Powell speaks out on the mosque:
Gen. Colin Powell, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state under President George W. Bush, said Thursday that the Islamic community center and mosque planned near Ground Zero in New York City should go forward. Powell made his comments during an appearance on ABC’s “The View.”
“The terrorists win if we become terrified and . . . change who we are and what we are,” Powell said, as he argued that it is crucial for Americans to remain true to the values that set the country apart from the rest of the world.
While I agree we should not interfere with people building whatever the hell they want wherever they want it, I’m kind of tired of the “The terrorists win” nonsense. I know I’ve used it in the past, but I’m just tired of it. Every time I hear it uttered it reminds me of “for the children.”
How about we just stop giving a shit what the terrorists think and what they consider a win, and just do our own damned thing and carry on our traditions like we always have? I’m tired of having to think about the implications of my behaviors in regards to lunatics, whether they be teahadists at home or jihadists abroad.
Omnes Omnibus
Do it for the children or the terrorists win. It’s a twofer.
demkat620
I’m tired of all of it. The next two years are going to be such a right wing circus freak out.
Peak wingnut anyone?
Spaghetti Lee
For those of you who haven’t gotten the news, the crazy Florida preacher has decided to not burn Korans.
tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/jones_agrees_not_to_burn_korans_claim_nyc_imam_has.php?re…
I will note, however, that the disingenuous little assmite is lying even now, about some “promise” that was most likely never made, and will almost certainly resurface as a right-wing meme showing how shifty them Muzzies are.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Because our traditions involve interpreting the Bible to ensure that white, Christian men stay in power and don’t get their feelings hurt.
Powell is definitely validating that he is a conservative, but the only way the baggers will disregard this is if he’s black. Oh, wait…
Zandar
Moot point.
Park51’s getting moved anyway apparently.
And the false equivalence of this idiot burning Qurans being compared to Park51 is now forever enshrined in the annals of EPIC FAIL.
Sentient Puddle
@Zandar:
Uh…if the source for this is Jones, then no. This isn’t true. Barring some developments we’re missing at the moment, he just made that up.
Jamie
well, true the terrorists won when we invaded Iraq due to our own ignorance and paranoid delusion. The Ground zero Mosque is just them running up the score.
maus
UnAmerican. The only time we can blunder on ahead and act independently is while at war.
BGinCHI
Can we please, please refer to the likes of Terry Jones from now on as:
Radical Christians
or
Radical Christian Clerics
“Puritans” is probably too much to hope for.
Zandar
I sure hope to FSM this idiot is full of crap.
Oh wait. He is.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Zandar: The article said that the Imam didn’t agree to anything. I think the dickhead is trying to come up with an excuse that he hopes no one will check on.
BTW, I don’t know why no one thought to challenge Jones this way: Have him pile some Qurans and pray to God to burn them if He hates Islam so much. It was done in the Old Testament.
licensed to kill time
Heh. I thought this would be about that other Angle.
Kryptik
To be fair, John, this really does seem like one of the cases where the phrase is appropriate, perhaps the only one left these days. I mean…the very fact that we’re jumping at shadows and about to eat ourselves alive is probably the biggest win for the sort of radicals we’re so fervent against. Al Qaida beat us by letting us beat ourselves, and we’re seeing the fruits of it now.
And as for those traditions, what makes you think this hysteria hasn’t warped them as well?
Todd
@Zandar: I’m confused, your link clearly says:
I’m confused and you’re snarky, or you’re confused…
Bob L
So the fake magic men agreed to respect each others woo-in-the-sky beliefs. No fake magical books will be burned, no fake magic house built in any sacred retail stores. Well that is a relief.
Hopefully no one will have to die over this nonsense.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: The Puritans valued education and intelligence. They would be appalled at being associated with this idiot.
Ash Can
Sadly, not giving a shit is what got us into trouble in the first place.
LT
If you threw a shoe at a Quran would they’d cancel each other out?
Dave Weeden
Indeed. Well said, John. Do our own thing: success is the best revenge. Not only refuse to be intimidated, but refuse to even care.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Cole, you magnificent bastard.
