"Our bishops' conference and all its members have repeatedly and publicly denounced all forms of violence in our society, including abortion as well as the misguided resort to violence by anyone opposed to abortion," Cardinal Rigali said. "Such killing is the opposite of everything we stand for, and everything we want our culture to stand for: respect for the life of each and every human being from its beginning to its natural end. We pray for Dr. Tiller and his family."Now, Jeff was talking about folks here at the Atlantic, not American Islamic groups, so this is only tangentially related to his original point. But the issue of political correctness was raised in comments. I have my own biases. Still, the USCB effectively equated Tiller's murder with abortion. Fair enough. But, to take Matt's point a little further, it's very hard for me to imagine CAIR issuing a statement like this in which they fold in, say, the murder of innocent Afghan children by American Predator drones with the Fort Hood massacre.
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...but Yglesias pulls out this statement from United States Conference of Bishops on the murder of George Tiller:
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Holy crow. Can you imagine the outcry if they did?
The hypocrisy of the Catholic hierarchy is why I left the Church recently and have now joined the Episcopal Church.
This is a few too many analogies and hypotheticals for me to follow the argument. Is your point that the hypothetical CAIR statement demonstrates that Goldberg et al freak out at anything having to do with Muslims or that the USCB is less virtuous than CAIR on the basis of the absence of a hypothetical statement?
Weak sauce, TNC. Weak sauce.
TNC,
I'm not saying that they are correct, but of course the USCB equated Dr Tiller's death with abortion. The reason most people are against abortion is because they believe it is the taking of a life,so it makes sense that they would compare the taking of one life to another. I'm definitely not saying they are correct, and I'm not disputing that a simmilar statement from CAIR would sound a bit awkward, but it always strikes me as weird when people are surprised that pro-life (or anti-choice, whatever) people equate abortion with the taking of an innocent life.
Not surprised at all. Hence the "fair enough." But again, by that standard one could equate the Ft. Hood murders with the collateral damage we inflict at will to try to kill terrorists.
If you're in certain parts of the world, innocent people are murdered weekly (via remote control) for a cause that you probably aren't affiliated with. I thought I'd linked Jane Mayer's piece on Predator drones, but I see I haven't. I'll put up a post.
I think this analogy fails on two levels:
No we can't equate the murders at Ft. Hood with the collateral damage we inflict "at will" in trying to kill terrorists. The thirteen people murdered at Fort Hood were intentionally killed, their deaths were willed, whereas those killed as collateral damage in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. were not intentionally killed--their deaths were not willed. Are you suggesting that the American military is deliberately targeting civilians?
Furthermore, George Tiller himself deliberately killed many innocent, defenseless human beings in very gruesome manners (cracking open a baby's skull and sucking out its brain is torture and murder, plain and simple), whereas there is no evidence that the twelve soldiers and one civilian murdered at Ft. Hood had ever deliberately killed an innocent person. So it makes sense to condemn both the violence that Dr. Tiller performed routinely along with the violence that ended his life. Not so with the Fort Hood tragedy.
Torouke,
Dr Tiller was performing a medical service (ending a late-term pregnancy) for the sake of his patients, people whose long-term health could have been jeopardized by their pregnancy; in some cases, Dr. Tiller's performance of an abortion might have saved the life of his patient. In some cases even, Dr. Tiller's actions might have amounted to a mercy killing, since late-term abortions are sometimes performed because an unborn child might have severe physical and/or mental deformities. So when you reduce Dr Tiller to someone who killed innocent defenseless human beings in a gruesome manner,without considering the context in which his actions occurred, you are as guilty of making simplistic moral judgements as many of those who conflate the collateral yet unintentional killing of civilians via military actions with acts of murder.
Maybe so eltoro,
But there is quite a bit of evidence that many, if not most of the partial-birth abortions performed by Tiller were done on healthy women. See here:
http://www.kdheks.gov/hci/abortion_sum/99itop1.pdf
Scroll down to the bottom of the report, and you find that of the 182 or so partial birth abortions performed in 1999, none were performed to save the patient's life, or to reduce the chance of some sort of physical malady. They were performed to reduce some sort of mental problem, possibly the anguish over physical and mental deformities as you suggest. But possibly not. You yourself suggest that even the complicating factors occurred in "some cases", suggesting that there were partial-birth abortions that were performed on demand. In those instances at least, my characterization of his actions is on target.
