Results 1 to 23 of 23
  1. #1
    Veteran DarrinS's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Post Count
    41,654
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...s_opinion_main


    It can't have come as a surprise that one of the now entrenched myths about America—namely, its ongoing victimization of Muslims—should have been voiced again by a leading citizen of our myth-producing capital, Hollywood. The citizen was Tom Hanks, and the occasion his March interview in Time Magazine in which he declared that our battle with Japan in World War II was one of "racism and terror." And that, he noted, should remind us of our current wars.

    The comments caused a furor. But Mr. Hanks, who had made them during a publicity tour—he's the producer of the HBO series, "The Pacific"—saw the issue in perfectly clear terms, which he went on to explain several times more in subsequent media appearances. We can only ponder the joy this must have brought to the hearts of HBO executives.

    The Hanks mini-seminar was only one of the many distortions of our still unbearably raw recent history—never mind World War II—encouraging Americans to view themselves as oppressors and racists. The latest reflection of this trend, grown steadily since the attacks of Sept. 11, came with a three-page spread in the Washington Post on March 24 about the tribulations of a Muslim soldier who reported being subjected to slurs, various other insults, and also a threatening note. His commander suggested he might do well to move to housing off base. The base in question was Fort Hood, where, last November, army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan murdered 13 fellow American soldiers.

    The pain of these confrontations was undoubtedly great, as such treatment always is. Ask the members of religious and racial minorities who served, say, in World War II, when it wasn't unusual to hear slurs like " " and such hurled at them. Ask black Americans who had the incomparably worse experience of serving in a racially segregated military, where they were relegated to the worst duties. Not to mention being made witness—in parts of the country—to the sight of German POWs held in the U.S. eating in restaurants barred to black Americans in uniform, and otherwise being accorded respect that those Americans could not hope to receive.

    Still, there were no instances of those enduring this treatment undertaking mass murder of other American servicemen. There was rage, and there were some riots, but no cases of U.S. soldiers enlisting in the service of the enemy as Maj. Hasan had. (Hasan, it was explained after he had cut down those unarmed servicemen and women packed into that room in Ft. Hood, had suffered prejudice-related pressures as a Muslim in the armed services.)

    There were, in World War II, no watchdog groups like the ones cited in the Washington Post story, no agencies keeping lists of harassment complaints, or name-calling suffered by members of the U.S. military, or of the number of soldiers, like those mentioned in the story, who called crying on the phone. There were back then plenty of officers given to convenient cover-ups. But, it's a good bet, few like Maj. Hasan's superiors—so addled by raised consciousness and worries about appearing insensitive to Muslims in the service that they ignored even the most extreme expressions of his enmity to the United States and its military, his praise of suicide bombers, his jihadi contacts.

    Since the events of Sept. 11, we've seen the growth of a view that American Muslims became prime victims of those terror attacks—isolated, fearful, targets of hostility. President George W. Bush, who went to Washington D.C's Islamic Center a few days after the terror assaults, told his audience that Islam was about peace and warned that the nation's Muslims must be free to go about without fear or intimidation by other Americans—remarks he doubtless thought were called for under the cir stances.

    It had not, of course, been necessary to remind Americans of who they were and were not. No menacing hordes, then or later, ever threatened American Muslims—and it has been an insult to the nation to have been lectured to the same way after every attempted terror attack, as though wild mobs of citizens might actually run through the streets attacking Muslims. Even as the ruins of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon still smoldered, countless Americans had reached out to their Muslim neighbors to reassure them.

    No matter. Every report of any activity bearing resemblance to anti-Muslim sentiment became, in short order, essential news. Every actual incident, every report of a nasty sign, fitted the all-consuming theme taken up by large sectors of mainstream media: that the country's Muslims were now hapless targets, not only of the national rage at the atrocities committed by Islamic fundamentalists, but also of racism. It was a view especially well in accord with those of a generation schooled in colleges and universities where pathological extremes of sensitivity to claims of racial, religious or sexual insult or charges of gender bias are considered perfectly normal and right.