Zandar
@Todd:
or they updated the article. It’s Reuters, they do that.
Thank goodness.
DonkeyKong
John, if you get tired of that phrase, the terrorists win. The phrase itself produces little invisible fairies that keep us safe. Safe from having to do anything other than repeating to phrase.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus:
I know, I know. But it would be fun to call the teatards that.
The connection is there though: a rigid faith determines how you educate, what you study, what sorts of interpretations are allowed, and so on.
Religious fundamentalism is amazingly consistent over time.
LT
What, attack Iraq again?
arguingwithsignposts
A few days ago, the guy who did the real estate deal for Park51 was quoted in the Times saying that you can’t just up and move a development in lower manhattan, so the story is dubious.
arguingwithsignposts
@LT:
{golf clap}
burnspbesq
@Bob L:
Yes. They have shone tolerance of which you are apparently incapable.
Dave L
As John Stewart put it a couple of weeks ago, how about we just STOP CARING what foreigners might think, and just do the right thing because that’s what our laws and traditions tell us to do?
Mnemosyne
The funny part is, that’s pretty much the exact argument in favor of the Danish Muhammed cartoons that’s going on in the thread below: “If we don’t publish these cartoons that Muslims might find offensive, then the terrorists win!”
One or two people seemed to have a vague realization that it was a ginned-up controversy that some repressive Muslim countries used to draw their citizens’ attention away from how much they’re being oppressed (“See! If you move to Denmark they’re just going to be assholes to you anyway! May as well stay here in Egypt.”) but a whole lot of people actually seem to think it had something to do with Islam, the religion, and nothing to do with Danish racism or Egyptian repressiveness.
(Edited for clarity. So sue me.)
LT
The shone tolerance. Hey! You can catch a book on fire with tolerance that bright!
bago
Needs more of the CounterStrinke “Terrorists Win!” sample.
Southern Beale
Too late. A crazy Tennessee preacher has decided to do it for him.
Honest to God I am so sick of the discourse in this country I could puke.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: I get where you are coming from, but I still have qualms. The Puritans, because they valued education and intelligence, evolved and liberalized. John Winthrop led to John and Sam Adams. I see no likelihood that teatards will do that. Sarah Palin and Terry Jones couldn’t reason their way out of a wet paper bag. They seem to revel in their ignorance. Comparing them really is insulting to the Puritans.
Violet
Terrorists are only terrorists if we let them terrify us. If we point and laugh or roll our eyes or get on with our business then they aren’t terrorists because they have failed to terrify us.
They only win if we act as the teabaggers typically act: afraid.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.
LT
@Mnemosyne: Edited? Do you still have the edit function?
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Have you read The Wordy Shipmates? It really is a fascinating (and entertaining) look at how fighting among the various Puritan factions led to us having freedom of religion enshrined in the Constitution.
cleek
let him burn his Korans. let them build their Islamic cultural center.
let the other countries freak out. fuck them.
America’s a fucked-up lunatic country. so let’s not kid ourselves about that fact; the rest of the world already knows it anyway.
Mnemosyne
@LT:
I do, but I’m on a Mac (with Firefox) so I rule you all. ;-) I almost never see any of the problems that other people (aka Windows users) complain about.
LT
@Violet:
Um, except of you’re in a building a 747 just drove into. Or standing next to one. Or running into one to help people. Or if you had a family member there. Or…
Southern Beale
Yes but for some reason the Teabaggers GET ALL OF THE FUCKING ATTENTION whereas the sane people of America are ignored. Jesus Christ on a Cracker but how is it possible some wacko with 50 followers can make so much noise that fucking Gen. Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and PRESIDENT OBAMA needs to address him over the mass media? How is that fucking possible!!????
BRICK —–> MY HEAD ——-> POUND POUND POUND POUND
I need an IV of chardonnay STET
spudvol
Who will think of the terrorists’ children?
LT
@LT: Well fuck fire. I’m on a Mac using Safari and used to get the edit function but haven’t in months. I thought it was killed for some reason. Now I feel left out and laughed at. It’s high school all over. I’m gonna go masturbate on a kitten.