I meant to say that most people who are against abortion are against it because they believe it is the taking of a life, I did not mean to imply that most people are pro life.
Still, when you're denouncing someone's murder, it's bad form to mention the reasons the victim might have "deserved" it. NCSB could have said that they consider the murder a crime and a sin, and left it at that. No discussion of other crimes or sins was necessary.
This.
Also, why wasn't Lieberman calling for congressional hearings when this asshole acted?
Bad form indeed.
I don't think it's too strong to suggest that rationalizing a murder--by explaining why the victim needed killin'--is not the same as 'denouncing' it.
Cue the faithful Catholics, who are still funding an international conspiracy to cover up and minimize the sexual and physical abuse of children along with some objectively good works, to be incensed by the comparison.
IMO, the big distinction between the USCCB and CAIR is: The USCCB is winning.
They had a pretty good week in our secular government, in making life harder for gay couples and women who don't want to stay pregnant.
New Rule: No whining about how you're just expressing the will of God while imposing your pre-Enlightenment beliefs on the 82% of Americans who are not Catholic, folks.
Sans-culottes,
The audience to which the bishops's statement was directed would include people who are sympathetic to the political views of Dr. Tiller's murderer. The bishops were not saying that Dr Tiller deserved to be murdered; they were saying in fact that Dr Tiller's "sins" of performing abortions don't justify Scott Roeder's sin of murdering Dr Tiller.
Phoenix Rising,
Bear in mind that many Catholics do not agree with the Church's position on abortion, and even if they agree that abortion is a sin, they don't believe in putting restictions on the ability of other people to have an abortion. At the same time, many people in other Christian denominations and even in other faiths do share the Catholic Church's position on abortion, and also agree with putting restrictions on abortion. Therefore, characterizing restrictions on abortion as an imposition of Catholic religious beliefs is not really accurate.
Phoenix Rising,
In addition, anti-abortion views are not necessarily an pre-Enlightenment belief. The Enlightenment occurred during the 17th and 18th centuries, while anti-abortion laws were in force throughout much of the Western World well into the 20th century.
eltoro,
you still have not commented on the fact that while the Catholic Church is in a constant tizzy about abortion, it is perfectly willing to turn its back on already born children being raped by its priests. The hypocrisy of the Church devalues its moral arguments.
Lebecka,
I did not comment on the moral authority of the clerical leadership of the Catholic Church (which I agree has been fatally compromised by the Church's failure as an institution to protect children from child predators among the clargy) because that was not issue at hand. The issue at hand was the appropriateness of equating the act of abortion to the act of murder in the statement issued by the bishops.
BTW, child molestation is a sin even when it is committed by priests, and the Church does condemn it as a mortal sin regardless of who commits the sin. So the Church is not guilty of hypocrisy when it condemns abortion. The Church's leadership is guilty though of extreme arrogance and callousness when it focuses so much attention on abortion when it did such a piss-poor job of policing its priesthood, despite the fact that so many victims of child molestation by priests reported these crimes to the Church's leadership.
The Church would be guilty of hypocrisy on the issue of abortion, however, if we discovered that there were widespead cases of nuns getting abortions for themselves, or of priests securing abortions for women the priests had sexual relations with, and if the Church leadership engaged in the same sort of denial and coverups that characterized its handling of child sexual abuse by membes of the clergy.
Eltoro:
The Catholic Church is guilty of hypocrisy by pushing to outlaw abortion which would put doctors who perform abortions and/or women that seek them in jail. The way the Church handles the mortal sins of pedophilic clergy is to council them, retrain them, relocate them and do everything within their power to shield them from prosecution. In the case of Bernard Law, the Pope went so far as to bring him to Italy in order to avoid the American justice system. (And this guy is much worse than Polanski.)The Church demands the authority to police themselves, as if they are not subject to our laws. When one of their own commits a crime they try to convince their clergy to do the right thing, but for anyone outside of their walls, the Church lobbies for prison time.
