Remember when George W. Bush and his neoconservative allies used to say that the “war on terror” was a struggle on behalf of Muslims, decent folks who wanted nothing more than to live free like you and me? Remember when Karen Hughes paid millions to produce glitzy videos of Muslim Americans testifying about how free they were to practice their religion in the USA? Remember Bush’s second inaugural, when he said “America’s ideal of freedom” is “sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran?”
Once upon a time, Republicans were so confident that the vast majority of Muslims preferred freedom to jihad that they believed the U.S. could install democracy in Iraq within months. Now, confronted with a group of Muslim Americans who want to build a cultural center that includes Jews and Christians on the board (how many churches and synagogues do that?), GOP leaders call them terrorists because they don’t share Benjamin Netanyahu’s view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Once upon a time, the “war on terror” was supposed to bring American values to Saudi Arabia. Now Newt Gingrich says we shouldn’t build a mosque in Lower Manhattan until the Saudis build churches and synagogues in Mecca—which is to say, we’re bringing Saudi values to the United States. I wonder how David Petraeus feels about all this. There he is, slogging away in the Hindu Kush, desperately trying to be culturally sensitive, watching GIs get killed because Afghans believe the U.S. is waging a war on Islam, and back home, the super-patriots on Fox News have… declared war on Islam.
So please, no more talk about those idealistic neoconservatives who are willing to expend blood and treasure so Afghans and Iraqis can live free. People in Basra and Kandahar had better hope that America’s counterinsurgency warriors create a society in which they can practice their religion free of intimidation and insult. Because it’s now clear they can’t do so on the lower tip of the island of Manhattan.
Not sure how the president is furiously backtracking, as Beinart asserts, but that is a minor quibble over an excellent and deserved rant.
Breezeblock
I’m getting awfully close on giving up on the American Experiment.
Makewi
It isn’t at all hysterical to equate a simple desire to not build one mosque within sight of an Islamic inspired slaughter of some 3000 people as a “war on muslims”. Maybe the problem is you just need to take a breath and think about the differences between can and should.
Of course, your shriekers love you man, so that might be hard.
MattF
It dawned on me (finally!) the other day that the right-wing Ground Zero Mosque craziness is a kind of war hysteria. The correct analogy is to the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. Sorry to say.
Dave
You know the Republicans have fully committed to a life in Crazy Town when George W. Fucking Bush looks reasonable by comparison.
Keith G
Technically, Obama’s second statemented was worded so as to not be a backtrack, but it sure smelled of desperation.
Once again, he stepped on his own message.
cleek
they hate us for our freedom to hate them!
fasteddie9318
Wasn’t Beinart once right in line with those neocons with respect to the efficacy of installing democracy in Iraq and the need “to expend blood and treasure so Afghans and Iraqis can live free”? That doesn’t detract from the fact that he’s right on this, but has he ever offered an “oops, sorry about that” for his views on Iraq?
Violet
That’s an excellent post. I wonder what the chances are that any Republicans will listen to him? Or that Democrats will have the balls to point out what hypocritical, terrified pussies the Republicans are? I’m going to McEstimate those chances at 100%, which means the reality is zero.
dmsilev
@Makewi: On 9/11, were we attacked by Islam?
dms
azlib
Xenophobia is alive and well here in the USA.
beltane
Newt Gingrich should ask why the Vatican does not permit a big box megachurch complex within its borders.
fasteddie9318
I wonder if Makewi would criticize me if I tried to open a sushi restaurant a couple of blocks from Pearl Harbor.
debbie
@ Matt F:
I was thinking yesterday that Muslims are the new Jew.
FlipYrWhig
Not that it should make a difference, but the building is NOT “within sight” of the WTC site.
El Cid
Anyone opposed to the idea of having an Islamic community center complete with mosque somewhat near ground zero is a prejudiced, fearful piece of shit, no matter their noble or ignoble biographies.
Second, I thought it was pretty obvious from the beginning thata huge part of the Bush Jr. administration arguing against anti-Muslim hatred was to establish a contextual propaganda function for the Iraq war.
licensed to kill time
It’s pretty amazing how people come to resemble that which they fear.
Pretty depressing, too.
