Insult To Injury

Up until now, I haven’t really let go with a full commentary on the Ground Zero Mosque, although I have commented here and there about it.  But with the President’s misleading remarks about it at the White House Ramadan Iftar last night, any doubt that it is a national issue have been erased.

September 11, 2001.  

Four domestic airliners are hijacked by acolytes of the Religion Of Peace, and true to their religion, they turn them into weapons.  One crashes into the Pentagon, one ends up making a wreckage strewn hole in the Pennsylvania countryside, and the remaining two each crash into one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan.   These last two are the ones that cause a nation to hold its breath, until the towers fall, dispatching 3000+ souls in mere moments, including scores of heroic first responders, and spreading a cloud of dust and ash over most of the island, while a nation watched the tragedy unfold through its tears on television broadcasts from coast-to-coast.   

This is what murder on a grand scale looks like.

A Cloud for the Dead

The Consecration Of Hallowed Ground

  

A Legacy Of Destruction

 It was a galvanizing event. A moment when Americans volunteered their blood, their money, and for some, their lives. All to assist in recovery after the first attack on American soil in 60 years.And now, almost 10 years later, there still is no memorial to those who died there.  And on an island where there are 30 mosques already, an Islamic group believes that it is imperative for them to build a 13 story mosque less than a block from one of the most stunning examples of their faith in action for the purpose of “building bridges”.   This imperative, aside from being an affront to good taste, overrides the sensitivities of the families of those who died there, and resists the offer of the governor to obtain for them a suitable location elsewhere.  

City officials, eager to deflect the criticism of a righteously outraged public, claim that nothing can be done…something that anyone who has contended with zoning boards across the country knows to be untrue.  The muslims themselves continue to preach on tolerance, understanding, and sensitivity, while demonstrating that they only expect that to work one way…their way, as Greg Gutfeld so ingeniously demonstrated.The usual suspects acted on their typical M.O., dodging the real issue by pretending not to have an opinion, or like my friend Rutherford, playing coy by saying that it isn’t appropriate to place the mosque in the graveyard, but how close is too close?  And all the while, the one person in the office with the gravitas to craft an acceptable compromise remained silent, too distracted by fund-raisers, his golf game, and a never-ending series of vacations to intervene in a matter that called for his intervention.   

Until yesterday.The President’s remarks at a Ramadan Iftar held at the White House: Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities – particularly in New York. Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan. The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country. The pain and suffering experienced by those who lost loved ones is unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.  

But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.   

This is what happens when a leader fails to be a statesman, and simply remains a lawyer.  It isn’t about freedom of religion.  Governor Patterson’s offer of assistance in obtaining another site should be ample proof of that, if indeed the other 30 mosques on the island are not.  And it isn’t about what is legal.  That was never the question.  The question is, and remains “What is right?”. By spinning the issue into what it is not, the President dishonors the dead, and insults the living. 

 Never one to resist the chance to lecture to those he holds in contempt, or to miss an opportunity to damn Americans by implication, he wraps himself in a document that he earlier condemned as flawed, and implies that we are the hypocrites for not wanting a religion soaked in blood to hoist a banner atop the site of its greatest contemporary triumph, willfully turning a blind eye to the rank hypocrisy demonstrated by the backers of the mosque earlier this week.

 It would be easy to dismiss this as another example of how 52% of the electorate chose a very small man to fill very large shoes in November of 2008.  It would be easy to point to this and say that once again he missed the opportunity to represent all the American people.  It would be easy to say that he opted for what was easy, to turn the argument to the law, and then boldly stand behind it, wagging his finger at the unwashed hoi poli who can see the real issue very plainly.  I’m no longer convinced that these things are correct.  I think that he decided a long time ago that the courageous play was to stand against America.  Whether it is a contempt for those who are “bitterly clinging to their Bibles and guns” or the assertion that Americans can no longer live the way they have been, or his disdain for American Exceptionalism, his eagerness to “fundamentally transform America”, or the need to constantly apologize for us while travelling.    

The legal excuse is merely a pretext.  A means to diffuse criticism while allowing those who have no love for us to put their finger in our eye.  If the law mattered, then our tax dollars would not be refurbishing and building mosques overseas, because that would be indefensible here.  To do it elsewhere is unthinkable.  If the law mattered to him, this would not be occurring. 

 Our submission to a faith foreign to this people is already under way.  It is being facilitated by the government, largely without your knowledge, and without your consent.  The Ground Zero Mosque is merely a provocation, a test of your awareness, and your resolve to resist the rule of outsiders.   Our willingness to be lectured to about tolerance and sensitivity by people who have no interest in reciprocating that which they would shame you into is all the warning you should need.  Changing the narrative about the real issue is merely another act of a surly teenager who continues to hand Mom and Dad’s valuables out the back door to waiting thieves, in an act of contempt and revenge.

Oh, and Rutherford?  You asked “How Close Is Too Close?”   

Look at the pictures from that day.  Look at the reach of that dust cloud…that dust that was all that remained of two skyscrapers containing 3000+ people.  Any place that dust reached is the resting place of people killed in the name of Islam, and they don’t deserve the insult of a mosque and calls to prayer over them, now or ever.