It's All Right There

Glenn Greenwald, Ross Douthat, South Park

Glenn Greenwald rightfully skewers Ross Douthat's outrage at the censorship of the South Park caricatures of Mohammed, noting that Douthat's claim that Muslims get special deference is ludicrous. Go read that column for more.

But I noticed two things at the end of this column that Greenwald didn't address.  Here's Douthat:

This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that “bravely” trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.

He's speaking here of our supposed deference to Islam, but as a description of what conservatives like him have done to the Constitution in response to the so-called Muslim threat is much worse. Comedy Central pulled a few seconds out of a cartoon; conservatives have exploited the fear to justify invasion, mass killings, torture and an absolute shredding of the Bill of Rights.

Happily, today’s would-be totalitarians are probably too marginal to take full advantage. This isn’t Weimar Germany, and Islam’s radical fringe is still a fringe, rather than an existential enemy.

No, today's totalitarians are on the right wing, as usual, and they have taken full advantage. This isn't Weimar Germany, another famous right wing republic; it's the Neo-Con era, and for Muslims, the difference probably doesn't seem too great.

For that, we should be grateful. Because if a violent fringe is capable of inspiring so much cowardice and self-censorship, it suggests that there’s enough rot in our institutions that a stronger foe might be able to bring them crashing down.

It's already been sent crashing. And his movement is the one that did it.

It's the Killing, Stupid

From Juan Cole, via Glenn Greenwald:

In 1996, Israeli jets bombed a UN building where civilians had taken refuge at Cana/ Qana in south Lebanon, killing 102 persons; in the place where Jesus is said to have made water into wine, Israeli bombs wrought a different sort of transformation. In the distant, picturesque port of Hamburg, a young graduate student studying traditional architecture of Aleppo saw footage like this on the news [graphic]. He was consumed with anguish and the desire for revenge. As soon as operation Grapes of Wrath had begun the week before, he had written out a martyrdom will, indicating his willingness to die avenging the victims, killed in that operation--with airplanes and bombs that were a free gift from the United States. His name was Muhammad Atta. Five years later he piloted American Airlines 11 into the World Trade Center. (Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 307: "On April 11, 1996, when Atta was twenty-seven years old, he signed a standardized will he got from the al-Quds mosque.l It was the day Israel attacked Lebanon in Operation grapes of Wrath. According to one of his friends, Atta was enraged,and by filling out his last testamentd during the attack he was offering his life in response." ).

On Tuesday, the Israeli military shelled a United Nations school to which terrified Gazans had fled for refuge, killing at least 42 persons and wounding 55, virtually all of them civilians, and many of them children. The Palestinian death toll rose to 660.

You wonder if someone somewhere is writing out a will today

.

Read the Greenwald post which is linked above for more.

Bottom line: if you think the Muslim world detests America because of our movies and our decadent way of life, then you really need to change your general frame of reference. Ask yourself if that makes any sense.

Maybe, just maybe, it's because we invade, bomb, kill, imprison, and generally wreak total havoc and destruction on Muslims all over the world. If someone in the government starting talking about America's War on Islam, would many of us even notice the slip?