El Cid
I am entirely opposed to the wisdom of building an Al Qa’ida training camp on top of Ground Zero. I don’t see how you libruls can live with yourselves.
cleek
@FlipYrWhig:
depends who’s looking. i’m sure Palin could see it.
Makewi
@dmsilev:
It was an attack done in the name of Islam. Yes. But thanks for trying to twist it from what I actually said. I understand honesty isn’t really a trait valued around these parts, but you could at least fucking try.
GambitRF
I’m pretty damn cynical, but I honestly never imagined that we’d ever have a national debate on how close brown people can be to ground zero without it being “insensitive.”
If they move the mosque (and/or community center, whatever, doesn’t matter) farther away from ground zero, does it become progressively less insensitive as it gets farther and farther away, or is there a magical sensitive/insensitive boundary at some exact distance? Like, they move it 4.57 city blocks away, that’s totally cool.
fasteddie9318
@El Cid:
I always thought that too. It seemed pretty clear that his rhetoric was intended to deny the idea that we were at war with “Islam” at a time when “kill as many Muzzies as you can, wherever you can” could quite easily have been seen as our new defining foreign policy paradigm. Maybe GWB really believed it, but it’s clear now that his
bosseshandlerssupporters didn’t.Makewi
@fasteddie9318:
Had you done it in 1950 even you would have had your ass handed to you.
Bulworth
Jimmy Carter is surely the worstest person alive.
NobodySpecial
@Makewi: So why are there Baptist churches within sight of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City?
Bobby Thomson
Within the next 20 years, this country is going to resemble France. Except it will be the alternative France that elected Le Pen instead of Chirac.
stuckinred
@Makewi: You come up in here with that bullshit and start calling people idiots? Go fuck yourself punk.
mcmillan
I liked this bit:
though I wouldn’t have said I ever thought they genuinely thought they’d get along, if any one group ever actually gained power they’d turn on their allies as soon as could setup the the Department of Religious Doctrine.
I’m also amused that a person that was picked by Bush to be a face of the “good Muslims” has been the center of all this outrage.
El Cid
@Makewi: You know what? Anyone race-baiting enough to hate a Japanese person for opening a restaurant in the urbanized areas near Pearl Harbor was an asshole then, too.
Frank
@fasteddie9318:
Well, since Makewi is criticizing the “mosque” that is two blocks away from Ground Zero but not the one that is four blocks away, I think the guideline according to him is four blocks. Hell, it could even be three blocks. But two appears to be a no-no.
However, if you want to start a topless strip-club two blocks from Pearl Harbor, that should be just fine (since there is a strip club two blocks from Ground Zero). At least according to the right’s dwarfed logic.
dmsilev
@Makewi: That’s not what I asked. I asked whether we were attacked by Islam. Because if the answer is no, which you tacitly admit, there is no legitimate argument against building the cultural center in its proposed location. Otherwise, you are arguing that all practitioners of Islam bear the responsibility for the actions of a very few.
dms
Omnes Omnibus
@Makewi: The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre was done in the name of Catholicism. So what?
agoner
@Breezeblock: I woke up this morning, started reading my morning news, and had the same reaction. I, however, revised it. Today I am feeling like giving up on the human experiment.
El Cid
@Frank: Four blocks good, two blocks bad.
singfoom
@Makewi:
Get a grip. You’re having a grouping problem. Islam is a religion. Many people subscribe to said belief system. Some of them blew up the WTC on 9/11. Not ALL Muslims supported that attack. So said group of suicidal/homicidal assholes != all of Islam.
Also, it’s a community center. Way to let emotions trump logic and the First Amendment. Fuck, with your attitude you should run for the Senate.
JimF
@ Makewi
And the both the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition were done in the name of Christ, your point being?
fasteddie9318
@Makewi:
Yes, well, El Cid beat me to it, but assholes are assholes, whether they’re near Pearl Harbor in 1950 or commenting on a blog in 2010.
Davis X. Machina
@Bobby Thomson: We’ll have single-payer, though, right?
BR
@Breezeblock:
It’s sad that I’ve been feeling this way too. I think we’d be okay if we had a semi-sane press corps – even the media of the mid 1990s was far more sane than they are today. But corporatism has taken over every aspect of the country.
