Globe's Carroll: Bush, Not Ahmadinejad, Desecrates Ground Zero

NewsBusters ^ | Mark Finkelstein

[governsleastgovernsbest]

vThis morning's column by James Carroll, the Boston Globe's resident gushy liberal, is so predictable you wonder whether it might have been written by a liberal-column generator software program. You know the kind: insert issue, names of political players, a few factoids, and let the program spit out the boilerplate of a standard leftist diatribe.

I mean, as soon as you knew that Carroll was writing a column about Ahmadinejad's visit to the U.S., could there be any doubt as to where he'd come down on the controversy surrounding the Iranian president's desire to visit Ground Zero? And Carroll doesn't disappoint. Naturally, this was just one big Kumbaya moment squandered:

What if, instead of shunting Ahmadinejad aside as one unworthy to enter the sanctuary of our national trauma, we Americans had said, "Yes - stand here with us. Look at what threatens the universal future if we do not find other ways to relate to each other than with contempt. Relive that horrible September morning with us, when the rank evil of terrorism showed itself with such clarity that the human family, decidedly including the Iranian nation, stood together against it. Let solidarity be the meaning of this place."

Can you feel the love?

And yes, of course we knew that Carroll would have his "it's all Bush's fault" moment. Even so, the former priest outdoes himself with his concluding paragraph, flatly stating that it is our president, and not the, shall we say, eccentric Iranian leader, who by his presence defiles the 9-11 site [emphasis added].

Here is George Bush's most grievous failure: Instead of enabling his nation to reckon with the blow of Sept. 11, and move on from it, he has worsened that anguish immeasurably. Yes, Ground Zero is a holy place, but Bush is the one who desecrates it.

It might be time to recalibrate that liberal-column generating program. We don't want to make the putative authors look like complete fools now, do we?

[BusterBear]

Yes, and he’s PO’d that these protests against the Iranian are taking attention away from our real enemies - Bush and Cheney.
Why oh why can’t all this energy be directed towards protesting the Iraq war? Curses.

[EDINVA]

It would sure be interseting to see this ex-priest when he meets his father and his Father in the great hereafter.

[maryz]

Just because there's nowhere else to put it -- re liberal Gov. Deval Patrick of MA: I just heard on the radio, one caller who relayed info to the producer because he or she has a recognizable voice, called a talk show to report that the State House has email monitoring software which identifies and logs any email containing "Deval" or "Patrick" or "Deval Patrick"! And who was yelling about the Patriot Act and the death of civil liberties?

[janereinheimer]

liberals don’t want to hear what others say — unless your opinion is the same as theirs.

I don’t think they can enter into an intelligent conversation with someone who differs with them. They don’t seem to be interested anyway.