August 11, 2006
FED UP
I heard a lot on the news yesterday about how Americans have forgotten about 9/11, and how this recently foiled terror plot should help us all focus. But apparently some people seem to have forgotten on purpose, because they don't believe we're fighting a war.
Hawkins is right that if this plot had been successful, if hundreds more people had been killed in planes this year, these would've been the first people to blame Bush and Blair. You can't win.
So everyone's mad. The Democratic Underground is mad that Bush is elevating the terror level for political gain. And the Council on American Islamic Relations is mad that Bush blamed the terror plot on, um, Muslims:
U.S. Muslim groups criticized President George W. Bush on Thursday for calling a foiled plot to blow up airplanes part of a “war with Islamic fascists,” saying the term could inflame anti-Muslim tensions.
U.S. officials have said the plot, thwarted by Britain, to blow up several aircraft over the Atlantic bore many of the hallmarks of al Qaeda.
“We believe this is an ill-advised term and we believe that it is counter-productive to associate Islam or Muslims with fascism,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations advocacy group.
“We ought to take advantage of these incidents to make sure that we do not start a religious war against Islam and Muslims,” he told a news conference in Washington.
“We urge him (Bush) and we urge other public officials to restrain themselves.”
Yes, because you know that after 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, etc, white people went bonkers and started rioting in the street and sawing off Muslims' heads with dull knives. We really need to prevent this from happening again. I mean, it's just be a coincidence that all these terror attacks over the past five years have been perpetrated by Muslims. We can't really blame Islam for any of this. It's obviously "counter productive" to say that there's causation here; I guess it's just correlation. So we owe you guys a big apology, Hasan Akbar, John Walker Lindh, Richard Reid, Muhammad and Malvo, Mohammed Reza Taheriazar, and Naveed Haq. The fact that you are all Muslims is just a big ol' coincidence, and any attempt to associate you with Islamic facism would be a grave injustice. We beg your forgiveness that while you were killing people, we might've offended you with a label.
Sorry, my sarcasm-meter just hit amaravatian levels.
Maybe Malkin is right: it doesn't even do any good to call them "Islamic fascists", because that assumes that it's an outlying fringe. Check out her scary graphs.
Laser beam. Laser beam. Laser beam.
Deep breath.