Martin
I think Colin is confused between what we are and what we ought to be. Unfortunately, stupid, racist, backwater douchebags is who we are.
Mnemosyne
@LT:
That made sense on 9/11/01. Heck, it even made sense on 10/11/01.
Why does it make sense to still be constantly terrified almost a decade afterward? After most traumatic events, if you’re still nonfunctional after six months, they tell you to get PTSD treatment. Why is permanent PTSD okay when it comes to 9/11?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Yes, I loved it. The concept of Roger Williams being kicked out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony because he was too intense for the Puritans, pure awesome.
Southern Beale
Umm …… yeah. OK. Won’t touch that.
arguingwithsignposts
@Mnemosyne:
Was going to mention the Wordy Shipmates. Recently finished it. Really good. highly recommended, and really explains A LOT about our country.
ETA: Also the factionalism was interesting. I had never known there were two “waves” of pilgrims with diff. viewpoints. And that whole freedom of religion thing used to be (and still is with some) a Baptist central principle until the Southern Baptists wanted to keep their slaves.
jinxtigr
Those that we are aware of, anyway :)
LT
@Mnemosyne: Well, yes, okay. I thought the point had to be made that not everyone can just laugh at terrorists. Or should.
Steve
I was at Waterloo Station in London. I couldn’t find a goddamn trashcan to throw out my candy wrapper. Suddenly, it occurred to me that the IRA used to put bombs in trashcans, so now there are no trashcans.
Now that’s letting the terrorists win.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus:
I was initially referring to English Puritans (so-called). It all depends when and who you’re talking about with that catch-all word.
And I take your points about the American versions.
Still and all, Puritans and Radical or Conservative Christians can be a severely dogmatic bunch. Agreed that this latest installment is mostly just really, really stupid.
Nom de Plume
How about we just stop giving a shit what the terrorists think
I was just thinking this very thing in response to that cute little game of religious blackmail going on in Florida.
“Move your mosque or we’ll burn your books!”.
“Oh yeah? If you burn our books, there’s gon’ be some violence!”.
Fuck these assholes. All of them. Take your implied threats and shove them up your fucking asses.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m usually anti-audiobook, but I listened to the whole thing and loved it. She got some of her friends to do the voices, but fortunately her friends are people like Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and Peter Dinklage.
arguingwithsignposts
@Steve:
Used to work with a guy who was a former RAF member who worked in counterterrorism. They took that shit very seriously. Of course, people were getting blown up pretty regularly in their backyard, so that tends to make people a bit more skittish.
Quaker in a Basement
Hey, I understand the inclination to turn one of the wingnuts favorite arguments upside down. After listening to pro-war conservatives scold us that “the terrorists win” if we fail to support government decisions unconditionally, it’s satisfying to flip the argument right back on ’em.
The only trouble is, it’s false when they use it and false when we use it too.
The rest of what Powell says, though, lines up nicely with what Br. Cole suggests. It’s not about them, it’s about us. Who do WE want to be and what’s the right way to be it?
arguingwithsignposts
@Mnemosyne:
Oooh, i may have to get that audiobook. I have her two other books on audiobook. Her and David Sedaris are worth the listen on audiobook. Also, Stewart’s America is great as an audiobook.
Mnemosyne
@LT:
If Jewish WWII vet Mel Brooks (born Melvin Kaminsky) can write “Springtime for Hitler,” then anyone can (and should) be able to laugh at anything, at least after a few years have passed.
arguingwithsignposts
@Mnemosyne:
Because it wins some elections for some politicians. Duh.
singfoom
The problem here is that the damage has already been done. We’ve already super sized our surveillance state so we can make sure we’re not going to attack ourselves.
We’ve already pissed off the majority of the Muslim world by attacking Iraq when they had nothing to do with 9/11. We’ve pissed off the moderates among the Muslim world with our extremists who preach hate of Islam as one of their so-called values and oppose building mosques anywhere and our idiot media that puts demagogues on and treats them like they’re rational people with reasonable points of view.
