Letters to the Editor
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Much is revealed....
Do you realize that the imams were returning from a conference in Minneapolis on how to increase Muslim political power in the States?
OMYGOD!!!!
Imagine Muslims actually wanting political power! Next they'll be wanting to - like - vote and act like citizens.
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@ Denning
Knocked that one out of here. Excellent post.
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Unfortunately Conflation
Glenn Greenwald takes aim at Jamie Kirchik of, among other publications, The New Republic in his latest post at Salon. I’m not normally a defender of Mr. Kirchick’s – unless he’s discussing gay rights, a field wherein he truly shines as a writer – and can often be found in the “Talkback” threads at TNR’s blog The Plank deriding pretty much anything he has to say about the Middle East, Muslims and Arabs in general, and foreign affairs, today I find myself taking issue with a portion of Mr. Greenwald’s post. In it, he declares:
“People like Kirchick and the pro-war right-wing movement of which he is a part are so desperate to believe they are threatened by a Grave Enemy -- and thus to perceive themselves as courageous Civilization warriors standing down mortal dangers (from their living rooms), and as exuding what Kirchik recently described, self-glorifyingly, as “grit” for fighting this Grave Threat to Civilization – that they literally invent fantasy worlds of scary, existential, domestic Islamic armies and widespread intimidation campaigns.”
So much of this is so right on that it almost feels like I’m quibbling, but I have to take issue with Mr. Greenwald’s characterization of Mr. Kirchik as being a party to “the pro-war right-wing movement.” That such a movement exists is undoubted, and that Mr. Kirchik shares his boss Martin Peretz’s raving bigotry towards both Muslims and Arabs is undeniable (Kirchik’s title at The New Republic is “assistant to the editor-in-chief”). However, this does not make Mr. Kirchik “right-wing” unless we wish to make the term so broad as to be bereft of meaning. Mr. Kirchik’s domestic politics, judging by his writing, conventionally neoliberal and more left-of-center – especially where gay rights are concerned – than the “moderate middle” (whatever that term means anymore). He may not toe the line where fidelity to the Democratic Party as the voice of liberals (a formulation that is more pragmatic than true) is concerned, but this hardly makes him a jackbooted black shirt of the right-wing authoritarian movement in this country.
Where Kirchik parts company with many modern liberals is in an unabashedly aggressive Wilsonian jingoism. He is, in this sense, a fellow traveler to the modern crop of neoconservatives (focused as they are on foreign affairs as the way to create grand experiments of their own in social engineering). I think fellow-traveler is the key phrase here. What Mr. Greenwald is doing is no more than what right-wing conservatives do when faced with, say, someone who thinks the European socialists are on to something with that universal health care stuff. All of a sudden, that person might as well be a Communist in the mode of Stalin, as far as the conservative commentariat is concerned.
When Mr. Greenwald – a highly intelligent man and gifted writer in desperate need of a word count limit and a patient editor – starts assigning people to “the pro-war right-wing movement” simply because they are unabashedly pro-war and revoltingly, simple-mindedly bigoted, it raises a McCarthyite cloud of dogmatism. Mr. Kirchik deserves to be excoriated for his expressed bigotry and simple-minded argumentation. But we shouldn’t forget that he is also an ardent critic of the West’s lack of action in Darfur and a fervent supporter of gay rights, in addition to his seemingly-impervious-to-reason views on the Middle East.
No, Mr. Kirchik doesn’t adhere to liberal orthodoxy. But liberals like Mr. Greenwald should remember that orthodoxy is anathema to the best traditions of liberalism. By all means, demonstrate where Mr. Kirchik is wrong, as Mr. Greenwald does so ably, but don’t fall into dogmatism, either.
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You've forgotten about Muslims unleashing the most potent WMD in America - the lawsuit.
Oh. My. God. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
And, oh yeah: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
"And wouldn't it be ironic if hate-crimes statutes were invoked."
What would be ironic would be a conservative who actually understands, or admits they actually understood, anything about why hate crimes statutes exist...
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James Elliot's unintended irony
The above commenter takes issue with Glenn labelling someone a conservative when he should be properly identified as a warmonger and then turns around and calls Glenn a liberal when he sghould be more properly labelled a civil libertarian.
Go figure.
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Glenn
For some reason, the "flying imams" incident seems to be central to Muslim apologists. I am not exactly sure why this is, but then again I am also baffled by the idea of progressives defending the rotten ideology of Islam.
Jay C originally posted that the imams were "several completely innocent men hassled by authorities for apparently no other reason than reflexive anti-Muslim bigotry." His assertion was wrong on multiple levels:
1) The reason that the imams were "hassled" was because of the little show they put on, first at the airport gate and then on the plane itself. Many of the passengers were clearly terrified by their behavior.
2) Why might they have put on this show? I don't know. However, if you wish to speculate, it is relevant to know that they were coming from a conference in which one of the topics was increasing Muslim political power in the States. Might that be a motivation to stage this?
3) Let's look at what we know of the characters involved. Imam Shahin leads a mosque that has members involved in 9/11 execution and pre-planning. He also has the precedent of defending two Muslims accused by the FBI of dry running 9/11.
4) Putting it together, might this have been a staged dry run in order to solicit the exact response they got?
Now I don't know, but the previous behavior and associates of Shahin make that plausible in my mind. Why isn't it plausible in yours? Why is this incident the one you want to hang your (inexplicable to me) defence of Islam upon?
Perhaps some insight can be gained by asking which of you agree with Ward Churchill's analysis of 9/11. Fair warning: if you do agree with it, I've got some uncomfortable questions for you.