Robert Dreyfuss’ piece also ran in The Guardian and elsewhere. And that stands to reason, since Dreyfuss summed up the common line of thinking held by the likes of Mayor Bloomberg of New York City and MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer: Muslims are non-white, non-Western, and non-Christian, and hence are always victims. Reality seldom fits this narrative, but that seems to lead those who hold it only to cling to it all the more tenaciously, and to do their best to tailor the facts to fit that narrative.
“A Connecticut Taliban in Bloomberg’s Court?,” by Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation, May 3:
It may be that the Pakistan-based Taliban, the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has quietly established a Connecticut franchise while we weren’t looking. That’s possible. But it seems far more likely to me that the perpetrator of the bungled Times Square bomb plot was either a lone wolf or a member of some squirrely branch of the Tea Party, anti-government far right. Which actually exists in Connecticut, where, it seems, the car’s licence plates were stolen. […]
Sensible analysts of the event point out, convincingly, that no branch of the Taliban, whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan, has demonstrated either the intention or the capability of striking in such as fashion. And the fact that the suspect, videotaped, is a white male in his 40s, hasn’t deterred our vast team of terrorism talking heads from describing the operation as part of the jihad. Of course, it could be that some offshoot of the jihadist movement recruited a white bread American to do its bidding, and it could be that the man shown in the videotape is not the culprit at all.
But, as in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, when self-appointed experts blamed Muslims only to find out that it was a Gulf war veteran named Tim who did it, there has once again been an unseemly rush to judgment.
The Wall Street Journal is already editorialising in favour of stepped up racial profiling to catch evil doers, even though – in this case – such profiling would have more profitably sought out the editors of the Journal, who are mostly white men in their 40s…
Did Dreyfuss retract all this politically correct twaddle, and apologize? Why, of course not. Cornered into admitting that the perpetrator was indeed a jihadist, he takes refuge in Faisal Shahzad’s apparent incompetence. Hope your luck holds on that score, Dreyfuss.