JONATHAN CHAIT AUGUST 12, 2010
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
Feisel Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Cordoba House and the target of a hilariously elongated chain of guilt-by-association by conservatives, turns out to have been invited to speak abroad about Islam and America by the Bush administration:
If one were to hearken back to the halcyon days of the Bush Administration, one would remember that, when Bush adviser Karen Hughes was appointed Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, the Bush Administration saw improving America's standing among Muslims abroad as a part of its national security strategy. And, as such, Hughes set up listening tours, attended meetings and worked with interfaith groups that -- shocking, by today's Republican standards -- included actual Muslims.
One of those people was Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.
Contemporary press accounts indicate that Rauf and Hughes were part of the February 2006 U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar. He was part of a delegation that met with her in March 2006 and held a joint press conference. A letter to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in November 2007 indicates that contacts with Hughes and Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns had continued apace.
I suppose by the Weekly Standard's reasoning, this would make George W. Bush a supporter of radical Islam. After all, his administration supported a man whose wife has an uncle who used to be “a leader” of a mosque that now has a Web site that links to the Web site of an allegedly radical organization.
15 comments
Someone alert Marty Peretz to this story! Combine this with the news that President Bush referred to two Jews [Krauthammer & Kristol] as the "bomber boys" proves that Bush was a vicious anti-Semite. I expect Mr Peretz to produce a 1400-word essay [complete with 51-word title] before the end of business today. Then I expect Mr Chait to spend a week politely pretending he doesn't know the magazine published it. Hobnobbing with KNOWN MUSLIMS and using disparaging language against two upstanding mensches [or menschen, if you prefer] who have been absolutely correct about everything in the past ten years is all the evidence any reasonable person needs to conclude that George W. Bush keeps Nazi memorabilia under his mattress.
- DC Spence
August 12, 2010 at 10:45am
In a semi-classic Simpsons, Springfield's Republican leaders, led by radio host Birch Barlow, concoct a plan to elect Sideshow Bob mayor. SSB wins in a landslide, but Lisa, always on the case, decides to investigate how he got so many votes. She finds that many voters are actually interred in the Springfield cemetery and then goes to the pet cemetery next door and finds out that the voter rolls contained the names of dead pets too. "Not you, Snowball!" The next day the Springfield newspaper has an article on what Lisa found. Underneath the main story is a smaller story "Why Shouldn't Dead Pets Vote?" Why indeed. Which is what I'm driving at here - the controversy over the Cordoba center is a variant of "why shouldn't dead pets vote?". We are questioning the bedrock principles on which this great country was founded - principles that ordinarily don't divide us and ordinarily are not even questioned. As TJ might say, they're self-evident. It's quite likely that if the center had been announced during the W administration, no one would have given it even a passing glance, and no one would have even thought to be offended, just as no one decided to make a big deal when W's administration decided to arrest failed terrorists, read them their rights and try them in civilian court. Cordoba almost slipped by anyway, but some demagogues decided to bash Muslims to score political points. Reactionary politics cause otherwise decent to lose their bearings and act indecently. Or, maybe more accurately, amplify the voices of hateful bigots like Andy McCarthy and Sarah Palin, who have no bearings to lose, while others who should know better follow along.
- Geoff G
August 12, 2010 at 12:27pm
Terrific Simpsons reference, G! One quibble, though. You write, "Reactionary politics cause otherwise decent [people] to lose their bearings and act indecently." Since the quality of a person's heart - his inner bearings - are unknowable to all but himself, a person's conduct must determine any external judgment of his character. Thus a person who behaves indecently is not "an otherwise decent person" who has been led astray. He is an indecent person, at least to the extent that we may reasonably judge anyone who engages in like conduct to be an indecent person. Those who follow bigots into this particular thicket are not victims. They are perpetrators. (A corollary of this anti-essentialist ethical stance is that we must approach such judgments with humility and generosity, as our own actions often belie what we would prefer them to be, and also as any judgment so made is necessarily provisional. A person who behaves indecently is an indecent person *at this time* and *in this regard*.)