I think it is completely over the line comparing CAIR to the Roman Catholic church. I mean, this is an organization (CAIR) that has been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in funneling millions of dollars in donations to Hamas, a terrorist organization. The FBI severed all relations with CAIR in 2008, describing them as a front for Islamic extremists. The last time I checked, the Church wasn't funneling money to terrorists, or the murderers of abortion doctors for that matter.
Regarding the Bishop's statement, it is their belief that abortions are the murder of the fetus. They are merely confirming that they are opposed to murder at all stages of life, including before birth. The attack at Fort Hood was murder. Collateral damage due to a drone attack is not in the same ballpark.
"The attack at Fort Hood was murder. Collateral damage due to a drone attack is not in the same ballpark."
I would say they're definitely in the same ballpark. Innocent people are dead by violence. Call it collateral damage if you want to, but a dead Afghani kid is someone's child.
Come on guys, there is a reason we have things such as negligent homicide, manslaughter, etc in court. Intent and premeditation are important aspects to consider when we are talking about murder. If someone's child is killed as we are bombing terrorists, it is a tragedy. It isn't murder, there is no intent, or premeditation. It is also completely legitimate so long as the target is a lawful and the damage is not excessive in light of the overall military advantage anticipated from the attack.
If you want to bring the law into it, abortion isn't murder in this country. It isn't even a crime if done with the mother's permission. That's why the analogy was brought up, because the Catholic Church equated a man's murder with abortion. I would say it's similar to bringing up another man's murder to accidental killings of innocent people in other countries.
We also need to remember the context of this post is the argument that "Christians are under far more scrutiny than Muslims" You are forgetting the train of thought that led us here. If the anybody made a similar comment that "We regret the actions of Hasan, but the US does kill innocents in Arab countries so that led him to do it" it'd be on Fox News 24/7 for a month.
But we know children and other non-combatants are there, and are definitely going to be killed by a strike. That's intent and premeditation. Just because they aren't primary targets doesn't mean the Predator strikes aren't deliberately killing them.
But that's beside the point. People die in war - that's what it means. And if you think it is a just war, then you accept that. I doubt, however, the victims see it that way. Surely they see it as murder.
And the US Government gives weapons and money to Israel to commit war crimes in Gaza. We do this while they are breaking a condition we have established for peace talks.
Comparing the IDF to Hamas is pretty weak. If you think our support of Israel and the IDF is morally equivalent to supporting a terrorist organization such as Hamas, I think you're delusional.
Hamas is violent democratically elected government. I'm failing to see the difference. Aside from US backing.
You're right, it is a weak comparison. It would take Hamas years to match the carnage the IDF can inflict in just a week or so of shooting up Gaza.
Whenever I see "IDF," "Hamas," and "delusional" in the same paragraph, I fear we're getting into heat not light territory. Are we going to have a Gaza War thread?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War
If so, I'll probably end up taking Dan W's side (without weighing in).
You know, let's just leave it. There's nothing to be won here, or even argue over. I could try to hedge my positions to sound like I could compromise, but I just frankly don't want it here.
@ Dan W
Hamas is a violent terrorist organization, democratically elected or not. The difference is that Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization by not only the United states, but also the EU and several other countries. Even Mahmoud Abbas, head of the legitimate Palestinian government, issued a decree outlawing the Hamas militias. The difference is that the purpose of Hamas is to destroy Israel, and replace it with a radical Islamic state. Again, if you truly believe that Hamas is in any way the moral equal of Israel and the IDF, I think you are being deliberately obtuse.
Amichel,
You are being deliberately obtuse yourself; surely you are intelligent enough to realize that in times of war, even the good guys are capable of committing war crimes. Moreover, even if the war crimes committed by the bad guys exceed those committed by the good guys, it doesn't absolve the good guys of the war crimes that they commit. The evils committed by Al Qaeda don't justify the violations of the Geneva Convention that occurred under the Bush-Cheney administration, and the evils committed by Saddam Hussein at Abu Ghraib during his regime don't justify the abuses committed by the US military at Abu Ghraib after the fall of Saddam.
