the war & the new york times...

Submitted by d levy (Canada), Nov 25, 2009 at 20:27

daniel: a metaphor from north of the border...imagine this: americans are in europe fighting and dying in the war to defeat the nazis...in virtually every major town in america, there is a nazi recruiting centre... anyone daring to utter a public denunciation of nazi mass murder policy and practice is labeled a naziphobe on the editorial page of the new york times...pro-nazi rallies take place on the campuses of the leading universities...nazis elected to congress may swear allegiance with a hand placed on mein kampf...the death toll in the war rises with each passing day...the new president says it's okay to show the flag-draped coffins on tv...a military shrink with proven nazi leanings enters an army facility and murders a dozen soldiers and wounds others...the president goes on tv to urge the nation not to jump to conclusions...etc...d.levy, montreal...

the new york times weighs in...

As Major Hasan got more radicalized by two American wars and God knows what else, the Internet made it easy to reconnect via e-mail. The Fort Hood shooting, then, is an example of Islamist terrorism being spread partly by the war on terrorism-or, actually, by two wars on terrorism, in Iraq and Afghanistan . And Fort Hood is the biggest data point we have-the most lethal Islamist terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. It's only one piece of evidence, but it's a salient piece, and it supports the liberal, not the conservative, war-on-terrorism paradigm....Contrary to right-wing stereotype, Islam isn't an intrinsically belligerent religion. Still, this sort of stereotyping won't go away, and it's among the factors that could make homegrown terrorism a slowly growing epidemic. The more Americans denigrate Islam and view Muslims in the workplace with suspicion, the more likely the virus is to spread-and each appearance of the virus in turn tempts more people to denigrate Islam and view Muslims with suspicion. Whenever you have a positive feedback system like this, an isolated incident can put you on a slippery slope...." -- Senior New America Foundation fellow Robin Wright, blaming the United States for the alleged murder of thirteen people at Fort Hood by Maj. Hasan. (New York Times, November 22)

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