In good times folks like Chalmers Johnson and Derrick Jensen seem like Cassandras. In times like these, it’s hard to see where they’re wrong.
NobodySpecial
You all know why Makewi is always punching his palm with his other fist all the time, right?
He claims the makeup sex is SOOOO GOOOD.
Makewi
@dmsilev:
I think it’s great that the folks here cannot see what the problem with this is. You should be screaming from the rooftops about this one guys.
El Cid
Islam attacked us on 9/11. It reified itself into things which looked like human bodies, but they were actually energy manifestations of Quranic evil. It was like on Star Trek when energy beings made themselves look like people.
In fact, it’s impossible to tell who among us is a Koran in human form. It now knows it may be too obvious to be a loudmouth Islamic fundamentalist.
These energy manifestations of Islam are getting cleverer each day, and soon they will gain the ability to bond together into a several hundred foot tall radioactive Super Muslim.
Makewi
NOT A MOSQUE!!!!!
Frank
@Makewi:
Well, African-Americans were beaten up and even killed for having the audacity to demand their civil rights per our constitution back in 1960’s and 1960’s.
Why do you hate our constitution so much?
singfoom
@Makewi:
I think the problem is a bunch of cowards with less than capable logic centers. You either believe in religious freedom or you don’t. If you do, you don’t have a problem with this Community Center (hint, not a Mosque) being built. If you do, you most likely can’t see around that blind spot.
fasteddie9318
@El Cid:
Oh. My. God.
Do you think it’s possible that some of these energy manifestations of Islam don’t even know that they are energy manifestations of Islam? I’m a little freaked out by this.
jl
@El Cid: Wasn’t Hawaii the place where thousands of Japanese Americans volunteered to join one of (or perhaps the most) decorated US unit in WWII precisely because the Japanese Americans and Japanese culture was not persecuted there?
In contrast to the Pacific Coast states?
Maybe I have it backwards.
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid: Oh no, not Mega-Mohammed!
El Cid
@fasteddie9318: On the other hand I think it’s still okay to hate those leading celebrations of the Confederacy, since Confederate-Americans are an ideological group based upon the philosophy of slavery, plantation-elite worship, and treason against the US. They’re not an ethnic or religious group with a huge diversity of interpretations of the meanings of the attack on Fort Sumter.
Jason In the Peg
Not entirely off topic I hope, but speaking of racist dirtbags, Makewi would fit right in amongst most of these commenters.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/tamil-ship-part-of-crime-ring-toews-100867149.html
MikeJ
@fasteddie9318: No to mention the fact that there almost certainly were Japanese restaurants near Pearl Harbour in 1950. Japanese Americans are the second most populous ethnic group in HI today, I would guess their percentage of the population has only gone down since 1950.
El Cid
@Omnes Omnibus: Mosque-ra.
Linda Featheringill
@fasteddie9318:
Google: Is there a SUSHI restaurant near PEARL HARBOR?
stuckinred
@jl:
KG
@Makewi: I see no difference between can and should in this instance. They can build there, and they should build there. If for only one, simple, plain reason: We are better than those who wish to destroy us. While they operate on terror and oppression, we thrive on liberty. The freedom to practice (or, for that matter, not practice) religion is at the center of the American experience. Those who stand against people who wish to peacefully practice their religion do not speak for the proud tradition of American liberty.
dmsilev
@Makewi: Your refusal to answer the question is noted. Here’s a logical follow-up based on your non-answer: Why do you hate the First Amendment?
dms
Violet
@El Cid:
All religions are equal. Some religions are more equal than others.
From the article:
Yep.
fasteddie9318
@El Cid:
I don’t view them as similar at all. People who celebrate the Confederacy would be akin to people who actually support al-Qaeda, or in the Pearl Harbor case people who were actually pro-Imperial Japan. These people have/had a disgusting ideology and it’s perfectly reasonable to hate them for it.
stuckinred
@Linda Featheringill: When I went to the Punchbowl, the National Cemetery of the Pacific, it was almost all Japanese tourists visiting.
Nethead Jay
Beinart is one of the people I find it very hard to forgive his role in the Iraq debacle, but this is pretty spot-on, save for the first line about the President being way too exaggerated.
