451° Stupid

by folkbum

The latest So There! argument from my commenters (a So There! argument is a point so stupid that a reasonable response is impossible to craft because of the enormity of the stupid; see, for example, this video, taken by those on the right as a So There! on global warming but by those on the left as proof that some Congressmen are too stupid for their own good)--

By now you've lost the thread. I get it. Take two:

The latest So There! argument from my commenters is that because radical Islamists will use Quran-burning among Americans as a recruitment tool and potentially ratchet up the violence against American troops or other targets, therefore Islam as a whole is not a peaceful religion. So There!

See what I mean? It's hard to know where to start. But I suppose I will start with a question, as simple one, and if the commenters can honestly answer the question, maybe we can move on from there.

Why do you want to burn the Quran in the first place?

I mean, I think I know the answer. I think it's clear that a certain segment of the American right wants to provoke the exact reaction described above. Their worldview begins and ends with "teh mooslems is scary!" and they need occasional validation of this. That's why a peaceful Sufi congregation in Manhattan seeking to fix up its existing overflow prayer location has been transformed into a hive of radical jihadists bent on building a "victory mosque" at Ground Zero. And it's why the haters--Fred Phelps has been doing this for years, and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks Phelps is anything other than a giant douchebag--that's why the haters want to burn Qurans. That's why, in a fit of utter imbecility, the burners have argued that "moderate Muslims" should want to burn the Quran, too: If you aren't willing to burn your own holy book, it just proves that you're a terrorist too, and that I'm right to hate all of you, even the moderates.

Otherwise, why do it? What's the point? What do you prove by burning a book, any book, ever?

Frank Rich: Your complaining about the mosque* at** Ground Zero undermines Petraeus

by folkbum

Of course, Rich doesn't offer any stats or an actual quote from Patraeus to show that that's true, but he makes a compelling case that it may well be:

Here’s what’s been lost in all the screaming. The prime movers in the campaign against the “ground zero mosque” just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America’s nine-year war in Afghanistan. The wrecking ball they’re wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America’s already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.

So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right--abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats--that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?

Rich goes on to lay out show how the ignorant stupid-head critics of the Park 51 plan are not merely ignorant stupid-heads wrong on the facts, but also ignorant stupid-heads intent on scoring a few electoral points at the expense of nine years and trillions of dollars trying to undermine and eradicate radical Islamists around the globe.

I ask, politely, that my ignorant stupid-head anti-Park51 readers to explain to me how Rich is wrong.

* it's not a mosque
** it's not at Ground Zero