He also quotes Richard Clarke (security expert):I have to admit, I'm embarrassed. That building the mosque in Lower Manhattan has become the dominant issue in this country is just disturbing. It sounds like the kind of fight people might have had in the Middle Ages, not in the 21st century in a country that purports to espouse religious freedom and tolerance.
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Many of our so-called "leaders" are stepping right into Bin Laden's propaganda again. They've turned this into an attack on Islam. Well played, Sarah and Newt, among others. Those two would have fit right in during the Crusades.
I'm just not up to commenting on this except to say that it's very disheartening.Osama bin Laden had been saying for years, 'America wants to invade an Arab country and occupy it, an oil-rich Arab country.' He had been saying this. This is part of his propaganda.
So what did we do after 9/11? We invade an oil-rich and occupy an oil-rich Arab country which was doing nothing to threaten us. In other words, we stepped right into bin Laden's propaganda. And the result of that is that al Qaeda and organizations like it, offshoots of it, second-generation al Qaeda have been greatly strengthened.
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"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
ReplyDeleteAlbert Einstein
Me, chiming in again. I just ran across this on "Slacktivist" on this same subject.
ReplyDeleteOh, my, Tom. That post on Slacktivsit is outstanding! And did you read the comments? Incredibly funny, snarky and creative.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sending it on.
Ny times reports one muslim New Yorker as saying this about the mosque: “No one wants a center in downtown Manhattan that stands as a permanent fixture of this terrible tension.”
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of the slayings of the Amish school children. The Amish razed the school not to bury the past but because it would be too painful to continue to look on it every day, to be reminded of the atrocity every day. I wonder if the mosque, with its placement so close to the WTC, would be a too-painful reminder. I think all the inflammatory rhetoric about religious rights and the constitution surrounding this debate is off-target. It misses the point and confuses the issue, which is to move toward healing and tolerance, not toward yet another divisive issue