@eltoro
You're attributing to me an argument I'm not making. What I am saying is that Israel is a legitimate government that is justified in using the IDF to respond to terrorists. Hamas is an organization of terrorists, that does not have the same legitimacy as the IDF. Of course war crimes by one side do not justify war crimes by another. I just don't consider the vast majority of the IDF's actions to be war crimes. Hamas provokes Israel by commiting war crimes in launching rockets at civilians. The IDF responds by attacking militants that are hiding amongst civilians, but taking steps to limit collateral damage such as calling buildings that are going to be bombed. I am sure some individual members of the IDF have commited war crimes, and if they can be proven and prosecuted should be. However, the entire organization of Hamas exists to commit war crimes against Israel. I do no think this is morally equivalent.
I disagree whole-heartedly amichael. Collateral slaughter in war is the taking of innocent life. Indeed, one might say since there are some who claim that human life begins at birth, such collateral slaughter of innocents already born is murder, while abortion is, in fact, merely the termination of a pregnancy--termination of a potential merely. Now perhaps you don't think collateral damage is murder, because here in the US we have suffered very little civilian slaughter that has been the hallmark of armed conflict for the past one hundred years all over the planet, but I'll bet you damn well would consider it murder if in an armed conflict, your children or children of family members were killed in a bombing raid.
I guess that depends on the size of your ballpark. I think it's quite easy to argue that they're in the same ballpark. Personally, I don't have a problem with either comparison. Saying they are all forms of violence is not the same as saying they are all equal forms of violence. But, of course, we deem their likeness based on our own perspective. Your attempt to rationalize the death on an innocent based on the intended result does not change the fundamental nature of what has occurred: an act of violence resulting in the death of an innocent.
I suppose we could devolve into a debate on the nature of innocence, but that sounds like a terrible way to spend a Tuesday morning.
"The last time I checked, the Church wasn't funneling money to terrorists, or the murderers of abortion doctors for that matter."
Nope, just child rapists. That's all good, yes?
Hey, you won't find a bigger critic of the Church's response to child abusing priests than me. I wish they could be executed, but as the churhc no longer has civil authority, at the least there should have been mass defrockings and greater cooperation with law enforcement. Regardless, this is off point and a cheap shot.
Not cheap, just the truth. The Church values unborn children much much more than born ones.
Not a cheap shot and entirely relevant to your point - as I said below, I was trying to suggest that it's not so crazy to list an organization that's known to protect child rapists alongside an organization that is alleged to have provided funds to terrorists. Some might even call the former the more heinous offense.
Eva,
You know very well that the Church is not funneling money to child rapists. It is however spending millions to compensate the victims of clerics who raped children, as a result of its failure to protect those victims from child predators among the clergy. These failures occurred even though those victims reported these crimes to bishops who had both the authority and the moral/legal obligations to remove those criminals from serving as pastors and to report those criminals to law enforcement officials.
eltoro,
And you know very well that it wasn't a passive matter of "failure to protect" so much as an active and deliberate cover-up and protection of the criminal priests in question. Keeping them on salary for decades seems close enough to "funneling money" to me. It's also worth noting that this matter is hardly in the past - a Canadian bishop was just arrested within the last month or two, and it appears his protection from the law had been ongoing until a chance screening at airport security found child porn on his laptop.
Regardless, I'm not aiming to re-hash the church scandal - I was merely trying to point out to amichel that the Catholic Church is not some sin-free organization that no one should dare to mention in the same sentence as CAIR. The church's history in recent years is ugly enough that it's no enormous insult to mention them in the same breath as alleged funders of terrorists.
The Catholic Church has a lot to answer for, and how they have handled the pervert priest is disgusting.