    Reporters ran with the theme in part because the media's appe e for victim stories of any kind is inexhaustible. But this was, in addition, the kind journalists pride themselves on as socially responsible. It was also one that didn't lack for willing subjects. For American Muslims in considerable numbers apparently subscribed to the view that theirs was the abiding suffering that had been inflicted by the 9/11 attacks. There was no missing the steady supply of Muslims available to tell inquiring reporters of their feelings of alienation and persecution.

    Each FBI terrorist sting that went awry or seemed to, each wild goose chase of a home-grown jihadi threat, spurred a new portrait of besieged American Muslims. When such plots turned out to be true, and their threat enormous—most recently in the case of Najubullah Zazi, a jihadist who planned to set explosives off in the New York subway—the portrait and the theme remained the same. Since alienated American Muslims were forced to live in fear as second-class citizens, it was explained, more and more of them chose extremism and violence. In short, whether the charges of terrorist activity were false or whether they were true, American society was to blame.


    There are other faces of Muslim America. Five years or so after the terrorists drove their planes and passengers into the twin towers and the Pentagon, a cab driver from Pakistan remarked, as we drove past the rubble where the towers had stood, that he could never pass this place without trying to see them again in his mind. A painful effort, for all that it brought back. What was not painful, he added, was the memory of certain people in his neighborhood—a mixed but mostly white area of Queens, with many Italian-Americans, some Jews, and he thought some Irish. After the attacks, some of the men had come to him.

    "My wife doesn't go out without a head cover," he explained. The men had come to tell him that if anyone bothered her, or his family, he must come to them.

    "I must tell them and must not be afraid. Do you know," he said, in a voice suddenly sharp, "what would have happened if Americans had done this kind of attack in my country? Every American—every Christian, every non-Muslim—would have been slaughtered, blood would have run in the streets. I know the kind of country this is. Thanks be to God I can give this to my children."

    Countless American Muslims would, like generations of immigrants of all kinds, say the same. Theirs, of course, is not the face of Muslim America suitable for the continuing chronicle of the victimized American Muslim.

  2. #2
    Alleged Michigander ChumpDumper's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Post Count
    144,598
    Darrin wants a cookie for not indiscriminately killing Muslims.

  3. #3
    Veteran Ignignokt's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Post Count
    7,042
    Darrin wants a cookie for not indiscriminately killing Muslims.
    What do you find wrong with the article?

  4. #4
    Believe.
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Post Count
    65
    "Muslims fear backlash over tomorrows terrorist attack"

    http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/mu...rom-the-m.html

  5. #5
    Alleged Michigander ChumpDumper's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Post Count
    144,598
    What do you find wrong with the article?
    Do you want a cookie as well?

  6. #6
    Veteran Ignignokt's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Post Count
    7,042
    Do you want a cookie as well?
    I only asked what you thought of the article. Besides, you probably already ate it for your personal victory in attacking Darrin and dodging a simple question.

  7. #7
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,425

  8. #8
    Alleged Michigander ChumpDumper's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Post Count
    144,598
    I only asked what you thought of the article. Besides, you probably already ate it for your personal victory in attacking Darrin and dodging a simple question.
    Sorry I upset you so severely. I didn't know my thoughts were so important to you, but it does make sense.

    I think it was a slow day at the Journal.

  9. #9
    Veteran Ignignokt's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Post Count
    7,042
    I don't get it.. so you're implying that you're the forum cop.

  10. #10
    Veteran Ignignokt's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Post Count
    7,042
    Sorry I upset you so severely. I didn't know my thoughts were so important to you, but it does make sense.

    I think it was a slow day at the Journal.
    I get it! Hyperbole!

    crofl! let my try that...

    <clears throat> No, i'm sorry i caused you severe torture and total biblical agony over such a simple question. I didn't know my words were like thorns to your mortal flesh, my questions vile condemnations of your faculties that have judged your mental capacity and vigor to be absolutely des ute, that you have been severely sentenced to a life of intellectual captivity, you yearn that i may dip a cookie in your mouth to cool the eternal damned flames like the rich man when he begged to Lazarus.

    UTTER SEVER EXEGERATED DESTRUCTION, only because you secretly admire me and beseech my prescence in these interscrolls.

