David Brooks gets it right about the Qur'an toilet murders in, of all places, the New York Times (thanks to Jacques):
We're in the middle of an ideological war against people who want to destroy us, and what have the most powerful people on earth become? Whining media bashers. They're attacking Newsweek while bending over backward to show sensitivity to the Afghans who just went on a murderous rampage.Talk about the bigotry of low expectations.
Maybe we should all focus on what's important. Newsweek's little item was seized and exploited by America's enemies in a way that was characteristically cynical, delusional and fascistic.
The people who seized upon this item, like the radical clerics in Afghanistan, are cynical in the way they manipulate episodes like this to whip up hatred and so magnify their own standing.
At the same time, they believe everything that could be alleged about America - and more. They've spent so many years inhabiting a delusional mental landscape filled with conspiracy theories and paranoia that you could drill deep into their minds without ever touching reality.
Finally, they are strategically ruthless. Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker, who has spent years reporting on extremists, says they use manufactured spasms of hatred to desensitize their followers. After followers spend a few years living through rabid riots and vicious sermons, killing an American or a Jew or even a fellow Muslim seems no more consequential than killing a mosquito. That's how suicide bombers are made.
The rioters are the real enemy, not Newsweek and not the American soldiers serving as prison guards. Just to restore some proper perspective, let me quote a snippet from a sermon delivered by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris, which ran last weekend on the Palestinian Authority's official TV station:
"The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world - except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquillity under our rule because they are treacherous by nature, as they have been throughout history. The day will come when everything will be relieved of the Jews - even the stones and trees which were harmed by them. Listen to the Prophet Muhammad, who tells you about the evil end that awaits Jews. The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew."
These are the extremists, the real enemy. Let's keep our eye on the ball.
Now if Brooks would acknowledge the fact that what Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris was referring to was a well-attested hadith that appears several times in Bukhari and Muslim, the hadith collections considered most reliable by Muslims, and discuss soberly and honestly the implications of that fact, we might really be getting somewhere.
...they use manufactured Allahspasms of hatred...
My goodness, a Brooks got it, almost. And he even employed a wonderous, insightful, truly astounding technique, the foundation, more or less, of Spencer's work on Jihad, a technique for which Spencer has been cursed, alienated, hated, insulted, and marginalized: quotation.
Brook’s NYT editorial excuses Newsweek’s liability for printing the lies about the US military guards disrespecting the koran. He also does a cheap underhanded slap at the Administrations foreign policies.
Fact is Newsweek (with approval of Mike Isikoff) gave the extremists more fuel to use against us. Why would they do that? Why doesn’t Newsweek, NYT, etc print positive stories about the military? This is nothing but liberals covering liberals. Blaming the riots on muslims is a half-truth which is the best you can ever get from a liberal.
Don’t think for a minute that this is the last story about “abuses” of prisoners. Look for more liberal newspapers and magazines to print similar stories after they go and interview as many released prisoners as they can. Can you imagine the lies those ex-prisoners are going to tell and the liberal press will be all too happy to print it.
More riots are on the way, they are already planned and the liberal press will give them all the excuse they need.
David Brooks deserves a medal, but what he'll get is a pink slip.
Doesn't Thomas Friedman work for the Times? He continually plays Hamas like Galloway played Coleman the other day (it wasn't pretty.) In other words, he walks all over them.
Yes, indeed, the Islamists are our enemies.
However, journalism must practice responsibility and journalists should show at least a modicum of common sense. Getting the scoop and getting story out is not more important than people's lives or the reputation and security of our country.
Perhaps some journalists don't realize what they are doing. Someone should take them out and apply a swift kick the backside and two-by-four between the eyes to get their attention. Muleheaded-stupidity during a time of war is dangerous to us all.
Tom Friedman the other day in the New York Times lamented the murder culture of the suicide bombers in Iraq -- but ended his article by stating that the suicide bombers were deviating from the "mercy" stipulated in the Koran.
No one in the orthodox news media -- including David Brooks as Spencer implies -- has the balls to even raise the question of whether the hideous barbarism of jihadists is a deviation, or a DERIVATION, from the Koran.
Maybe what we are seeing is that after the Newsweek retraction and criticism, people are left with the accurate impression that it is Radical Islam, after all, that we are at war with.
sparrow,
You might not realize that the most accurate meaning of "radical" means "going back to the founding roots". In that sense, yes, we are at war with "radical Islam" -- the Islam that began at the roots, with the Prophet Mohammed.
The West has always been at war with that radical Islam, from the very beginning. Islam only receded from its aggressive jihadism by the 17th century, when the West's spectacular and for the most part beneficent rise to global superiority eclipsed Islam and forced them to geographically retreat and become turned in upon themselves to nourish in their self-enclosed casbah-ghettoes a perhaps even more twisted and pathological culture strangely mixing wicked corruption with puritanical fanaticism than heretofore.
As Cross noted- the NYT writer got it only half right.
Newsweek was used like a cheap hooker by the Muslim fanatics, but Newsweek supplied them with the 'goods' that these nutjobs exploited for a Muslim propaganda gangbang.
Blaming the users of a "flush the Koran down the Gitmo toilet" scoop (whether it was true or not is immaterial to them) for 'being crazy' is no absolution for the callous, historically-myopic and venal Newsweek journalism.
We know the Muslim extremists are insane.
What was Newsweek's excuse?
Other than undermining their own country.
Robert, the Times' columnist in question was David Brooks, their token conservative.
Errr.... is it only my impression that, if it had not been a matter of defending a fellow MSM member caught red-handed publishing crap, the New Jack Dimes would never in a million years have even thought of suggesting that we are at war with Islam and that there is something wrong with the religion? Token conservative or not? Remember, the MSM are currently under severe pressure and are circling wagons. If they have to discard their Muslim allies to defend themselves (even - especially - if they are in the wrong), brother, they won't hesitate a second to do so.