The one thing I will give them in regards to abortion is that at least their pro-life stance extends to capital punishment as well. I have much more disdain for the religions that are militantly anti-abortion on the one hand, and pro death penalty on the other. Also, I don't think it's fair to say that the Catholic Church does not care about children after they are born. They provide one of the most accessible educational systems for poor children in the country, and perform extensive charitable activities.
This is all from a pretty militant pro-choicer, here. Just adding a little of my own perspective about the church.
Eva,
I did mention in my post that this failure occurred despite the reporting of these crimes by the victims to the bishops, so I am not letting the Church's leadership off the hook (They can't feign ignorance.) They were told about these crimes, and they failed to take the steps necessary to stop these crimes (removing the offending priests from their positions as pastors, kicking the offending priests out of the priesthood, and reporting those crimes to law enforcement officials) because they couldn't even acknowledge to themselves that there was a problem to deal with. (The Church made a mistake in who it accepted into the priesthood? That's impossible!)
Even when they recognized that there was a problem, too many of the Church's bishops refused to hold themselves accountable. They covered up the acts of those offending priests, and even when they actually removed those priests from their positions as pastors, they still kept them on the payroll as you mentioned. All despicable and dishonorable actions to be sure, but that still doesn't qualify as funneling money to child rapitsts.
I do agree with you though that the Catholic Church deserves to have its sin held against it just as much as any other organization, including CAIR.
I think a more appropriate comparison to what the Bishops said would be to compare it to how a non-violence group would respond to violence behavior in the anti-war community. I would imagine they would issue a statement saying that they condemn all kinds of violence and would tie it into opposing wars. Admittedly, it is speculation on my behalf.
Good comparison.
As part of a non-violent group myself, I would say this is exactly right (or should be). If people who proclaim to be non-violent are taking up arms for the cause of non-violence, then that needs to be condemned.
Yes, I think this is a much more apt comparison.
Today Goldberg advocates, albeit with lots of hedging and qualifications (probably because the consequences of his insinuations are morally untenable), religious profiling. I think Mr. Goldberg needs an elementary lesson in logic: correlation does not imply causation. Sure, Muslims have committed violence on American troops. Goldberg's right to reject any squeamishness in pointing it out. But lots of people do lots of things. That fact doesn't prove that a quality like religious belief was the cause of their actions.
Does Goldberg really want to argue that Muslim soldiers are inherently more inclined to kill their compatriots than other soldiers? It's amazing to me that a fellow Jew would not see that the dangers of such institutionalized suspicion would far outweigh the benefits. In advocating something so reprehensible, he does a disservice to his (and my) people.
Excellent point.
If I may add something, profiling wasn't needed in this case. The guy was clearly a seriously troubled individual, given to spouting hateful and violent words to his coworkers (if all I've read is true) - unstable, in other words, and becoming increasingly so as his deployment neared.
Goldberg can't see a difference between these warning signs and just some Muslim (or anything else) soldier going about his business? That's ridiculous.
If they can't find a way to control a guy who is clearly unstable, how would profiling accomplish anything?
Right. Whatever the moral and logical problems with Goldberg's recommendation, I think the strongest case we can make against it is pragmatic: it's not necessary and would likely not even work very well, while wasting resources and creating all kinds of problems.
Also: if a guy like Hasan with multiple red flags couldn't be isolated and addressed, how much harder will it be to locate the real threats if we throw a much wider net? Does the military really have the resources right now to thoroughly investigate every soldier who is Muslim, or of middle-eastern descent? Or do we further cripple our military by dismissing all those soldiers?
The deliberative quality on the Ft. Hood massacre by the American media in my opinion has been by and large salutary. In the wake of the Oklahoma City Federal building bombing, there was an initial rush to judgment in which unknown, because they did not exist in this case, Muslim extremists were called to task.
As the evidence seems to be spilling out in this case, it appears that those who feared that Hasan was indeed a man who was sympathetic to extremist Islamic causes and methodology have been justified in their fears. We also can see other, experiential factors, that led to his psychology. What is striking is how given the number of red flags were out there, the military failed to act in preventing this individual from continuing in the military. It is almost impossible, given the number of utterly innocent Americans on no fly lists, to comprehend how Hasan was allowed to continue in his job with the military. Now, given his perspective and pychology, perhaps Hasan would have committed his atrocities elsewhere.
