Jihad’s True Face

NY Times ^ | December 1, 2008 | WILLIAM KRISTOL

[neverdem]

Much of the reporting from Mumbai the last few days has been informative, gripping and often moving. Some of the commentary, on the other hand, has been not just uninformative but counterinformative — if that’s a term, and if it’s not, I say it should be.

Consider first an op-ed article in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times by Martha Nussbaum, a well-known professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago. The article was headlined “Terrorism in India has many faces.” But one face that Nussbaum fails to mention specifically is that of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Islamic terror group originating in Pakistan that seems to have been centrally involved in the attack on Mumbai.

This is because Nussbaum’s main concern is not explaining or curbing Islamic terror. Rather, she writes that “if, as now seems likely, last week’s terrible events in Mumbai were the work of Islamic terrorists, that’s more bad news for India’s minority Muslim population.” She deplores past acts of Hindu terror against India’s Muslims. She worries about Muslim youths being rounded up on suspicion of terrorism with little or no evidence. And she notes that this is “an analogue to the current ugly phenomenon of racial profiling in the United States.”

So jihadists kill innocents in Mumbai — and Nussbaum ends up decrying racial profiling here. Is it just that liberal academics are required to include some alleged ugly American phenomenon in everything they write?

Jim Leach is also a professor, at Princeton, but he’s better known as a former moderate Republican congressman from Iowa who supported Barack Obama this year. His contribution over the weekend was to point out on Politico.com that “the Mumbai catastrophe underscores the importance of vocabulary.” This wouldn’t have been my first thought. But Leach believes it’s very important that we consider the...

[sionnsar]

And she notes that this is “an analogue to the current ugly phenomenon of racial profiling in the United States.” \

I too decry the denial of funding for Cystic Fibrosis research simply because the majority of sufferers are white males.

But that's the Left's inherent racist and sexist attitudes nakedly on display.

[rmlew]

It’s kind of sad to have Bill Kristol as the voice of reason to leftists.

[Cicero]

Jim Leach: “the Mumbai catastrophe underscores the importance of vocabulary.”

I knew there was a simple solution to the terrorist problem somewhere. Thanks, Jim!

[rmlew]

Leach is just another liberal using Newspeak to obfuscate. He cannot stand the truth or real language, so he must rewrite the facts dissembling.

[mathurine]

But don’t those Asian kids keep winning the spelling bees? Must be something other than vocabulary at work in Mumbai. Could it be mohammedans?

[navyguy]

“if, as now seems likely, last week’s terrible events in Mumbai were the work of Islamic terrorists, that’s more bad news for India’s minority Muslim population.” She deplores past acts of Hindu terror against India’s Muslims. She worries about Muslim youths being rounded up on suspicion of terrorism with little or no evidence. And she notes that this is “an analogue to the current ugly phenomenon of racial profiling in the United States.”

I am convinced that liberals are genetically programmed to side with those who want to kill them. It’s a form of self loathing... slow suicide. Liberals DETEST life.