I seem to remember another display of him Having Gotten A Clue not too long ago. Good to see.
El Cid
@jl: Yes.
Keith G
In case you are interested, type “49 Park Place St NYC” into Google Maps. Use street view to get a taste of the block.
And/or use Bing Map’s Bird’s Eye View which isn’t bad for nearby relationships.
That block of Park Place is narrow and nondescript. Not that any of that matters.
El Cid
@Linda Featheringill: It’s called Freedom Raw Fish there.
fasteddie9318
@Linda Featheringill:
That is awesome.
El Cid
@stuckinred: What was interesting is that when I was there, the American tourists just were walking through and looking at the sights, while the Japanese (perhaps Asian, I don’t know) were very solemn, stopping and taking in many of the monuments. It all felt very powerful and yet of course another completely unnecessary war by various elites against the others in which vast numbers of ordinary people had to die.
Svensker
@Makewi:
How was 9/11 an “islamic inspired” event? And how was it the fault of the imam who is building the center?
Like blaming the Baptists for a Catholic priest’s pedophilia.
MobiusKlein
@jl: San Francisco and adjoining cities had significant Japanese populations.
I know folks who went to the camps and went to fight in Germany. And when some folks got back from the camps, their ‘abandoned’ property had been seized by good Americans in their absence.
Jay B.
The right’s been itching for this fight for 10 years. That’s why they own “hallowed ground” and the murder of thousands of people. That’s why they wave that crying eagle and are astonished that New Yorkers — the people of every stripe, hue and nationality, those who experienced the horror up close — generally don’t give a shit about these hysterics. Sure, some do. But even now, in the teeth of the this demagoguery, most see through it for what it is.
It’s not that New Yorkers are noble souls, looking out for each other (although that happens from time to time), but it’s more like if the yahoos (and the lying yahoos like Makewi, who are still trying to keep that veneer of respectability about their pant-wetting) start dictating what is and isn’t acceptable in New York — it’ll cease to be New York.
And so the yahoos are unmasked and unmoored. All that feeble bullshit about purple fingers and spreading democracy and “women’s rights” and “noble” intentions — co-opting the liberal hawk’s arguments — have been exposed for the lie the skeptics always knew it was.
The argument that is somehow the location is the issue is a joke. There’s going to be a 1500 foot building where the Twin Towers stood, not a memorial. There’s a fucking Blimpies across the street. A couple of strip joints. Hallowed ground? Fucking Christ, that’s funny. It’s the capitalist’s capital. You think they’re gonna let some choice real estate go fallow over sentiment?
Enter the yahoos. They’ve been dying to make it a fight against Islam, otherwise, they’d let the community board’s approval stand (it’s their neighborhood for fucksake, not some moron from Morristown, never mind Des Moines). Otherwise, they’d support it as the Freedom Mosque, run by the kind of Islamic people they’d want to have as allies.
Unless, of course, they really never wanted to have Islamic people as allies to begin with.
stuckinred
@El Cid: I mentioned something similar this morning talking about America’s “Hallowed Ground”. Go to the Wall when it is not a vets event and you might as well be at Six Flags.
Dave
I’m just concerned because having an Al-Qaeda Victory Mosque near the hallowed Ground Zero will completely interfere with my respecting the site while eating a double cheeseburger from McDonalds during my lap-dance at New York Dolls and paying for it with cheap-ass souvenirs.
HyperIon
@Violet wrote:
Close to zero, I imagine.
Beinhart’s a lefty….a war-mongering lefty.
He was on CSPAN this weekend with fellow douchebag Mike Allen. It was pretty revolting all around. Allen is an extremely bad interviewer and Beinhart is an extremely inarticulate interviewee.
Mayur
Stop responding to the troll.
Honestly, I think this open bigotry coupled with insults for anyone who dares to speak up against it should be faster grounds for a ban than BOB’s word salad. At least that was entertaining.
Svensker
@Makewi:
Yes, and the abortion clinic bombings were done in the name of Christianity. Does that make all Christendom guilty?
jl
@stuckinred: thanks. I don’t have time to find a link now, but most of that unit came from Hawaii. Japanese Ameicans who were interned were given an opportunity to join later in the war, I think in return for some special consideration in their release after the war. Many refused, saying that they would volunteer when their families’ Constitutional rights were restored.
