Sunday, July 24, 2011

Some media first assumed the attacks in Norway were committed by "jihadists"

Think Progress: 'some pundits, mostly right-wing neoconservatives, proclaimed that this bore all the hallmarks of Islamic terrorism, even going so far as to draw policy prescriptions. At the Washington Post, normally a well-respected news outlet, Jennifer Rubin quoted the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies‘ Thomas Joscelyn and AEI scholar Gary Schmitt to say that the attacks were the result of Islamic terrorism. She then concluded the “jihadist” attack on Oslo means the U.S. shouldn’t cut military spending"

This is a sobering reminder for those who think it’s too expensive to wage a war against jihadists. [...] Some irresponsible lawmakers on both sides of the aisle…would have us believe that enormous defense cuts would not affect our national security. Obama would have us believe that al-Qaeda is almost caput and that we can wrap up things in Afghanistan. All of these are rationalizations for doing something very rash, namely curbing our ability to defend the United States and our allies in a very dangerous world.

The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, rushed up an editorial Friday, blaming “jidhadists” for the attacks and exclaiming, “Norway is targeted for being true to Western norms”:

…in jihadist eyes, [Norway] will always remain guilty of being what it is: a liberal nation committed to freedom of speech and conscience, equality between the sexes, representative democracy, and every other freedom that defines the West. For being true to those ideals, Norwegians have now been asked to pay a terrible price..

As more information came out about the attacks and the attacker, the WSJ rewrote the online version of the editorial, albeit by removing any trace of the above paragraph. Instead, it mentioned that it had falsely attributed the attacks to jihadists and called the attacker an al Qaeda “copycat.” '

Read more here.

12 comments :

C.H. said...

Mojo, you yourself are guilty of the same thing that these "right-wing pundits" are. Do you remember the Tucson attack back in January, when Jared Loughner shot nearly 2 dozen people? You assumed it was a "Right-wing Christian" killing progressives in the name of God.

At the same time, the fools at Think Progress and other hate media blamed Sarah Palin's "crosshair map" for the carnage. As the facts came in though, Loughner turned out to a delusional, flag-burning, pothead athiest with leftist leanings...and a hatred of the Bush Admin coupled with a belief that 9/11 was an inside job.

C.H. said...

Also...perhaps the blame for this attack in Norway wouldn't have been laid at the feet of Muslims if an Islamist group didn't claim responsibility for the blast/shooting as it was underway.

Just saying...

Iraqi Mojo said...

First of all, and most importantly, I am the author of a blog called "Iraqi Mojo". I am not the editor of the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post. Neither is Mustafa.

I was wrong to jump to conclusions in the post called American Taliban, but the fact remains that Jared Loughner shares some of the same views as the Teabaggers. He cannot be called a liberal. Let's just call him a Libertarian and leave it at that. LOL

Iraqi Mojo said...

Was Think Progress quoted by MSNBC? That's cool. I still like MSNBC, even though I watch less MSNBC and more Current TV these days.

Iraqi Mojo said...

The lesson to be learned from both the Jared Loughner case and the Norway case is that it's way too easy to buy a gun. I didn't know that gun ownership in Norway is legal until I read this: "In Norway gun ownership is common; violence and homicide are not"

Franky said...

Strange, I find the lesson is that it is far too difficult to buy a gun. An armed society is a polite society. A disarmed society is a vulnerable society.

Smuggling a gun from Russia or by sea would likely have been easy regardless of a ban on guns. How successful would the gunmen have been had the camp workers been armed. Would he even have attempted the massacre if he thought he could be shot at and killed?

He likely chose the camp precisely because he figured he would be safe.

C.H. said...

"He cannot be called a liberal. Let's just call him a Libertarian and leave it at that."

An anti-Bush secularist who smokes marijuana and burns the American flag sounds like an ideal guest on "Current TV", not at a Sarah Palin rally.

I'd prefer to leave it at that.

Muhannad said...

I'm sure any media outlet would love to have an exclusive interview with Jared Loughner.

Check out Current TV's schedule to see what kinds of shows they have: http://current.com/schedule/

Muhannad said...

"An armed society is a polite society." --Franky

Franky, are you from Texas?

C.H. said...

I don't think Loughner will be giving any interviews anytime soon...

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/national_world&id=8268473

Tucson shooting suspect Jared Loughner was put on suicide watch in prison after he asked a psychologist to kill him.

A newly released court filing also said prison staff reported Loughner has been pacing in circles near is cell door, screaming loudly, crying for hours at a time and claiming to hear messages from a radio.

Loughner, 22, has been in federal prison in Missouri since May after a federal judge concluded he was mentally unfit to help in his legal defense.

He pleaded not guilty in the January shooting that killed six people and wounded 13 others including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Maury said...

Mojo, it's hard to draw a distinction between systems of government and murder rates. The same goes for gun ownership.

Norway's latest murder rate was .60, which is sure to be a lot higher this year. It will be at least 2, thanks to this lone gunman.

Saudi Arabia has a murder rate of .90 . That's despite a repressive regime, and one of the world's highest rates of gun ownership.

The Socialist paradise of Venezuela, on the other hand, has a murder rate of 49. It doesn't rank in the top 40 countries on gun ownership, while KSA is #6 and Norway is #11.

The US easily tops the charts on gun ownership, but our murder rate is very close to Europe's, with North America at 6.5 and Europe at 5.4 per 100,000 residents. If blacks committed murder at the same rates as other ethnic groups, the murder rate in the US would be much lower. Blacks make up about 13% of the population, but they account for 50% of murder victims.

I'm not trying to inject race into the discussion. Just pointing out that culture has a lot more to do with crime rates than the system of government, or the prevalence of gun owners.

Muhannad said...

"The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam, lacing his 1,500-page manifesto with quotations from them, as well as copying multiple passages from the tract of the Unabomber.

In the document he posted online, Anders Behring Breivik, who is accused of bombing government buildings and killing scores of young people at a Labor Party camp, showed that he had closely followed the acrimonious American debate over Islam.

His manifesto, which denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country from Islamic influence, quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch Web site, 64 times, and cited other Western writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture."