly has relationships with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other despotic regimes who regularly lop the head off of people and stone women as adulterers. But we don't complain about them...

But, more importantly, there has never been an actual link between the organization and any terrorist group. The FBI actively investigated CAIR under GW and tried to bring it down, but couldn't draw enough to make the accusations stick. It has been compared to McCarthyism... you said things similar to them which is not the official policy of the US, so you're a communist!

CAIR has a $3mil annual budget. Or about the same as Tulsa Opera. If it is a front for terrorism it is doing a really bad job - since the basic premise of a front is that it doesn't raise suspicion and it clearly isn't doing that well fundraising.

Finally, I don't get what it is provocative. If they were marching under the Islamic flag, that would be provocative. But a group of Muslim American Veterans, who very well may have actually been shot at by Muslim extremists marching under the American flag on Veterans day? Our government has been trying to say for a decade now that we are not in a Crusade. This is not Christians vs. Muslims, so we can keep our middle eastern alliances. So it is OK for Christian groups to "support our troops" but a Muslim group can't do the same?


Is it just the CAIR banner is a buzzword like "Blaine Amendment," people don't really know what it is ... but they're against it!

I'm not a huge CAIR advocate. Couldn't tell you if they have an office in town or name a member. But you are just asking for trouble if you refuse them because you heard on the interwebs that they suck, but every Christian group that applies is allowed in.

This is the complaint, er speculation, I’ve heard is they are hoping to be refused so they can raise a stink.

I can see why their presence seems somewhat incongruous, but it doesn’t rise to any level of outrage for me.

I wonder CAIR will be entering a float in the newly re-combined Tulsa Christmas parade?

What is it with this town and parades? Isn't it just getting in line and then going around in a circle (like ring around the rosie for big people)? I cannot fathom how that can be controversial.

and this:


http://www.newson6.com/story/30459052/confederate-veterans-lives-matter-claims-tulsa-parade-unfairly-denied-float (http://www.newson6.com/story/30459052/confederate-veterans-lives-matter-claims-tulsa-parade-unfairly-denied-float)

Are they the undead veterans of the civil war? If so, they should be able to line up...if they are not actual US Veterans then they don't deserve to be honored in a Veteran's day parade. 

Tulsa's Veteran's Day Parade Angst

http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/tulsas-veterans-day-parade-angst (http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/tulsas-veterans-day-parade-angst)


Oklahomans just can't help ourselves.  We are fated to look like jackasses.

The most common suggestion I see on the comments sections is to assault, berate, or otherwise insult the participants - who CAIR has suggested will be Muslim veterans of American armed forces. So--- to show their support for veterans on veterans day, those that self identify as the most patriotic literally intend to turn their backs on some veterans.

#irony

#spareus

I dont think that requirement is applied to any other participants, so it might not be a good idea to start now.
Here's what got my attention:

"Just a regular old float, have the Confederate flag up there like we have mounted on our trucks,"

...which isnt proper flag display regardless of the flag.
I know some very ugly people in the 1920s, 1960s etc. misappropriated Confederate flags for hateful purposes, but we have to also remember that it was also once a flag Americans died defending.
Id be tempted to say let the parade group have at it, and look like fools if they are, or put on a respectable memorial if they turn out to be sincere.

Okay, the world is coming to an end, I agree with patric. Take away the perversion of the Confederate Flag, and it stands for those that fought and died for it. It's a part of American history as much as the battle against the British for independence.

Except that when you boil down the civil war it was not about states rights...it was about the right to own slaves. The states rights meme is a post war revision.

War over slavery + Confederate side wants to own slaves = Confederate flag is racist.

Fun turn in the thread...

I have no problem with the confederate flag as a memorial to confederate war dead. Most of those boys fought and died for their homes, neighbors, and states - just like most of the boys from the north did. Just like most German soldiers did in WWII. The higher notions and dastardly deeds may have been the cause of the war, but 95% of GI Joes from any side had little do do with it.