By the way, I read that most of the rank and file Japanese Buddhist priesthood supported the war effort.
Should there be no Buddhist temples in Hawaii?
There are differences and distinctions of course. We can always find those and narrow the relevant cases for the current situation down to just the current situation. In which case we can justify anything we want.
But I have not seen any response to why we shouldnot be consistent and ban Christian churches from around the McVeigh bombing site.
Iwekam
It isn’t at all hysterical to equate a simple desire to not build another US structure within sight of an American inspired slaughter of millions of native Americans as a “war on Americans”. Maybe the problem is you just need to take a breath and think about the differences between can and should.
Of course, you shriekers love your country, so that might be hard.
martha
@jl: Um, I’ve actually been to that exotic locale known as Hawaii. Specifically the island of Oahu (well, Kauai too, but not germane to this point). And, to Pearl Harbor, twice.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056/tab26.pdf
The demographics of the Hawaiian Islands, specifically Oahu in 1950 were…wait for it…37% Japanese. I’m guessing that opening a sushi restaurant wasn’t as much a problem as some might think.
Edit: screwed up my link but you get my drift.
El Cid
The Daily Show’s John Oliver nailed this when he asked whether or not it was appropriate to allow a Catholic Church to be located near an elementary school.
El Cid
@stuckinred: They have to celebrate at the Wall to reverse the history of Vietnam keeping all those MIA Americans in underground tiger cages through the 1980s and all those hippies who kept beating and spitting upon every Vietnam vet when they came back.
stuckinred
@jl: There is a book called Zen at War that covers that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Svensker:
Yes, and the abortion clinic bombings were done in the name of Christianity. Does that make all Christendom guilty?”
Why yes. Yes it does. Isn’t it obvious. Of course, if it’s done in the name of Christendom (see Randall Terry, et al), it is of course CORRECT in all ways!
Silver Owl
I’m pretty disgusted with they hypocritical Americans that where the “freedom” like a pair of party thongs and then fling them off when it actually comes to standing up for freedom.
How many republicans and dems said the military is fighting for our “freedom”, but flinch and run every time they should be standing up for freedom here? Quite the disgusting ones.
o kanis
Peaceful Moslems is exactly the problem.
There are some folks who wish to perpetrate strife with “Moslems” for various reasons. Makeup is the last thing on their mind, hence the “Jews and Christians on the board” falls on deaf ears.
Permanent war is their wish, for plucky little all ally’s only democracy in the ME™ Israel’s sake, for panderting Gingrich type politicians’ sake, for the war industry’s sake.
The peaceful message of the project is subversive to the whole war with muslims project.
El Cid
@Silver Owl: Freedom is only worth anything when it’s used by the right people to do the right things.
jl
Might be useful to ask the hate mongers why the sudden surge of anti mosque sentiment right now?
Have there been no new mosques built in the US since 911?
Are these the first new battlefronts hatched by Islam in the US over the last ten years?
Anything significant happen recently?
Sure, there have been successful and unsuccessful attempts by radical Muslims to shoot people and blow up stuff. But there have been successful and unsuccessful attempts by radical Christians to shoot people and blow up stuff too.
Was there complete quiet on the terrorism front for ten years and then a sudden surge of activity recently?
Can anyone think of anything that might have suddenly alerted the country to the Mosque Menace recently?
Anything other than an upcoming election, and a ruthless Republican party unhindered by the decent impulses of GW Bush (who I think did have decent impulses wrt race and religious tolerance, apart from his other drawbacks)
scav
@Keith G: Oh my gosh my golly, call at the major panic buttons: Park Place! They’re attacking the Monopoly board on the DARK BLUES! it IS a Democratic plot — I bet unsuspecting RED-blooded patriotic ‘mercans have that game in every house in ‘merca and are letting their CHIRLDREN play with it! Next thing you know all the little hotels will have minarets and THEN you’ll be SORRY!
(yeah, yeah, it’s Atlantic City, but that’s for those limited to real world geographies instead of existential threats. so there.)
licensed to kill time
The ‘Hallowed Ground’ and ‘Not at Ground Zero’ argument falls apart when you see the protests against mosques all around the country. Or is the whole country Hallowed Ground now?
suzanne
@Violet:
I’ve found it so interesting/hilarious how the LDS Church has tried to mainstream itself in recent years. This weird ad campaign they’ve started running proves to me how badly they hunger for that middle-American approval.