However, the willingness of the 4th estate to for the most part allow the facts of the case to unfold has been a good thing. Those of us who are frightened of the spread of domestic terrorism, whether from Islamic or right wing extremists, will benefit from such a detached perspective that may lead to improving safeguards in the future. What's more those who knee jerk on the Muslim threat should be tempered with the reality that we have in the US an ongoing problem of extreme domestic violence for which there is no, nor can there be, any satisfactory explanation.
And that to one killed in a gun spree of a disaffected youth on a school campus or in a Federal building at the hands of a disaffected former soldier or in this case at the hands of a Muslim extremist who has been allowed, despite obvious warning behavior, to continue in his position with the military, there is no difference.
No doubt, the Islamic American population has been both quick to respond with outrage, in response to the wanton slaughter of innocent life and how Hasan by his murderous action has constricted their lives. No doubt, we live at a time in which we need Islamic participation in all aspects of American life, including the military, if we are going to be able to respond effectively to Islamic extremism, and beyond that, more essentially, because as Americans all of us are given that right.
Similarly, we need members of the American right to cease and desist in their admiration of those extremists who would promote domestic violence in the name of causes to which they are sympathetic, without the kind of equivocation we see in the USCB statement.
I'd been thinking some of these points, but hadn't put it together with such care and precision. Well done.
Goldberg's response:
There's no question that the powerpoint presentation unearthed by Dana Priest changes the tenor of this story. Nidal himself sketched out a lesson several years ago. He was willing to serve his country, but felt that taking part in a war in which American soldiers were placed "at risk to hurting/killing believers unjustly" was a betrayal of his faith. He was broadly sympathetic to the perspective of those with whom we are engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, arguing that "fighting to establish an Islamic State to please God, even by force, is condoned by the Islam." Moreover, he clearly indicated his belief that some number of devout muslims in the military, placed in such a bind, might choose to respond by perpetrating "adverse events," and should thus be allowed to separate themselves from service.
Actually, I think Nidal is right about that.
Here's a proposal that attempts to steer a middle course between TNC's refusal to see anything distinctive about the present case, and Goldberg's insistence on its uniqueness. Nidal wanted to give genuinely conflicted Muslims an easy path out of the military, by claiming conscientious objector status. What he was pressing for was something novel - what's often termed discretionary or selective conscientious objection. It's an incredibly fraught concept - you don't want a military composed of soldiers who decide, on a case by case basis, whether they'll deploy or engage in a war. It opens the door to all sorts of abuses. Lots of rational soldiers would prefer to remain stateside, instead of entering into combat. And it also raises troubling questions about why some sorts of objections should be deemed more valid than others. But these objections don't drown out the rationale for implementing some sort of rigorous procedure to allow such soldiers to separate themselves from the military - that, absent such an outlet, they may produce further "adverse events." Recognizing that a small number of American Muslims, including some on active duty, believe themselves caught between conflicting obligations - or worse, believe that their faith obliges them to take the other side - isn't the same as profiling. Give them a relatively easy way out, and we'll all be better off.
But there's something else that the military needs to do - recruit more Muslims. At present, the military's own numbers suggest that they account for roughly 0.3% of active duty personnel; the more optimistic numbers put out by CAIR and similar groups are as high as 1%. Either way, it's less than half of their representation in the population at large (the same groups producing maximalist estimates of their representation in the military also produce the highest estimates of their presence in the population). And of those who do serve, a substantial plurality are of African-American descent. In other words, after years of engagement in conflicts in which cultural knowledge is at an absolute premium, we've done an incredibly miserably job of drawing on one of our potentially greatest resources in waging the battle. The Army says that it has just 1,977 active duty personnel who identify their religion as Islam.
