I previously posted about the latest rash of scandalous photos coming out of Afghanistan showing U.S. military atrocities under Obama’s command, and wondering if the media would pick up on it the way they did when it was Bush’s army… Well, here’s a twist I wasn’t expecting: yes, one of the U.S. media, Rolling Stone, [...]
Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for the Atlantic, cast a spotlight on yet another disgustingly overt example of pure bias in the mainstream media, particularly at the anti-Semitic Reuters newswire. He points to a Reuters news item which contains the following despicable sentences: Police said it was a “terrorist attack” — Israel’s term for a Palestinian [...]
In the [sparse] reporting of the Palestinians’ massacre of the Fogel family, several newspapers stand out with their distorted sense of “balance”, i.e., where they feel overwhelmingly uncomfortable describing the barbarity of the Palestinians without at least taking a swipe or two at the Israelis, no matter how patently irrelevant or disgustingly disrespectful it comes [...]
Bloomberg: “Islam did not attack the World Trade Center, al Qaeda did”
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James Taranto, in his WSJ Best of the Web Today column last week, commented on Mayor Bloomberg’s asinine comments regarding the Ground Zero Mosque:
Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, has an op-ed in today’s New York Post defending the Ground Zero mosque. Actually, the Post informs us, it’s an adaptation of “Bloomberg’s prepared remarks for his annual Ramadan celebration at Gracie Mansion yesterday.”
It is a low performance. Bloomberg panders to his audience by slandering the two-thirds or so of Americans who take offense at the idea of a fancy new mosque near the site of an Islamic supremacist atrocity:
Islam did not attack the World Trade Center–al Qaeda did. To implicate all of Islam for the actions of a few who twisted a great religion is unfair and un-American.
The substance of this statement is unremarkable: Obviously it is wrong to implicate all of Islam in the 9/11 attacks.
But the mayor employs scurrilous McCarthyite rhetoric in an attempt to inflame emotions and divert attention from a point that should be equally obvious: The Ground Zero mosque planners have implicated themselves by seeking to exploit the symbolism of the site, whatever their purpose is in doing so.
Taranto points out one obvious flaw in Bloomberg’s statement: that the mosque supporters have essentially inserted themselves into the controversy by the very fact that they deliberately chose the site of the mosque solely based on the symbolism of the site and the opportunity to exploit that symbolism. THAT is why we are targeting them, and NOT simply because they are Muslim.
Another entirely different flaw in Bloomberg’s statement that I have yet to see anyone pick up on is the fact that Bloomberg simply shifts the blame from “Islam” to “al Qaeda”.
Using Bloomberg’s own logic for defending “Islam” in that ridiculous statement, one could just as easily say that it wasn’t all of al Qaeda who attacked us on 9/11; it was only those 19 hijackers! So, if he wants to be so technical about over-generalizing, why is he careful not to attribute the attacks to “Islam” (in whose name they were carried out), but not similarly careful when attributing them to al Qaeda (also in whose name they were carried out)?
Ultimately, if one truly wants to be “fair” about it, one should do the judging not by religion or organization, per se, but by affiliation. In other words, anyone who affiliates themselves with individuals who publicly support such terrorist attacks should be equally condemned. As George W. Bush succinctly stated: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” It’s that simple.
So, if those behind the Ground Zero Mosque have been known to be affiliated with terrorists or supporters of terrorists (as has been widely reported), then it doesn’t matter whether they are with “al Qaeda” or with “Islam” in general. They chose to be with the terrorists, and they don’t belong in this country, let alone at Ground Zero.