The only ones blameless in this are the organizers of the Park 51 Islamic Community Center. The radical preacher is a dick but he’s right in that it’s within his rights to burn all the Korans he wants. So he’s not going to do it now, because it’s a bad idea.
At the same time, it’s pretty asinine to riot and be violent just because someone did something to a book.
I don’t think the terrorists have won. I think the extremists on both sides have won because all we do is pay attention to what they do, like 5 year olds having a tantrum in the store.
I respect the rights of all people of faith to worship how they wish, with the understanding that they’ll offer the same respect to those have different faith or those like me who have no faith at all. I just wish they’d stop fucking shit up for the rest of us. And that goes for all the major religions…except the Church of the SubGenius. Those guys are just amusing.
BGinCHI
Can’t we agree that if we just burned Frank Luntz it would solve everything?
The art of the possible….
debbie
@ Violet:
If you saw the movie Bowling for Columbine, maybe you’ll remember that animation which demonstrated how the entire history of the United States was grounded in fear. If you’re counting on Americans casting aside their fears and getting on with much of anything, I have a feeling you’re going to be very, very disappointed.
eemom
The only one ever to talk sense about terrorists is TBogg, when he said
Ain’t got the linky. So sue me too.
Martin
@LT:
High school. ur doin it rong
Mnemosyne
@BGinCHI:
That’s what’s so fascinating about The Wordy Shipmates — because the Puritans came from an intellectual tradition where you were supposed to read the Bible and then think about it, they started diverging even from one another pretty quickly as everyone came to their own conclusions all based on the exact same book.
I would say that was the big cultural advance of Protestantism over Catholicism — encouraging people to read the Bible for themselves and decide what it meant without the intervention of a priest telling you what it meant.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Some people have all the luck.
debbie
LT, you may want to check your preferences and make sure javascript is enabled.
arguingwithsignposts
@singfoom:
The flip-side of freedom of practice is tolerance of other practices. And, it’s helpful to recall that the people who are doing the rioting and violence are not in areas where there is a First Amendment.
I was going to mention the name of She of the IQ/g determinism, but thought better of it.
arguingwithsignposts
@BGinCHI:
co-sign, but sadly I’m sure there’s another mini-Luntz waiting in the wings.
singfoom
@arguingwithsignposts:
That’s a good point. I understand that the violence and rioting would be happening in a place without the first amendment, but regardless of the laws in place in a specific land, being violent and angry because someone burned a book/icon/Elvis effigy is just plain stupid.
Of course, in many of those lands, I’d probably have violence visited upon me for not believing in any god.
It still doesn’t change the fact that the conversation (in a worldwide sense) is driven by the 5 year olds and not the adults. And at least to me, it seems to have been getting worse over time.
arguingwithsignposts
@Mnemosyne:
Priesthood of All Believers, bitchez!
Sadly, it has also proven to be protestantism’s achilles heel (examples too numerous to mention).
BGinCHI
@Mnemosyne:
OK, fair warning, academic discourse ahead.
You want to read a GREAT book about this, that cuts to the heart of how religious fundamentalism works, please read James Simpson’s Burning to Read:
hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674046122
It’s an account of how early English Protestants found that allowing bible reading didn’t work out so well in its early incarnations. The clerics then tried to keep people from reading and making up their own minds. The version of Puritanism/Protestantism to which you’re referring happens later.
Fascinating subject.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: In addition, the church structure was non-hierarchical. Each congregation chose its own ministers who had spiritual authority. Some, like the Mathers, achieved fame and wide influence, but to a large extent, they wielded influence not power. This also helped lead to divergence of views. Even those with heretical views were reasoned with, in an intellectual sense, to bring them back on the correct path. They were an interesting group.
LT
@debbie: Deb, I’m Java enabled.
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus:
Many churches still have that structure (esp. in Baptist tradition). It is both blessing and curse, same as Priesthood of All Believers.
debbie
LT, you need to check both Java enabled and JavaScript enabled.
