Writing in her syndicated column today, Michelle Malkin shines the light on President Obama’s refusal to call Islamic terrorism exactly what it is:
When a right-wing Christian vigilante kills, millions of fingers pull the trigger. When a left-wing Muslim vigilante kills, he kills alone. These are the instantly ossifying narratives in the Sunday shooting death of late-term abortion provider George Tiller of Kansas versus the Monday shootings of two Arkansas military recruiters.
Tiller’s suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, is white, Christian, anti-government and anti-abortion. The gunman in the military recruitment center attack, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, is black, a Muslim convert, anti-military and anti-American.
Both crimes are despicable, cowardly acts of domestic terrorism. But the disparate treatment of the two brutal cases by both the White House and the media is striking.
President Obama issued a statement condemning “heinous acts of violence” within hours of Tiller’s death. The Justice Department issued its own statement and sent federal marshals to protect abortion clinics. News anchors and headline writers abandoned all qualms about labeling the gunman a terrorist. An almost gleeful excess of mainstream commentary poured forth on the climate of hate and fear created by conservative talk radio, blogs and Fox News in reporting Tiller’s activities.
By contrast, Obama was silent about the military recruiter attacks that left 24-year-old Pvt. William Long dead and 18-year-old Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula gravely wounded. On Tuesday afternoon — more than 24 hours after the attack on the military recruitment center in Little Rock, Ark. — Obama held a press conference to announce his pick for Army secretary. It would have been exactly the right moment to express condolences for the families of the targeted Army recruiters and to condemn heinous acts of violence against our troops.
I find this situation odd, but not surprising.
I wish they would put Roder’s religous affiliation in quotes; he’s a “Christian,” not a true believer. I’m sure that in his mind he was furthering a cause and probably had some delusion of this being a “wake up call” for Pro-Lifers to rally and rise up, taking matters into their own hands.
But the truth is that, despite what flaws it does have, the vast majority of those in the Pro-Life movement (99.5%, I would think) would find the concept of killing someone in the name of life to be hypocritical and horrendous. No, Tiller was not the first abortion doctor killed by people claiming Pro-Life ties. But if you look at those other events, they did not become the basis for copycat crimes and they did not become a rally call for violent Pro-Lifers. That’s because the majority of Pro-Lifers know that you don’t fight violence with violence, you don’t take life and death into your own hands.
Roeder was a lone nutjob, another crazy conspiracy-prone, anti-government crank who, unfortunately, will symbolize all Christians in the eyes of our culture (because even though I don’t think Roeder was a Christian, pro-Life is equated with Christianity in our cultures’ eyes). Tiller may have done a job that people hate, but he was no more worthy of death than any of us (or just as worthy, to be more accurate). Roeder is a toilet bug.
As for the shooting at the recruitment center, I was initially baffled that it wasn’t getting more media play. From the standpoint of a former journalist, this is a sexy story–it’s tragic, touches on controversy in religion…the saying is “if it bleeds, it leads” and I have to believe that there are reporters chomping at the bit on this one.
But the Army is (understandably) a very tight-lipped organization. I work with the Army and I know how stingy they are with info sometimes. And if they’re handling the media affairs and police investigations, then the most likely reason you’re not hearing anything is because the Army isn’t talking. It’s not a political bias–because, trust me, a good story always trumps politics– it’s simply that getting the info is not easiest when you’re dealing with the government.