Terrorism in the liberal mind

The opening of a recent New York Times opinion piece about Fort Hood was alluring, I must admit, but it didn't take long to discover what the writer, Robert Wright, is really trying to say. After admitting that two conservative columnists were right in saying the root cause was Islamic terrorism, Wright makes his coup de grace:

The good news for Mr. Krauthammer and Mr. Goldberg is that there is truth in their indictment. The bad news is that their case against the left-wing news media is the case against right-wing foreign policy. Seeing the Fort Hood shooting as an act of Islamist terrorism is the first step toward seeing how misguided a hawkish approach to fighting terrorism has been.

This denial of reality is as tired as "broad strata" and "tiny minority". I mentioned this strange liberal notion as far back as February 2007, when I wrote:

According to liberals, U.S. foreign policy assumed human form and piloted airliners into the World Trade Center. It's not clear why the ghostlike apparitions spoke Arabic.

Why O why do liberals want to blame themselves (us) when other people misbehave? Everything is our fault, they believe. This truly is psychotic. Wright is saying, essentially, "Fine, maybe it was an act of terrorism, but it's still our fault." Think about that.

More wrong from Wright:

The American right and left reacted to 9/11 differently. Their respective responses were, to oversimplify a bit: “kill the terrorists” and “kill the terrorism meme.”

That's incorrect. The right got angry and wanted to fight back, while the left became sad and tried to blame almost everyone other than the perpetrators.

Wright put even more distance between the Fort Hood terrorist and his motives by saying "Major Hasan got more radicalized by two American wars."

But why stop there? Why not drum up sympathy for all Muslims:

Any religious or ethnic group includes people like that, and the post-9/11 environment hasn’t made it easier for American Muslims to keep their balance.

Keep their balance? Compare how they're keeping their balance to the way German Americans kept their balance during World War II. When the Bund, a pro-Nazi group of German Americans, were marching in the streets in U.S. cities with picket signs and cheers supporting Adolf Hitler, the rest of the German Americans held counter marches putting down the Bund, Nazis, and Hitler. The message was crystal clear: "We are the majority of Germans living in the U.S., and we do not agree with what these radicals are doing. Shame on them."

What did we get from these "embattled" American Muslims after 9/11? Carefully worded statements on anemic websites, giving us their official view that terrorism is not supported. There's one word to describe this kind of behavior: unconvincing.

Liberals are good at reaching for answers in the clouds, so I'll give one of my own: liberal hypertolerance murdered the people at Fort Hood. We knew very well that Hasan was a radical Muslim filled with hatred, yet he was allowed to continue serving in the military. Why? Probably because people were afraid to point the finger at a Muslim because the liberal media would have a field day with it, bringing out labels like "xenophobia" and "racism" and "bigotry".

Remember what happened with the case of the flying imams? The Muslims making a trial run received a settlement two weeks ago. See what happens when you speak out? You hand a purse of gold to scumbags.

Liberals like Mr. Wright only need to open their eyes and look around to see what's actually happening. Here's a USA Today headline: "Another Minn. man faces terror charges in Somali case." The liberal press has been baffled by this for months on end. How could lovable immigrants from Minneapolis ("broad strata") simply disappear, only to reappear in a Muslim land and commit mass murder in the name of Islam? A real headscratcher, that.

From the story:

Omer Abdi Mohamed, 24, was arraigned today on charges of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, of providing material support to terrorists and of conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure. His lawyer said he had been under investigation for several months.

Little Omer wasn't a psychiatrist, so I guess the liberals can't try "vicarious trauma" with him. Something else, perhaps, to avoid facing the truth?

Here's from Minnesota Public Radio:

Wold [defendant's attorney] was referring to the climate in late 2007 in Somali communities around the globe, including the Twin Cities, during the Ethiopian occupation of Somalia. Friends of the missing American fighters have said that the young men wanted to defend their homeland. But the hard-line Islamic group they allegedly joined, al-Shabaab, has continued down a violent path even after the Ethiopian soldiers pulled out of the country this year.

Ah, the Ethiopian occupation of Somalia. It will be difficult for liberals to blame American foreign policy for this one. Libbies could put their ideas into a rock polisher and still not have enough spin to affix the blame to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Sarah Palin, all conservatives, or those dreaded Christians.

And that brings us right up to the Guantanamo detainees going on trial in New York -- a colossal blunder for Obama. First, a few facts: the folks at Gitmo are enemy combatants, captured during a war. Therefore they are not entitled to our civilian court system. Also, they were not in uniform as part of an army representing a nation state, so they're not entitled to the rights of a POW. President Bush gave them POW rights, though he wasn't required to. Ordinarily, one of two things happen to people in this strange category: military trial and/or hanging.

With all of the above information in mind, listen to what Anthony Romero, head of the ACLU, thinks, from his opinion piece at USA Today:

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision last week to prosecute five 9/11 defendants in federal court is the only option for delivering trustworthy and legitimate outcomes consistent with our values. Any other path would mean abandoning our commitment to the Constitution and bending our principles for the sake of expediency.

Straight off, it wasn't Holder's decision, and everyone knows it. And it's tough to believe the head of the ACLU thinks the detainees belong in court.

More from Romero:

It is time to get serious about upholding the law. If our government has evidence against detainees, it should do what it has always done before — go into a courtroom and prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. America is certainly up to that task.

No, this is never done when we're at war. Remember Lincoln and FDR? Apparently Romero has never heard of them. Or what's more likely, Romero denies we're at war, even after 9/11 and having hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting, in two different theaters of war, for many years now. Romero is astonishing.

This is not an act of war, according to liberals like Romero:

When Islamic terrorists flew jets into skyscrapers, liberals blamed conservative foreign policy. Robert Wright from the New York Times said it himself:

The good news for Mr. Krauthammer and Mr. Goldberg is that there is truth in their indictment. The bad news is that their case against the left-wing news media is the case against right-wing foreign policy. Seeing the Fort Hood shooting as an act of Islamist terrorism is the first step toward seeing how misguided a hawkish approach to fighting terrorism has been.

So what did Muslims think of liberal foreign policy? One that's dovish, inclusive, and tolerant?