- rhubarbs
August 12, 2010 at 1:00pm
Oh well. There ya go. Anybody connected to Dubya, I don't want building ANYTHING, ANYWHERE. Problem solved:)
- Sophia
August 12, 2010 at 1:09pm
Simpson reference, "Reactionary politics..." etc; what post were you reading, barb? And your anti-essentialist trope is vintage you. It is impenetrable.
- liberal reformer
August 12, 2010 at 1:45pm
How "impenetrable"? The reference to anti-essentialism can be penetrated by anyone who understands that to posit an inner self is consequently to posit an "essence" that is separate from observable phenomena that merely have existence. The "essentialist" thus assumes (so goes rhubs's argument against Geoff G.) that the observable phenomena of ludicrous and unconstitutional positions on religious freedom are not in accord with the "essence" of the individual expressing those positions, and are deviations from an "essential" decency. Rhubs recommends anti-essentialism, that is, not making the aforesaid assumption. So penetrated.
- ironyroad
August 12, 2010 at 3:13pm
eeww
- JakeH
August 12, 2010 at 3:40pm
Thanks, irony, but our pygmy Broder is hopeless. He unable to comprehend that I was quoting, and replying to, a previous comment, rather than the original article. The lickspittle seems compelled to insult certain people reflexively, no matter what they write, and in the rush to write invective, minor details like literacy are often cast aside. Hell, our toady poet doesn't even make sense within his own sad little worldview anymore; for months he's accused me, nonsensically, of being an essentialist, but here he declares my anti-essentialism to be "vintage [me]." As the wise mallard said, "It is to laugh."
- rhubarbs
August 12, 2010 at 3:41pm
Of course, Bush is tied to radical Islam. His dad has extensive business connections with the Saudi royal family. You can't get more radical than sponsoring Wahhabism, the cult behind the 9/11 attacks.
- NR114746
August 12, 2010 at 5:57pm
Nice try, irony, but I am extremely acquainted with the concept of antiessentialism. Moreover, I utilize it all of the time. Further, I am a raging antiessentialist and have deployed that term against people out here like .... wait!, the barb, for their Manichaenism. I have studied antiessentialism from the master of this notion, the late Richard Rorty (d. June 8, 2007), whom I had the great honor of talking to on February 4th or 5th in 2004. So your condescension fails once again, irony. And your "hermeneutics" helped not at all to elucidate the gibberish of the barb. As for you, b. you are as dumb as dro, who has called me a Blue Dog. I would like to think that even the densest reader out here (the barb?) could tell that I have no taste for the flat David Broder. I am infinitely more partisan than he is and I have expressed my distaste for Broder for decades to friends of mine. What apparently confuses poor barb is that I am for intellectual honesty, something that the scribes at TNR angle for, too, but which is of no interest to the vast number of commenters here. So therefore, I must be a Broder. That, barb, is known as an enthymematic proposition.
- liberal reformer
August 12, 2010 at 7:50pm
"So your condescension fails once again, irony." My condescension has never failed, lib ref -- I'd appreciate any evidence for your strident and defensive assertion. [a minor point, but "study" cannot take the preposition "from"; "with" or "under" would be acceptable.]
- ironyroad
August 13, 2010 at 2:38am
lib ref, I agree that drofnats is a bore. But you're kind of being a bore here. Maybe you and irony and rhubarb coudl get a room?
- miceelf
August 13, 2010 at 9:53am
Well, of course I am taken as boring here. I take on groupthink, liberal epistemic closure, bad writing, worse thinking, empty praise, and much more. I am not part of the club, or the clubbiness. As for you, irony, I made a non-strident assertion that is validated and vindicated every time you write. As for your status as a grammar maven, I suggest you read someone who actually knows language, our own John McWhorter. It is amusing to read him making fun of the hoity-toity language gatekeepers who think that they have linguistic "truth."
- liberal reformer
August 13, 2010 at 12:21pm
Whatever.
- ironyroad
August 13, 2010 at 12:24pm
lib ref, I generally like you. But this weird feud with a couple of posters is of interest to no one except you all. It's not taking on groupthink, it's making weird attacks on them taht have nothing to do with content. I mean, come on, do you really think a commentary on another poster's style made the thread more intersting to anyone else?
- miceelf
August 13, 2010 at 7:56pm