Giuliani’s tendency to conflate all terrorist groupsRight. What we need is a more NUANCED approach to terrorism.
What we need is a more NUANCED approach to terrorism.
1. The author has overlooked a very important point here with regard to Giuliani's track record.
2. Giuliani's campaign has basically been a wholesale whitewashing of his disgraceful track record of what actually was a very NUANCED approach to terrorism.
Just a few weeks before the infamous "tough on terror" incident in which Giuliani had Arafat expelled from Lincoln Center, Giuliani had actually honored former Irish Republican Army spokesman Gerry Adams at an official New York City dinner. Since Arafat and Adams both had the same legal/diplomatic standing in terms of their relationship with the U.S. at the time, one must logically conclude that Arafat's only crime was that -- in Giuliani's mind -- he simply wasn't "the right kind" of terrorist.
Giuliani's references to the 1972 massacre at the Munich Olympics are particularly silly and pathetic. Based on his own track record as mayor of New York City (particularly with regard to the one high-profile terrorist incident in New York City during his tenure in office -- i.e., the 1997 multiple shooting on the observatoin deck of the Empire State Building by a Palestinian terrorist), I would make the case that if such an incident had occurred right here in the United States, Giuliani himself wouldn't even have the b@lls or the moral clarity to call it an act of terrorism.
Those of his who know about that 1997 incident in the Empire State Building will remember that Giuliani never used the word "terrorism" or "terrorist" to describe that attack. Instead, he zeroed in on that incident as a gun problem, AND IMMEDIATELY ADOPTED IT AS PART OF HIS PATHOLOGICAL ANTI-GUN CRUSADE.