    AS IT HAS BEEN WRITTEN IN THESE BOOKS!

    <thunder and condemning lightning!>

  11. #11
    Alleged Michigander ChumpDumper's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Post Count
    144,598
    I get it! Hyperbole!

    crofl! let my try that...

    <clears throat> No, i'm sorry i caused you severe torture and total biblical agony over such a simple question. I didn't know my words were like thorns to your mortal flesh, my questions vile condemnations of your faculties that have judged your mental capacity and vigor to be absolutely des ute, that you have been severely sentenced to a life of intellectual captivity, you yearn that i may dip a cookie in your mouth to cool the eternal damned flames like the rich man when he begged to Lazarus.

    UTTER SEVER EXEGERATED DESTRUCTION, only because you secretly admire me and beseech my prescence in these interscrolls.

    AS IT HAS BEEN WRITTEN IN THESE BOOKS!

    <thunder and condemning lightning!>
    After that, my response really doesn't seem hyperbolic at all.

  12. #12
    Alleged Michigander ChumpDumper's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Post Count
    144,598
    I don't get it.. so you're implying that you're the forum cop.
    If you don't get it, you wouldn't post the conclusion you got directly after saying you don't get it.


    Get it?

    Or maybe you just forgot a question mark.

    Don't bother clarifying. It's not important.

  13. #13
    W4A1 143 43CK? Nbadan's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Post Count
    32,408
    Kudos that we didn't round em up and put them in prison camps? WTF?

  14. #14
    Veteran Ignignokt's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Post Count
    7,042
    After that, my response really doesn't seem hyperbolic at all.
    "seem"

    "almost"


  15. #15
    Veteran Ignignokt's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Post Count
    7,042
    If you don't get it, you wouldn't post the conclusion you got directly after saying you don't get it.
    So you also thought he was implying that he was a forum cop.

  16. #16
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,425
    You were the one demanding answers.

  17. #17
    Alleged Michigander ChumpDumper's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Post Count
    144,598
    So you also thought he was implying that he was a forum cop.
    No. I think he was mocking you.

  18. #18
    Alleged Michigander ChumpDumper's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Post Count
    144,598
    I never used the second word in this thread.



    No one did until you just did.


  19. #19
    Cogito Ergo Sum LnGrrrR's Avatar
    My Team
    Boston Celtics
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Post Count
    22,399
    The article in summary:

    "America is awesome because we haven't started throwing people into camps like we did to the Japanese in WWII. Also, soldiers nowadays are sissies, because they complain about harassment. Finally, any person who thinks that Muslims are getting harassed are making it up; or, alternatively, even if it does happen occasionally they should be thankful they're not getting killed."

  20. #20
    keep asking questions George Gervin's Afro's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Post Count
    11,409
    why do the dead enders continue to play the victim? if your vaginas are hurt stop going to Tom Hanks movies.

  21. #21
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Post Count
    50,672
    seem (sm)
    intr.v. seemed, seem·ing, seems
    1. To give the impression of being; appear: The child seems healthy, but the doctor is concerned.
    2. To appear to one's own opinion or mind: I can't seem to get the story straight.
    3. To appear to be true, probable, or evident: It seems you object to the plan. It seems like rain. He seems to have worked in sales for several years.
    4. To appear to exist: There seems no reason to postpone it.


    Synonyms: seem, appear, look

    Sorry "almost" is not a synonym.

    Bubba Henry called, he am wanted his grammar fail back.

  22. #22
    Veteran DarrinS's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Post Count
    41,654
    The passengers aboard the flight with the fruit-of-the-loom bomber and, most recently, this idiot diplomat from Qatar who smoked in the lavatory and joked about lighting his shoe on fire, would be completely justified in beating these idiots to within an inch of their lives.

  23. #23
    Alleged Michigander ChumpDumper's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Post Count
    144,598
    The passengers aboard the flight with the fruit-of-the-loom bomber and, most recently, this idiot diplomat from Qatar who smoked in the lavatory and joked about lighting his shoe on fire, would be completely justified in beating these idiots to within an inch of their lives.
    That wasn't what this article was about at all.

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •