Obama condemns Muslim attack on Arkansas Army recruiters…not
President Obama announced his choice for Army Secretary this afternoon.
The news isn’t what he said in his statement about GOP Rep. John McHugh:
“As Secretary of the Army, he will ensure that our soldiers are trained and equipped to meet the full spectrum of challenges and threats of our time. And John [McHugh] shares my belief that a sustainable national security strategy must include a bipartisan consensus at home, and he brings patriotism and a pragmatism that has won him respect on both sides of the aisle. I look forward to working with him in the months and years ahead.”
The news is what he left out.
Not a word about the jihadi attack on the two Army recruiters in Arkansas. No condemnation of the heinous attack and senseless violence. No condolences for the families of the targeted men or praise for the military recruiters who have been under increasing attack on U.S. soil. No statements from the DOJ or Pentagon, either.
Nothing.
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Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic notices similar whitewashing by government-funded NPR, which failed to report the name and religion of recruiter-murdering suspect Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad:
Why not tell people what is actually happening in the world? We saw this a couple of weeks ago, when the press only gingerly acknowledged that the malevolent though incompetent suspects in the synagogue bombing-conspiracy case in New York were converts to Islam. How is the public served by this kind of silence? The extremist Christian beliefs of George Tiller’s alleged murderer are certainly relevant to that case, and no one in my profession is hesitant to discuss them. Why the hesitancy to talk about the motivations of the man who allegedly killed Pvt. William Long?
Amy Ridenour: Some murders matter more than others.