LT
I’m in Firefox to see if I see the edit thing.
Well hell. Here it is.
In case you admins don’t know, I can’t see the edit function in Safari, but can in Firefox.
LT
Deb, they’re both enabled. In my Safari preferences.
Mnemosyne
@BGinCHI:
It sounds interesting, but did the summary leave out John Calvin or does the author take a totally different approach? The summary’s definition of “Lutheranism” sounds an awful lot like the teachings of Calvin, not Luther.
By bringing in More I hope that means he discusses Catholic fundamentalism as well as Protestant since the religious wars in Europe were all about Team Luther vs. Team Pope.
(One of my history hobbies is Tudor England, and it’s interesting to see how Henry VIII’s marital problems had a whole lot to do with Lutheranism and Protestantism. Anne Boleyn was considered a Protestant martyr in many circles, and Catherine Parr, his sixth wife, nearly lost her head specifically for arguing theology with the king — worse, she often won.)
LT
Trying again. (Sorry to put so many posts up. I’ll delete this if I can.)
Restrung
why’s b-j updating automatically on comment pages? Not to give me the latest comments, apparently. hmm.
edit: edit still works for me. Chrome on Gnome, biches!
Corner Stone
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: I read your book! I READ YOUR BOOK!!
fasteddie9318
@burnspbesq:
How is dismissing all religions as phoney hooey any more intolerant than any one religion dismissing all other religions as phoney hooey, which is what the three monotheistic faiths do as a matter of doctrine? Ridiculing something isn’t being intolerant of it; I think people who wear baggy pants with half their boxers sticking out the top look like dipshits, but I’m OK with them doing it. Similarly I think worshiping the Man in the Sky is silly, but it’s fine by me if you want to do it. You can tolerate me not having a high opinion of your religion, can’t you?
Corner Stone
@LT:
Like the Simpson’s Halloween special where all the bad Advertising spokespeople thingies came to life and terrified the town.
The anti-dote was the catchy, “Just don’t look. Just don’t look.”
And when they ignored them, they all fell over teh dead.
bleh
But … but … the terrorists win if we forget to say “the terrorists win if…”
Restrung
@Restrung:
Found it. It’s so the ad before the comments section can rotate between where I bought my fridge and where I have my car serviced. Not evil, thank goodness. (poor Denny Hecker! Bye!)
GregB
WWBDD?
What would Bob Dobbs do?
maus
@Corner Stone: I think the same of the Phelps clan/Westboro Baptist Church.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Spaghetti Lee:
I still think we should drop him and his 50 parishioners in a neutral zone like, say, -Gaza- Lebanon and have them exhibit the courage of their convictions. Jesus would want them to go head to head with Mohammed’s followers. Me too.
Restrung
No shit! I’ll extend that to what shitwits everywhere (and even the (not at all) liberal MPR guy on Midday) will say any time Barack Obama says anything. Why do I worry about that? freekin’ tired of it.
Restrung
@bleh: too meta! like it, tho… somehow.
scav
I’m still thinking if anyone burns any Korans we should put them out with urine from Piss Jesuses . . .
Martin Gifford
@singfoom:
This.
BGinCHI
@Mnemosyne:
A must read novel is Q, by Luther Blissett.
Here:
amazon.com/Q-Luther-Blissett/dp/0156031965/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284076883&…
Great novel on the Continental religious wars in the early 16th C.
Violet
@LT:
If you’re in the building or standing next to it or running into it, when a 747 hits it, you’re probably dead. So you’re no longer going to be feeling much of anything.
If you had a family member there, then you probably have experienced a whole bunch of emotions, from disbelief to sadness to anger and, hopefully, right on through to acceptance. Does that mean you don’t still have strong feelings about people who are like the people who killed your loved one? No, probably not. But does it mean you should cower in fear and see terrorists behind every tree? No, it doesn’t. And if you still are feeling that way, then you might be suffering from PTSD and a little therapy and other help might be beneficial.
