Posted on 06/30/2005 9:32:25 PM PDT by 68skylark
Durbinization alert:
Tons of readers are e-mailing me about NBC News anchor Brian Williams' comments tonight in which he apparently compared the Founding Fathers to modern-day terrorists. The remarks seem to pooh-pooh the story about Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's alleged involvement in the 1979 hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
Williams previewed his argument on his MSNBC blog:
Many Americans woke up to a curious story this morning: several of the former Iran Hostages have decided there is a strong resemblance between Iran's new president and one of their captors more than 25 years ago. The White House and most official branches of government are ducking any substantive comment on this story, and photo analysis is going on at this and other news organizations. It is a story that will be at or near the top of our broadcast and certainly made for a robust debate in our afternoon editorial meeting, when several of us raised the point (I'll leave it to others to decide germaneness) that several U.S. presidents were at minimum revolutionaries, and probably were considered terrorists of their time by the Crown in England.
According to news watchers, Williams repeated the argument in his broadcast banter tonight with NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell. Since I haven't watched an NBC Nightly News broadcast in, oh, five years, I'm hoping someone grabbed video of it.
According to this report, Williams told Mitchell:
"What would it all matter if proven true? Someone brought up today the first several U.S. presidents were certainly revolutionaries and might have been called 'terrorists' by the British crown, after all."
In his blog post, it was "several of us" who came up with the morally equivalent notion. According to the above transcription, the "several" was reduced to a lone "someone" by air time. Who brought it up, Brian? Who? Do tell. Is it your own fabulously ill-informed thought? Or can you blame one or two or several low-level staffers?
Bloggers are already on the case, natch...
The Dread Pundit Bluto comments:
If anyone needed another example of the insanity of the liberal doctrine of moral and cultural equivalence, which came into fashion during the Cold War, this is it. It's actually less offensive for Williams to imply that our Founding Fathers were terrorists than it is for him to put them on a par with the bloodthirs[t]y, unevolved barbarians who took over Iran in 1979.
Williams owes this country a sincere and abject apology.
Williams indulges in the same, tired moral equivalency that led Michael Moore to declare Zarqawi as the Iraqi version of the Minutemen from our war of independence. This minimizes the cruelty and inhumanity of the enemies of freedom that use civilians as their targets while trying to impose tyrannies far worse than anything George III could ever have dreamed in his most feverish illusions.
Media Lies: "That's it. I'm done with NBC."
I am quite the history buff and I have yet to see any type of mention where this happened or anything even remotely close. During the Revolutionary War, the British burned homes of settlers, executed traitors and ransacked the nation. We gave the British soldiers quarter for the most part and eventually shipped a large number of Red Coats back to England . . . alive. Never did American soldiers storm into buildings and take everyone inside hostage. Never!
I have a feeling Mr. Williams will be feeling a lot of heat in the next 24 hours. He's already sparking some major pre-Fourth of July fireworks. For once, I'll be interested in what he has to say. Stay tuned to his blog.
I haven't watch MSM news in YEARS. Well i take that back... I watched Dan Rather once during the National Guard Scandal to see if he would apologize, and I ended up watching him interrogate a 90 year old woman.
They were a threat all right -- but they aren't the kind of people to torture, rape and kill women and kids and other non-combatants to appease their moronic religion.
BTTT
I honestly can't remember the last time I watched a broadcast evening news report. I get all the info I need, and more, from Brit Hume and the conservative corners of the internet.
Well. If they find no difference between Islamic fascists who blow up school children and the Founding Fathers, one wonders what basis they have for their condemnation of America.
We would do well to treat this band of moral idiots as the ridiculous fools they are.
That's well said.
I really don't think many people watch network news any more. I don't. Half the people who do watch are conservatives who're just trying to find something to get ticked off about. They're usually well rewarded.
yep. I watch Brit all the time. It's also quite fun when they lay the smack down on Juan. :D
The analogy hinges upon the idea that terrorists are merely political rebels. The founding father were considered rebels and dangerous, but they officially made a deceleration of hostilities. A terrorist is someone who kills civilians intentionally, usually without even a deceleration. No one at the time of the revolution considered the killing of non-combatants acceptable even for a rebellion. Indeed the whole point of the "War on Terror" is that we still don't consider it legitimate combat tactic even if you do claim to be a political rebel, accept for apparently Brian Williams, hence his use of the analogy.
Terror as a political tool was an invention of the modern, Stalinist Left. It was not practiced in the 18th century as a means to achieve political change.
And to simply catagorize anti-monarchical, Enlightenment reolutionaries are somehow the same as modern Marxist revolutionaries is patently idiotic, also.
But, then again, we know how brainy liberals are when it comes to history and politics.
Perhaps we can celebrate July 4 by giving Mr. Williams a one-way ticket back to England so he can renew his loyalty to the British crown.
Is Brian Williams from Connecticut?
In grade school in CT they used to teach us how to curtsy before the Queen, and how the American Revolutionaries were terrorists, learning their terrorist tactics from the American Indians. I kid you not.
You might as well have said "Teenagers are already gossiping about the case".
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
During the Gulf War Brokaw went on and on about the poor 18 year old F-15 pilots.
I don't know Fred beats him about the head and shoulders on a regular basis. I like Fred, you can see he has no patience and gets flustered easily, and sometimes I bet he would rather slap Juan across the lips rather than argue with him. :D
What an insult.
A MSM employee would say something like that? Absolutely.
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/interview.html
In May 1998, "a little over two months before the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, Osama bin Laden answers questions posed to him by some of his followers at his mountaintop camp in southern Afghanistan. In the latter part of the interview, ABC reporter John Miller is asking the questions."
Knowing that Bin Laden has declared war on the U.S. nevertheless near the end of the interview Mr. Miller tells OBL,
"In America, we have a figure from history from 1897 named Teddy Roosevelt. He was a wealthy man, who grew up in a privileged situation and who fought on the front lines. He put together his own men - hand chose them - and went to battle. You are like the Middle East version of Teddy Roosevelt."
It's the MSM. It's what they do.
If I am not mistaken Miller was hired by the Los Angeles Police Department homeland defense operation a few years ago.
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