But this is the confederate flag:
(http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/u/us-csa1s.gif)

What they want to do is march with the battle flag of the army of Northern Virginia, which has taken on a post-war meaning unrelated to honoring the war dead of the confederacy. It wasn't a popular symbol in the United States after the civil war under those pesky black people kept trying to vote down south. It's primary purpose now is to show racism, defiance against the United States, or as a pop culture marker for a particular sub-group (mostly "rednecks").

I highly doubt the group called "Confederate Lives Matter" truly wishes to honor confederate war dead. Hell, they may not actually understand what the confederacy was. I'm going with they probably don't really understand.

How can they not understand it?

Millions of Americans see the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of human on human attrocity and bigotry
Millions of Jewish people see the Nazi flag as a symbol of human on human attrocity and bigotry

We find one repugnant and we look at the other with a shrug? It needs to be relegated to museums and it has no place in a Veteran's Day Parade. This group knows exactly what they are doing.

Then, using your words, we should ban most every state flag as they are "a symbol of human on human attrocity and bigotry" against all the native Americans that were slaughtered and displaced in advancing the development of the US.

If Native Americans find them offensive they should be banned.
(http://www.iplawyeresq.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/nfl-washington-redskins-logo-dark_1920x1200_608-wide-300x187.jpg)

When I hear someone making the "flag of slavery" argument, I always ask "Which flag, the one that flew over a slavery nation for four years, or the one that flew over a slavery nation a hundred years before it?"
The Civil War was fought for the same reasons as most any war:  Economics.


Now about that thread drift...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zack-hunt/the-war-on-christmas-is-r_b_8512120.html

Neither "states rights" nor "slavery" were the direct cause of the Civil War, though how slavery was treated in national policy was the central issue. From the time Lincoln took office until long after the Civil War began, the official policy of the U.S. Government and the political consensus of Congress and the Lincoln administration was that slavery would continue to be legal in the states in which it already existed but that slavery could not be extended into new territories. After the establishment of the CSA and the beginning of the war, slavery continued to be practiced in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Maryland, slave states that remained in the Union, and the U.S. continued to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, returning escaped slaves to their Southern, rebel owners, until Union General Benjamin Butler came up with the novel idea of treating slaves as "contraband of war," i.e. property that could be held during hostilities.

Lincoln's belief was that slavery would eventually die out of its own accord.

A major issue leading up to the secession was that the secessionist states had insisted that their slave-holding citizens should be free to move to U.S. territories out west and continue to hold slaves there. The Northerners, wanting to "contain" rather than abolish slavery, would not agree, creating a Congressional stalemate. This was never a genuine a "states rights" issue since states don't ordinarily have the right to determine the policy of another state, Scott Pruitt's opinion notwithstanding. The Emancipation Proclamation didn't come about until after Gettysburg and with much controversy. Notably, the Proclamation freed the slaves only in the rebel states and not in the slave states that had remained loyal to the Union. Keeping those states in the Union required some delicate political footwork. In a real sense, though, the Civil War was fought over the alternatives of containment and expansion of slavery.

Two good books to recommend: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Nothing Like it in the World by Stephen Ambrose. The latter deals with the building of the transcontinental railroad. The route was greatly influenced by the issue of whether slavery could be expanded into the territories. In fact, Congress was unable to decide on a route until after secession because of that single issue.

Good discussion. Put me in that camp that asserts the impetus of almost all wars is primarily economics. If not the primary determinant, most likely the fuel to feed them.

The North had manufacturing, textiles and export. The south had agriculture. The north had concentrations of labor in the heavily populated cities. The south needed labor and preferred the free kind (slaves). Anything else was posturing or politics.

That's not a state flag, and the attempted cleansing of professional sports team names by the use of coercion, shaming and threats of lawsuits in the name of "political correctness" is an entirely different discussion.

An entirely different discussion which you felt the need to retort and then immediately shut down discussion on...