This is what Casey was getting at when he fretted about the backlash, and it's why the wingnuts who worry about Islamic infiltration of the armed forces make me want to weep. The military needs to recruit more Muslim soldiers, particularly those with familiarity with the cultures of the nations we are seeking to aid. If President Obama really wants to salvage something positive from this tragedy, he should issue such a call to service: "We cherish those of the Islamic faith who serve their country in a time of war. There are not too many, but rather, too few. Your country needs you. It calls upon you in a time of peril to don the uniform, and to serve alongside Americans of all faiths and creeds as they seek to end the violence and begin to rebuild two Islamic states."
For as long as we've been a nation, wearing the uniform during wartime has been a path to legitimacy and equality for marginalized groups and victims of discrimination - from the Colored Troops of the Civil War to the Nisei of the 442nd RCT. It shouldn't be that way; equality is a birthright in our nation. But the reality is that more Muslims in uniform would benefit everyone, the Islamic community most of all.
Again, Goldberg's responses is vague as all hell. "Take seriously" how? Who should do the taking seriously?
It means nothing. I guess he wants some sort of national clucking session over 'the extent to with jihadist ideas have penetrated.' Maybe it could be similar to the ones from my formative years about violent video games and gangsta rap, possibly with himself in the role of C. Delores Tucker. Sen. Joe Lieberman is still available to play Sen. Joe Lieberman, unfortunately. Are some senate hearings worth their weight in manure are what he wants? Does anyone think such an effort would lead anywhere good? Likely, like most Senate hearings, they'd lead to nothing and be ignored by almost everyone. But if they caught on with some large segment of the public?
If your goal is to push American Muslims to embrace radical, anti-American ideologies that preach that the U.S. is the enemy of Islam, then Red-baiting style public inquiries in the press (or maybe the Senate) into what Imams are preaching isn't a bad idea. It's not as good as the Iraq War, but it might be somewhat effective.
I still remember the Yglesias post from 2003 in which he argued that George W. Bush was an Iranian agent. (Bush had, to date, taken out two of Iran's major enemies Saddam and the Taliban) Maybe we should take seriously the possibility that Goldberg is some sort of jihadist mole? I kid, but c'mon.
This is all such a tragic waste. Hasan could have gotten out of his deployment. Without hurting anyone. Easily. All he had to do was say that he was gay. He would have been out just like that. But I guess murdering a bunch of unarmed people is less humiliating or less of a sin than being gay.
If the logic is the taking of any innocent life is wrong, then any analogy should work. Yet an analogy always serves a larger argument, it's never just about X=Y. If Cair wanted to draw attention to the plight of Afghan children, for example, then they might use the Hasan incident to draw such an analogy. But they're not trying to teach that moral lesson; their concerns lay elsewhere.
So it doesn't seem useful to me to analogize CAIR vs. Cardinal Rigali; their motivations are completely different. Perhaps a better analogy would be Muslim cleric vs. Rigali.
Or should the Voice of America bring up the religion of the D.C. Army sniper who is set to be executed soon for killing 10 people ... or of the soldier in Iraq who shot and killed his fellow soldiers?
The whole discussion is the essence of power in this country. A legal medical procedure can be equated with murder because it's a viewpoint shared by a large number (if not a majority) of the actual white (and mostly male) people who actually run things. That other equivalencies are not equally privileged should really surprise nobody. Rage-filled men shooting up the spot over a variety of grievances is a reality of life here in America. The difference comes in the use and abuse of the greivances at issue. The actions of your George Sodini are simply not going to engender a serious discussion of misogyny that would result in the scrutiny of men because if we are running things, then why would we scrutinize/penalize ourselves? On the other hand, Hasan's greivances will definitely be used to-at the very least-question whether we should scrutinize/investigate/detain some or all Muslims. He's not part of the group that's running things, and therefore there will be consequences for everyone like him-Arabs/Muslims-when he snaps. The truth is that Hasan is much closer to Sodini than a desperate Palestinian refugee who blows himself up. Both were frustrated American loners who felt alienated for various reasons and then latched onto particularized outlooks that neatly justified their taking revenge on the world around them with a gun (it's the women, it's the West), as all these shooters do. The truth lies not in the concotion of their respective excuses, but in our disparate responses to them.
