Editorials & Other Articles

kpete

(71,991 posts) Mon Mar 19, 2012, 09:50 AM Mar 2012

There you have it. Gingrich, Santorum, and their pals were wrong. Obama and Brennan were right.

Over the next several months, King and other Republicans escalated the assault on Islam, whipping up hysteria over the “Ground Zero mosque.” Soon, their cause was taken up by Republican presidential candidates. Newt Gingrich led the way, and Rick Santorum followed. “We're fighting a war against radical Islam,” Santorum asserted in a debate on Nov. 22, 2011. In a debate on Jan. 7, 2012, Santorum complained: “This president has sanitized every defense document, everything. There's no—the word ‘radical Islam’ doesn't appear anywhere. Why? Because … we're trying to fight this politically correct war and not being honest with the American public as to who the enemy is.”

Usually, this kind of macho windbaggery can’t be falsified. But this time, Allah was merciful. On May 2, 2011, Obama, in a fit of political correctness, sent a SEAL team to kill Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The SEALs, upon entering Bin Laden’s compound, inexcusably failed to call him a radical Islamist. They did, however, shoot him dead and make off with a haul of al-Qaida documents. Some of these documents have now been declassified, and David Ignatius of the Washington Post has just published the first eyewitness account of them. He writes:

Bin Laden’s biggest concern was al-Qaeda’s media image among Muslims. He worried that it was so tarnished that, in a draft letter … he argued that the organization should find a new name. The al-Qaeda brand had become a problem, bin Laden explained, because Obama administration officials “have largely stopped using the phrase ‘the war on terror’ in the context of not wanting to provoke Muslims,” and instead promoted a war against al-Qaeda. The organization’s full name was “Qaeda al-Jihad,” bin Laden noted, but in its shorthand version, “this name reduces the feeling of Muslims that we belong to them.” … Bin Laden ruminated about “mistakes” and “miscalculations” by affiliates in Iraq and elsewhere that had killed Muslims, even in mosques. He told Atiyah to warn every emir, or regional leader, to avoid these “unnecessary civilian casualties,” which were hurting the organization. “Making these mistakes is a great issue,” he stressed, arguing that spilling “Muslim blood” had resulted in “the alienation of most of the nation [of Islam] from the [Mujaheddin].”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bin-laden-plot-to-kill-president-obama/2012/03/16/gIQAwN5RGS_story.html

There you have it. Gingrich, Santorum, and their pals were wrong. Obama and Brennan were right. So was George W. Bush in his steadfast refusal to blame Islam for 9/11. Bin Laden wanted a religious war. Bush and Obama refused to let him have it. At the end of his life, isolated by left-wing drone strikes and marked for death by PC commandos, this was Bin Laden’s chief lament. And that, Sen. Santorum, is why you don’t call it a war on radical Islam: because choosing your words carefully is part of winning the war.

MORE:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2012/03/war_against_islam_bin_laden_s_documents_show_obama_was_right_and_gingrich_and_santorum_were_wrong_.html