Lets rename the team the "Washington Nigg3rs" because DC used to be the largest slave trading center in the world! Or how about the "CHINKS"," the "WOPS," "SPICS," "KIKES," or the "HUNS?" Maybe just stick to skin colors and call them the "darkies" or "yellow skins?"

If the team wanted to name themselves those things, it is their right as a private company.  But everyone would agree that they were trying to be offensive. Why is it different with the Redskins?

Even the dictionary entry to redskin identifies it as a derogatory or offensive term for Native Americans. By some accounts it is a term used to refer to the encouraged murder of Native Americans for profit. At best, it is a, erroneous reference to skin color.

And I'm not a big supporter of stripping native american team names. Braves, warriors, or even Indians, are all team names with the potential of being offensive. Certain of being stereotypes. But the FSU Seminoles certainly don't offend the legacy of the tribe. But Redskins? We can do better.
- - - -

Regarding the Native American genocide referenced above - two points:

1) The American flag is not generally seen in the United States as a symbol of genocide, oppression, etc.  Hence, displaying the flag is not generally held out as an attempt to symbolize oppression etc. Even to the vast majority of Native Americans, it does not have that meaning. Ergo, it is not analogous to the ISIS flag or even the Confederate Flag. Particularly in a parade to honor soldiers who fought for the American flag.

2) Native Americans were screwed over, mistreated, and murdered by the US government. But the real damage was done by disease. Many, many multitudes more natives died, and more damage was done by disease than could have been done by the most ill-meaning conquerors.  By many estimates all the conflicts and massacres of (north) Native Americans resulted in less than 60k Native American deaths. Some estimates halve that number (this includes the colonist wars, French and Indian wars, forced removals [Trail of Tears, etc.], and the Indian Wars), and no one has the number of "whites" killed at above 15k.

That is not to excuse any behavior or make light of it, but I was surprised by the numbers when I read the study.  50k dead was a bad day in the civil war.

As an aside, and a tangent on a tangent, an alternate history where disease didn't wrack the Native population is an interesting exercise.

Hey, don't forget the derogatory names and characterizations of the Irish. Notably the Notre Dame "Fighting Irish". Or those native to Wales, used to describe "Welshing on a debt". Truth is many of our ancestors in America have not been fair to any minority. It is time to do some house cleaning instead of rationalizing.

I've never met an Irishmen offending by the fighting Irish (my entire gaggle of in laws included), it is an "Irish American Catholic institution." While I understand the concern -  the team was historically made of of Irishmen and they exhibited a fighting spirit. It is not meant to be a parody of drunk Irishmen fighting (where I would argue many Native American team names became that). They were originally just known as the "Catholics" and then "the Ramblers" before adopted the Fighting Irish in 1927. The president of Notre Dame served as the Chaplin to the Irish Brigade during the civil war. There is another origination story that a team was down to Northwestern at the half and the coach gave a talk where he said you guys are all Irish, wheres the fighting spirit? This was overheard by the press, who reported the come from behind victory as a win for the "Fighting Irish." Or so the stories go. (http://www.und.com/trads/nd-m-fb-name.html) Hence, if the college of the Cherokee wanted to call themselves the Braves and dance around in what-ever... I'd be hard pressed to call them racist.

to take thread drift to a whole new level -

If you want to see cultural confusion, look up Notre Dame v. Navy in Dublin, 2012. Irishmen trying to figure out why there is an American University named after a French Cathedral that calls itself the Irish while playing a confusing sport against a team from the United States military. This in a country that doesn't have football, a naval academy, or a tradition of (non olympic) intercollegiate athletics. Let alone such a tradition where 40,000 people would cross an ocean to watch the game.

I wasn't trying to "shut down" the thread, I was trying to draw a similarity between the use of the Confederate Flag as a representation of slavery and oppression (and it's form is and has been used in state flags) to the flags of individual states that were formed after treachery and oppression and the forced removal of native Americans from their home lands to advance the expansion of the United States. I was trying to keep this on topic. To me, trying to force a privately owned sports team because it's name is deemed offensive is not the same, and I as trying to avoid thread drift.

