Spot on, Dr. C. One thing

DF — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:20:56 +0000

In reply to Dear Right Wing: Is This War or Not?

Spot on, Dr. C. One thing that occurs to me finally after having read your piece is that the whole argument against the proposed center completely misunderstands 9/11/01. The implication that it's unseemly for Muslims to build a house of worship near the WTC site requires that you believe that the U.S. was primarily attacked by Islam. Sure, the people who carried out the attacks may have been Muslim, but that wasn't primarily why the attacks were carried out.

Perhaps all of the fervor being witnessed is what is required to maintain that belief. If you believe that 9/11 and the ensuing events are primarily about Islam waging war against "the west" or what have you, that makes it a lot easier to maintain narratives about the necessity of servicing a state of war in response. It also makes it easy to paint the proposed Cordoba House as analagous to spiking the ball in the end-zone. If, however, your analysis of the attacks leads you identify motivating factors that have much more to do with geostrategy, energy, politics (especially the politics of picking winners and losers in the Middle East via military action and foreign policy) and economics, then the "war on terror" narrative, as well as the opposition to the proposed Cordoba House, completely fails.

It strikes me as not likely that it is mere coincidence that those with a direct interest in maintaining the status quo favor the simplistic religious analysis of the 9/11 attacks and the attendant narratives.

dagblog - Comments for "Dear Right Wing: Is This War or Not?"

Spot on, Dr. C. One thing