Of course, then I ask myself, “What would Jesus’ media strategy be?”.
Svensker
Does anyone have the link to that “what the Cordoba House location looks like and what the Wingers think it looks like”? someone posted a day or so ago?
Some of the righties in my family — all of whom live in Texas and rural Washington State — are going apeshit over this business. I need that link.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Back during the campaign Obama used to wave off this sort of stuff as a cynical ploy to divide people, and I’m wondering why the Dems aren’t at least attempting to frame it in those terms again. They don’t think it will work this time? Or they just have no genuine principles when it comes to a religious minority and civil liberties?
A year ago we had the death panels, now the “Ground Zero Mosque”. I can’t wait for next August to see what new abyssal depths our society can plumb.
ed drone
@El Cid:
Fixed
Ed
cat48
@Keith G:
I agree the second stmt smelled of desperation…..probably because he was walking around in the Gulf trying to promote the Gulf with the WH presscorp desperately following & trying to get a quote about a fucking mosque after them
begggggging him to spend time in the Gulf for 3 mos. That was no longer important or newsworthy to them so they kept questioning him until they got something they could parse & call a walkback that Ed Henry & Politico could call EXPLOSIVE!!!! Very nonsensical actually as I watched it unfold live on CNN!
El Cid
Next thing you know Obama will be putting Bill Ayers in charge of blowing up the new World Trade Center. And re-rebuilding it with Kenyonesian jihadist forces intent on imposing Shania law.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Keith G: The worst think about Obama’s second statement is that it is the typical thinking Democrats statement: “It doesn’t matter whether or not I feel it should be built there, I support the Constitutional position that my feelings in this case don’t matter.” Once again, we have the following dichotomy:
Republican: Short sound byte. Feels good and is totally wrong.
Democrat: Complex statement that requires people to think, but is correct.
And we live in sound-bite-America.
matoko_chan
bullshytt.
Only that credulous WEC retard Bush thought that. He was the only one stupid enough to not understand that when muslims are empowered to vote they vote for shariah. His smarter and more evil advisors were pursuing own goals…a wartime economy and a wartime electorate. They just played Our Moron President Bush.
Bush was just careful not to declare war on Islam, because even that dumbass knew we can’t win that one.
….the reason is simple scale demographics. There are 1.8 billion muslims in the world and more than half are under 30—-Islam is a young growing faith.
How many Americans are there? 300 million? Better yet, how many christian americans and what is their median age ?
and even if we stay there until ALL our teeth are broken and ALL our purses are empty…. Rick Warren and James Dobson and Sarah Palin still won’t be able to build a megachurch in Mecca.
FlipYrWhig
@Svensker: You don’t understand, Muslims are like The Borg, they’re part of a hive-mind, they don’t really comprehend individuality, and they’re bent on assimilating you. It’s, like, fractal, where each piece of the whole replicates precisely that whole. That’s why every single Muslim is just a synecdoche for Big Terrorism, but every single Christian is a unique and special snowflake.
Omnes Omnibus
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): And yet the world is still a complicated place and navigating it successfully require a grasp of nuance.
Frank
@suzanne:
The leader of the Catholic Church is the Pope while the leader of the Mormon Church is their Prophet. I will never forget their respective positions about the Iraq war back in 2003. The Pope was clearly against it and said so to Bush himself. The Prophet was for it and said so to Bush in his meeting with Bush.
Somehow I think the position of Jesus comes much closer to the Pope’s position; turn the other cheek, love thy enemies and all that other inconvenient stuff that Christians in our country can’t seem to be bothered with.
MattR
@jl: Have you seen the timeline that Salon put together? Laura Ingraham interviewed the Imam’s wife while guest hosting the O’Reilly Factor on Dec 21, 2009:
Bulworth
Apparently. This is why I can’t for the life of me understand why Dems (Reid, some NY Dems) would join the freakout about this as if by doing so it would Appease the reichwing.
matoko_chan
@Svensker: tell your families they are helping Bin Laden kick America’s fat white christian ass.
link
Mnemosyne
@Makewi:
So no one is allowed to build a Catholic church in Atlanta anymore because Eric Rudolph bombed the Olympics in the name of the Roman Catholic Church, right?