For what it's worth, the CAIR float was next to last in the parade - right in front of the Tulsa Police armored personnel carrier.  Coincidence?

It went in front of our office. We were wondering the same thing. For the record, there were two people following the float along its way. One was a protester bellowing out stuff about Jesus and bullets dipped in pig blood over a megaphone, the other was a guy wearing a hot dog suit. No, I don't get it either.

They may have picked up other protesters along the way, but I doubt that anyone would voluntarily be associated with the bellower and the hot dog man.

Incidentally, Paul Tay rode by with a Marine flag on his bike. Did he serve?

Pick up truck with the Dukes of Hazard flag stuck to the bed was out while I was at a ceremony on Guthrie Green.

At least no one was bellowing about pig's blood

Yes, as I understand it he was a Marine followed by a civilian job in L.A. managing bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure before moving back to Tulsa.

Well, there's that offensive state name...
http://kfor.com/2014/06/19/if-redskins-change-name-should-oklahoma-change-its-name-too/

Oh and we can really get into it if I point out that there was a time in our history where the N-word was just an innocuous identity (and not a double-standard offense).

Went to the parade yesterday. Took some pictures that I would like to share... but apparently you can't resize photos in the new fancy Google photo thingy and I don't really think you are interested enough in seeing 12mg pictures on here.

But there was a float flying the Israeli flag (not sure why, it wasn't a Jewish Veterans float).

There were four floats flying the "Christian flag."

There was a group of Laotian veterans.

A group of South Vietnamese veterans.

Creek vets.

And no one protesting any of those flags or groups.

The CAIR group had a banner up that said "In memory of many, in honor of all. Oklahoma Mulsims Thank Our Veterans." The float was drapped in red white and blue. It flew an American flag with the service flags off the front. It was loaded with kids waiving American flags. Marching along side it were veterans and reservists carrying American flags.

Running along side it was a hot dog, a guy with sign that said "Every Real Muslim is  Jihadist" and a guy with a sign that said "Jesus Christ God manifested in the flesh, crucified, resurrected, and coming again, has a pressure cooker (lake of fire) for every dead Muslim!" I also counted more than a dozen people around the parade route with Confederate flags, hate signs, and bigoted shirts.

Most people didnt seem to care at all. Had I not known that CAIR was some controversial thing, their entry would have appeared like most others. Maybe a little better done than some - but nothing special. The trolls looked like fools waiving Confederate flags at group after group of American veterans.

So who was using the event for politics again?

I guess with an over-active imagination you can construe a name to represent anything you like.

I think for me, “redskin” will now represent the genocide of Jews.  Why not?  Everyone else keeps attaching their own image to the term.

I thought the same thing, but...

While it may be scary, there is historical evidence for this - including a proclamation published in the Winona Daily Republican (in Minnesota, 1863) (http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Search&Key=TWR/1863/09/25/2/Ar00212.xml&CollName=TWR_APA3&DOCID=82317&PageLabelPrint=2&skin=WinonaA&sPublication=TWR&sScopeID=UDR0&sSorting=IssueDateID%2cdesc&sQuery=purgatory&rEntityType=&sSearchInAll=false&sDateFrom=%2530%2531%252f%2530%2531%252f%2531%2538%2535%2535&sDateTo=%2531%2532%252f%2533%2531%252f%2531%2538%2539%2539&dc:creator=&PageLabel=&dc:publisher=&RefineQueryView=&StartFrom=80&ViewMode=GIF). Whether you agree with the name change or not, there is historical documentation to the claim that Redskin referred to Indians killed for bounty. It was also used in several notable editorials calling for the genocide of native populations (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/10/27/130862391/l-frank-baum-advocated-extermination-of-native-americans). Starting the mid 1800s, redskin was a derogatory term for Native Americans (http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/09/220654611/are-you-ready-for-some-controversy-the-history-of-redskin).