Excellent point. Thanks for this.
Excellent point, Oswaldo, and I think you have the analogy just right: it's George Sodini that Hasan most resembles.
Amichel,
While the goal of the IDF's attack is to kill the terrorists launching attacks on Israeli civilians, the actual effect of the IDF's actions is to kill lots of Palestianian civilians, while failing to kill the actual terrorists. One could argue that Hamas succeeds at playing the IDF like a fiddle. Hamas launches civilian rocket attacks on Israel, the IDF shoots back and kills Palestianian civilians while missing the terrorists, enabling Hamas to recruit more Palestianians to engage in terrorism.
So all this talk about legitimacy is irrelevant to judging Israel's actions in this context. Israel's methods of defending itself results in the deaths of a lot more Palestianian civilians compared the to the deaths of Israeli civilians resulting from Hamas's despicable terrorist attacks, and the deaths of those Palestian civilians are not only unnecessary, they are also INEFFECTIVE.
Causing so many unnecesary deaths among civilians, especially when these deaths fail to advance the end of the war between Israel and Hamas, is simply wrong. It is not as wrong as the terrorist activities of Hamas, but they are wrong nevertheless.
@Eltoro
I guess it depends on your definition of effective. I think Operation Cast Lead was extremely effective, in that it accomplished its mission of stopping terrorist rocket attacks against southern Israel and destroying military supplies and infastructure for Hamas. In 2008, Hamas fired over 3,000 rockets into Israel. In the eleven months since Operation Cast Lead, they have fired only 100. It is not wrong for Israel to defend itself from terrorists, and collateral damage is sometimes unavoidable when cowards choose to hide amongst civilians.
"It is not wrong for Israel to defend itself from terrorists, and collateral damage is sometimes unavoidable when cowards choose to hide amongst civilians."
Avoiding the killing of Palestinian civilians should be the very point of any military exercise performed by the IDF, since Hamas's very reason for provoking Israeli attacks that hit Palestian civilian areas is to cause the death of Palestinian civilians at Israeli hands. The more Palestianian civilians that die as a result of IDF attacks, the more Palestianians that can be recruited to Hamas.
"In 2008, Hamas fired over 3,000 rockets into Israel. In the eleven months since Operation Cast Lead, they have fired only 100."
How much of this achieved by bombing of civilian areas that resulted in widespread civilian casualties versus a more targeted approach? Don't forgot how the bombing of Lebanon did little to stop Hezbollah's rocket attacks in northern Israel, but did a lot to kill Lebanese civilians.
@Eltoro.
The point of any military action by the IDF has been and will be the protection of Israeli citizens. It is not the responsibility of the IDF to protect Palestinian civilians any more than is expected on the battlefield to avoid collateral damage.
Regarding Hezbollah, since the 2006 Israeli incursion into Lebanon, there have been less than a dozen rockets fired into northern Israel. This is in contrast to the approx. 4,000 that were fired at Israel during the war. I don't see how your argument that Israeli military actions have been ineffective holds water. In both cases, the IDF's swift and overwhelming attacks destroyed terrorist infrastructure, and mitigated subsequent terrorist attacks.
When engaging in urban warfare with terrorists hiding amongst civilians, civilian casualties are unavoidable. The IDF has made a good faith and largely effective effort to minimize civilian casualties. This is in marked contrast to either Hamas or Hezbollah.
"Regarding Hezbollah, since the 2006 Israeli incursion into Lebanon, there have been less than a dozen rockets fired into northern Israel. This is in contrast to the approx. 4,000 that were fired at Israel during the war."
Why was Hezbollah able to fire so many rockets during the war, despite the widespread bombings that occurred during the war? If the bombing was so effective, Hezbollah would never have been able to fire off 4,000 rockets during the course of the war. They would have only been able to fire a couple of hundred at the most.
No, what succeeded in reducing the rocket attacks on northern Israel was the CEASEFIRE negotiated between Israel and Lebanon, not the IDF's bombings during the war.