Letters to the Editor
Scientician
Published Letters: 523 Editor's Choice: 1
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Goldenboy's 500,000
[Read the article: The Islamic enemy within]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This supposed "500,000" Al Qaeda "sympathizers" Goldenboy references cannot go unchallenged. His math was well enough i suppose, but the rhetorical trick he has pulled is to turn the 19% of muslims who answered "don't know" or "refused" into sympathizers of Al Qaeda. His logic? They "refused to condemn" Al Qaeda."
This is reprehensible manipulation of the data.
Naturally it's possible that some of the "refused" category do support Al Qaeda but were afraid to say so in a poll by phone (perhaps suspecting their phones are tapped!). But Goldenboy has no basis to infer what portion of that 19% falls into this group. He merely attributes them all to it, instead. This ignores the groups of people who are simply uninformed, unpolitical and genuinely confused ones who have no solid opinion on Al Qaeda.
So this scary figure of 500,000 Bin Laden disciples running around with full citizenship of the United States is laughable.
Now let's add some more context: Only 8% overall think suicide bombings on civilians are often or always justified.
Only 5% overall actually have a favourable opinion of Al Qaeda.
Finally, let's remember there was an intra-Christian conflict raging for many years that was deeply important to many Americans: Northern Ireland, where a substantial portion of US Catholics (and maybe protestants too) supported terrorism through the IRA or Protestant militias. Was there calls for mass deportation of Catholics back then? No.
The last thing Golden Boy is ignoring is that the polling results in virtually every category for US muslims is actually better than the other Western nations that have had similar polls. If anything US Muslims are better integrated and more moderate than average.
Is it probable a few genuine, active supporters of Al Qaeda exist among the domestic Muslim populations of the US? Yes. This is the unavoidable reality of a pluralistic society. So should we panic? Of course not. The large majorities of moderate muslims will be happy to turn them in if the US authorities engage them properly (honestly and respectfully).
Rounding them up, or regressive laws, or paranoid unwarranted scrutiny of muslims will only surely increase the extremism and prove counter productive.
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hardly prescient
[Read the article: Improvement in Iraq: Trust Joe Klein and his secret sources]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I wish I could say Glenn was revealing some bold prediction here, some evidence of his clairvoyance, but no.
All this is transparently evident. The Democrats have allowed themselves to be duped again. Atrios frequently mocks Broder for insisting Bush's polling numbers will rise by the metaphor of the pony. The mythical moderate republicans who will insist on withdrawal in September is the Democratic pony. Our Christmas which never arrives. The surge was a joke from the start yet we were exhorted to "give it a chance" - give what a chance exactly? What was this "new strategy" the president keeps talking about? More troops isn't a "new" strategy.
Who would have thought the Republican party takes its strategy lessons from Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football? Or that it would work on the Democrats?
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
I realize now the 2006 Democratic victory was less of a landslide than the 1994 Republican one. I had hoped it would change the landscape, that the media would start to change their narratives and work from different playbooks. Instead, we have a Democratic majority operating in what remains a very surreal conservative environment. We're still somehow in the minority, even with the Majority. We can block a few really bad Bush nominations to various things, and get some decent legislation passed on the fringes of what's really important, so we do have some progress, but the landscape is still very much slanted against us.
This is why the Blue Dogs have been dominating the agenda still, somehow. And memes like "cutting the funding would abandon the troops in danger" are so pervasive. It's partly a Democratic failure to refute these, but even if courageous Democrats attempt to do so, I harbour no more illusion that they will have an easy ride of it.
The main front of progress remains investigations. Thankfully, Leahy, Conyers and Waxman have proven adroit and tenacious in pursuing the various threads (ropes) of criminality. Too bad the Senate Government Oversight committee is chaired by one J. Lieberman or we would be doing even better.
Kos was right: It's still a long fight, and 2006 was a breakthrough, but the enemy has several lines of fortification in reserve. All we've done is make the US government a good bit less idiotic, but there's a lot more to be done.