I don’t mean to be callous. What happened was awful and we should be vigilant to keep things like that from happening again. But the tradeoff between giving up our national values so that we can perpetuate security theater in the false hope of keeping us completely safe from terrorists is the wrong way to go. Living in fear is being terrified…just like the terrorists are hoping.
Redshirt
What a great thread – so many interesting and profound posts!
Fear IS the mind killer, and that’s why the evil “powers that be” constantly use it for their advantage over the easily influenced. Keep people afraid, and they’ll eventually believe, and do, just about anything. Cognitive dissonance melts in the face of fear.
Now that this Florida troll has shown what can be done, I assume we will now see a legion other trolls copycatting his tactics. So, pretty soon we’ll have numerous koran burning incidents all over America, which of course will be aired in Muslim countries and they’ll get all pissed and start burning flags, which in turn will cause more Teatards to burn korans, and so on.
Should be fun!
If I was Mod(God) of this blog we call the World, I’d start banning trolls, stat.
CynDee
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: What you said.
And another thing — After learning that he lied to the U.N., not to mention the citizens, soldiers, and taxpayers who would go into harm’s way, I have believed that Colin Powell should NOT be making any public comments of any kind.
There is punishment for lying about a love affair romp in this country, but no accountability whatever for lying that gets people killed, maimed, and permanently impoverished.
Colin is “sorry” ??? A fine example of lack of honor in a U.S. general. A sorry specimen who ruins lives forever and gets away with it. He should be brought up on charges, as should the others who seem to have committed war crimes. Rotten creeps.
Colin enjoys a nice comfortable government retirement while the civilians of the U.S. and Iraq have lost loved ones, homes, health, and prosperity. And that is no exaggeration.
Mnemosyne
@BGinCHI:
First I have to plow my way through Wolf Hall. I am not joking when I say I bought a Kindle partly to read this book and Nixonland, both of which are so big and heavy that it actually hurts my wrists to read a paper copy.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
> How about we just stop giving a shit what the
> terrorists think and what they consider a win,
I agree with this, and that goes thrice for Republicans and double for balloonbaggers.
fitzwili
If there are any Manhattan/ Brooklyn( and any other borough of course!) BJers around tomorrow there is going to be a vigil for relgious tolerance in lower manhattan. Here is the info:
A candlelight vigil will be held Friday, September 10th to support the right of Muslim Americans to build the Park 51 community center in Lower Manhattan.
Time: 7:15pm (sundown) to 10:00pm
Location: Intersection of Church Street and Park Place
Participants are encouraged to bring candles and American flags, but no signs.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve #51: I had the identical experience at Waterloo Station in late 2007, and subsequently at any number of Tube and BR stations. I think it was at Richmond Park or someplace where an annoyed station attendant told me to throw my rubbish on the platform. That just went right against my tidy American instincts!
Anyhow, I’m sorry to hear that three years later the terrorists are still winning the trash wars. Sigh.
SiubhanDuinne
I heard a short item on NPR tonight (can’t remember now whether it was All Things Considered or Marketplace) in which it was reported that Donald Trump has offered to take the “Ground Zero Mosque” property off the owner’s (owners’?) hands for a handsome 25% above valuation.
Have not seen any other reference to this, although I certainly haven’t looked. But ugh, the whole idea of The Donald getting mixed up in this for his own inscrutable Gordon Gekkoish reasons, is just nauseating.
Anyone else hear the piece, or know more?
Darkrose
@Mnemosyne: Hee! That’s totally why I bought a Kindle. Wolf Hall was fascinating, but it’s so damn heavy that I could barely hold it, and I could never find a comfortable position to curl up with it.
I heart my Kindle. We were out of town for two weeks recently, and we didn’t need to carry a separate bag (that we’d have to pay to check) for our books.
MJ
@fitzwili:
Thanks for this. I think I’ll come support the vigil.
Resident Firebagger
Actually, I’m fucking tired of the angle on this angle. Jon Stewart said essentially the same thing a couple weeks ago, and I’m still pissed off about it.