Oh, wait, that’s right — Christianity is different, so therefore we can’t hold the things that some Christians do in the name of their religion against all Christians the way we can hold the things that some Muslims do in the name of their religion against all Muslims. Because shut up, that’s why.
dan
Republican politicians and the Fox and Friends don’t give a crap about this. They do not give a hoot in a hayloft about this Mosque BS.
It is a distraction. The new gay marriage (especially since they lost that one). They have no answers for a lot of problems (or answers that would kill them to suggest), so, once again, culture wars. It’s what’s for dinner.
FlipYrWhig
@Svensker:
I think there’s like a weird “political correctness” muscle memory kicking in for some of these people. It’s like they remember some old controversy, like the convent near Auschwitz, and now they want to have a turn to bash someone for being insensitive to them (even though it has nothing to do with them and they’re not even slightly nearby).
Bulworth
@MattR: Maybe Ms. Ingraham wasn’t aware that “two blocks from gz means gz”. Also, too, the nation-wide anti-mosque freakout hadn’t started yet. To not condemn the construction of every new mosque is now heresy. Pretty soon our “liberal” elite will be claiming that anyone who opposes the shutting down and destruction of all remaining mosques is shrill.
El Cid
Downtown Manhattan is Hallowed Ground when it comes to warmongering and Muslim-bashing, but it’s librul big gubmit Barney Frank Chuck Shumer Eastern establishment elite hoity toity snob anti-flyover state evil when it comes to right wing politics.
ed drone
Why has no one pointed out that war with the West is Bin Laden’s goal for Islam? If enough of our yahoos start a ‘crusade,’ the various factions of Islam will unite to war with us, no matter if we agree with the yahoos or not. Bin Laden had several goals — US out of Saudi [check!], bankrupt the US [we’re working on it], and holy war [see: Gingrich, Newt].
Why are the Republicans doing Bin Laden’s work?
Ed
lol
@Mnemosyne:
It’s more like being against building a Baptist church near a playground because of the child molestation scandal in the Catholic Church.
matoko_chan
@ed drone: i did point that out.
repeatedly.
ed drone
@matoko_chan:
I sort of meant, “Why haven’t some of the ‘big bullhorns’ in the SCLM done this? You and I and us here all know this, but I haven’t heard Keith or Rachel or any of ‘those’ folks saying it, and it needs the saying, loud and clear.”
Ed
dan
You are all coming at this as if it is honest argument. It is not. See my comment at 98.
Svensker
And by the by, has Beinart explained again why he was for the war in Iraq? Has he changed his mind? Apologized? Or is he just shocked shocked to see what his little experiment in regime change and nation building has wrought? Fucker.
Tsulagi
I wonder if the teadweebs like Makewi know there is already a “mosque” actually within a site attacked on 9/11. Built in 2002, in the portion rebuilt…
Gee, I guess Bush and Rummy didn’t take into account the sensitive feelings of the Purple Heart bandaid warriors like Makewi in allowing that mosque. Muslim prayers are at 1400 every day of the week.
Now if only Obama would allow Gates to release the names of those attending Islamic prayers in the Pentagon. Makewi and his fellow rough teamen at the ready in the countertop surveillance and operations MOSs could swing into action. The fate of America is at stake.
Svensker
@FlipYrWhig:
My husband was just a few blocks away from WTC and watched the towers fall and like anyone who was right there he has quite a few stories. When we last saw my family, the righties all wanted to hear the stories over and over again — it’s like they needed to stoke the hatred. My husband, who was there, and I, who was across the river trying to locate parents of our students (a number of whom did not make it), really don’t like talking about it. But it’s as tho the people who weren’t there “own it” more than the people who were.
bootsy
@dan: You’re right of course that Rupert Murdoch and co. have no more attachment to this bs than anything. Simply being a consistent racist would be too principled for them, somehow. What if someone of another race has oil?
