Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Krauthammer's Obama Criticism Applies to (Oops!) Krauthammer

Those wacky conservatives are at it again, all worked up about President Obama's interview with Al-Arabiya, an Arab television network.

As Think Progress has noted, the conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer "complained that President Obama’s interview…was too 'apologetic and defensive.'”

Speaking on Fox News (naturally), Krauthammer continued: "We heard him say that we shouldn't paint Islam with a broad brush. Who does? That's a straw man."

Well, no. As it happens, a great many conservative politicians, pundits and talk radio blabbers have routinely done just that.

One of them, in fact, was Charles Krauthammer. Here's his quote from December 2002:

From Nigeria to Sudan to Pakistan to Indonesia to the Philippines, some of the worst, most hate-driven violence in the world today is perpetrated by Muslims and in the name of Islam.

Whoa, Charlie! You mean there's no a single Muslim in any of these places who is remotely peaceful? Now that's a broad brush.

5 comments:

Man of the West said...

From Nigeria to Sudan to Pakistan to Indonesia to the Philippines, some of the worst, most hate-driven violence in the world today is perpetrated by Muslims and in the name of Islam.

Whoa, Charlie! You mean there's no a single Muslim in any of these places who is remotely peaceful?

No logician--not even anyone with an iota of common sense--would give you a pass on this one. The two statements are not even remotely similar. Concluding that this is what Mr. Krauthammer means requires reading more into his statement than is there. Further, I seriously doubt that, if pressed, you would actually deny that "...some of the worst, most hate-driven violence in the world today is perpetrated by Muslims and in the name of Islam." Such a denial would require the thickest pair of rose-colored glasses imaginable. You are not that stupid.

Mr. Krauthammer did not say--at least here, and I am not aware of him saying it elsewhere--that there are no peaceful Muslims. What he did say--that some of the worst violence in the world is perpetrated by Muslims--is manifestly true. That you appear not to have noticed this makes it appear that you may have been reading superficially. A less charitable explanation would be that you are putting words into his mouth.

Neocons have enough problems. They are ideologues and many of their ideas are cataclysmically divorced from reality. You don't need to make them out to be saying something they are not in order to critique them effectively.

Jeff Shaw said...

My thoughts precisely.

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