Granted, Powell in his mealy-mouthed way comes close, but I don’t believe he is in any way suggesting that the community center should be built because of what the terrorists might think. NO ONE is saying we should do anything because of what the terrorists might think.
When people make this argument, it’s just an elegant way of pointing out that the Islamophobes, in addition to being idiots, are doing real damage with their idiocy.
kindness
Damn, it sure seems like the terrorists are going to win to some group no matter what happens. You know what is really sad about that statement? There’s a whole bunch of Caribou Barbie types that think any time the liberals win anything…the terrorists have then won. Sharon Angle in NV is a good example. I don’t think I’d ever heard someone running for a government office say their side will take up guns and go crazy if they lose. WTF is up with that I mean?
We’re all terrorists now.
Restrung
C’mon, terrorists are LOSERS. If they don’t die and don’t kill, then they just look like dupes. And if they do, they still look like dupes.
The ridiculous T-baggers of last summer are dupes. So is Tim Pawlenty.
scarshapedstar
I’m with Colin on this one.
I always figured that the real aim of 9/11 was to goad America into a stupid unwinnable war, bankrupting us and turning us into a global pariah, while we ran around like fire ants crawling over the smoking remnants of a single Black Cat even though there was no reason whatsoever for a follow-up attack.
The wingnut, version, of course, was that 9/11 made us look WEAK and we had to look STRONG because the only thing “those people” understand is WEAK and STRONG and if we didn’t look STRONG then they would slit every single one of our throats in the middle of the night. (Which seems to implicitly assume that they are in actuality way the fuck stronger than we are, but who am I to question the patriotic logic of a Real Murkin?)
Fast forward to the present, when the wingnuts are saying that the Muslims build a mosque in every place they conquer, and so if we let them ‘build a mosque next to 9/11’ then this will prove that ‘they’ conquered us, or at least conquered 9/11 or something… and then they will talk amongst themselves that we are WEAK and they are STRONG.
I wish Colin would have gone a step further and said that these fucking teabaggers are Al-Qaeda’s wet dream and that they will ruin this country far more quickly and effectively than 100 planes crashing into office buildings.
LanceThruster
The fanatics of Islam are basically pulling off the heckler’s veto. Their is no good reason to whack the hornet’s nest just because, but we could have a lot more rationale debate about the whole thing if respect for secularism was more widespread. Without enough rallying for the importance of freethought worldwide, religious fanantics get to help set the midpoint.
I would definitely be willing to stir the pot, if we went all in. Ridicule those who think they need to act as murderous proxies for their powerless gods. Mock their gods openly (all of them) and challenge them to put up or shut up. Point to the inescapeable fact (I’m making a prediction here) that no one will be struck by lightning, or clobebred by quakes, floods, tsunamis, and the liek, any more than they statistically would have prior to mocking the gods.
Giving people burdened by the weight of theocracies courage to reject superstition would go a long way towards getting our collective act together.
SpaceSquid
I’ve heard this sentiment voiced a couple of times in the last few weeks. I can get behind it in general, but in this specific case I think it’s slightly missing the point. Powell is pointing out that this sort of thing will give terrorists the happies to the very people who are linking Park51 to terrorism. To me, his statement reads as “Look, if you really believe we should do A to fight terrorists, then independently of whether that’s a good reason to do it or not, A is what your professed enemies want you to do.”
Batocchio
I partially agree, but saying “the terrorists win” in these instances is a reactive tactic to try to get the crazies, warmongers and demagogues to think for a second and not be such assholes. (Not that anything has really proven effective on that front.)
It’s standard wingnut to say that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, and then – without missing a beat – working to eliminate all those freedoms here in America. Pointing that out is important. The Islamophobic and torture zealot crowd are all working on the same, false, dangerous assumption – we’re not safe because we’re not savage or intolerant enough.
You write: “How about we just stop giving a shit what the terrorists think and what they consider a win, and just do our own damned thing and carry on our traditions like we always have?” Both you and Powell agree on the second part. On the first part – well, if we really had wanted to deny bin Laden a “win,” we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq, either – and as Jon Schwarz and others have shown, Powell himself has some culpability there.