I do think this should be called out as Racism and Bigotry as often as possible, since even some of the creepiest teatards seem hurt when they are correctly identified as Racists. “Culture War” or arguments about counter-productivity in the War (of) on Terror are too subtle for the wingnut mind.
Mike in NC
@Tsulagi:
The Makewi troll was absent from BJ most of the summer, so maybe she was in rehab. From her idiotic posts about the non-mosque not near Ground Zero the past couple of days, she might be hitting the cooking sherry pretty hard.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Svensker:
That is simply revolting.
IIRC a non-trivial number of the victims who died on 9-11 were themselves Moslems. Are their surviving families and friends to have no place of sanctuary and spirituality at all, anywhere in the vicinity of GZ, to which they can go to pray for their lost loved ones? Because that is where this bigotry is leading us towards – to a state where only the right sort of Americans, with official govt. permission no less, are allowed to morn their dead from that event, and everyone else doesn’t count.
kay
60 US religious groups came out in support of Native American’s right to use peyote in religious ritual in 1993, and got a law passed to protect that right. The religious support was so broad, and so diverse, it passed Congress on a voice vote.
There was a Muslim group among the 60.
It wasn’t that long ago. 1993.
The silence (or opposition) from religious groups on this is deafening.
Fat and happy in their majority status, or secure and complacent in their minority status, they can’t be bothered to speak in defense of religious liberty, and stand silently by while this group are smeared and vilified.
There are a lot of moderate religious folks in this country, and we’ve seen how they can organize and act, because they did it in 1993.
I’m finding it difficult to get all het up about religious liberty interests when religious themselves are too frightened to speak. I’m not really in the mood to stand in for them.
Catsy
@Makewi:
You wouldn’t know honesty if you had a polygraph machine shoved up your ass and all your cherished memories of spanking off to Jeff Goldberg columns replaced with episodes of Lie to Me.
Then again, you’re yet another bigot who’s apparently incapable of distinguishing any random Muslim from al Qaeda, so I shouldn’t be surprised.
kay
@Catsy:
Makewi defends all religious, like a good conservative, up to and including regularly accusing people here of religious bigotry.
Except this religion, oddly and inexplicably.
debbie
@ Svensker:
Similar to those in Congress who scream for war, yet managed to get out of having had to do any service themselves.
Shalimar
@Makewi: It isn’t a god-damned mosque, it’s a community center which includes a place for Muslims to pray. As others have pointed out repeatedly and you undoubtedly have read, calling it a mosque is like calling Las Vegas casinos cathedrals because they include wedding chapels.
Mike P
@fasteddie9318:
I’m gonna step in here as one of Beinart’s former students. Whatever we think of people who supported the Iraq war, he’s pretty much admitted that he made a mistake on that and has been willing to take his lumps on that score. After having engaged w/him for a full semester in J-School, I think he’s clearly become a person willing to move away from the general consensus and call b.s. when he sees it (he’s been pounding the A.D.L. for their stance on the GZ mosque pretty hard).
I’m not saying forget his Iraq war support, but I am saying let’s be willing to admit people make mistakes, they can grow and learn from them and become better for it.
catclub
@NobodySpecial:
“So why are there Baptist churches within sight of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City?”
Because Timothy McVeigh was an irish-american catholic terrorist.
Mike P
Here’s a couple of links that talk about Beinart’s evolving views on Iraq:
George Packer in the New Yorker on Beinart’s new book
Richard King on the same
El Cid
@Mike P: I don’t as much mind the “mistakes” on Iraq, but the utter insulting and slandering of motives of those who dissented. The ‘you must be Saddam’s boot licker and you’re not brave like me and you love Saddam and want to have his babies’ disgusting “Scoop Jackson” fetishizing crusade solidified who was an asshole and who wasn’t in our political culture.
HyperIon
@Svensker:
he has been struggling with it….is the interpretation i put on his mumbling on CSPAN on Sunday when the topic came up. the douchebag was going on about how he wanted to confront reality, blah, blah. what a self-absorbed, inarticulate asshole. and no matter what he is quoted saying in this post, he’s still an asshole.
Tehanu
@Makewi:
And Oklahoma City was an attack done in the name of Tim McVeigh’s version of Christianity, so are all Christians everywhere guilty for it? Or just any who might want to build a church in Oklahoma City?
Idiot.