Oslo, Fort Hood and Sally Quinn

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." — John Adams

When a lunatic named Jared Lee Loughner killed six people and injured 13 more last January, liberal accusations of conservative complicity in the assault emerged faster than the sedatives could slow Loughner from “wild-eyed mass-murderer” to “Chris Matthews.” As the twisted tale unfolded, it became readily apparent that Loughner was inspired not by Sarah Palin (nor any other conservative), but by the voices in his head. With the revelation that among Loughner’s victims was not only U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), but a staunchly conservative Federal judge named John Roll, who died shielding another victim from Loughner, the coordinated liberal effort to pin the actions of a madman on people who don’t read The New York Times evaporated as quickly as liberals’ feigned concern for Giffords (but not Roll). By the way, Giffords is improving at a nearly miraculous rate. She may never return to Congress, but she returned to her husband, family and friends. I’ll wager that being discarded by the Democrats the moment she stopped being an effective political prop is meaningless to Giffords’ loved ones; they’re probably just overjoyed to have her home.

Following the failure of Loughner to provide an effective brickbat with which liberals could defame conservatives, the left went back to its usual litany of hate speech, slander and outright dishonesty. President Barack Obama and his racist minion, Attorney General Eric Holder, weathered a few storms of their own creation. Narcoterrorists from Mexico to Honduras obtained guns from the U.S. through an almost impossibly ill-conceived program called “Operation Fast and Furious.” While the cost of the program reached tens — if not hundreds — of millions of dollars, the human cost was even higher. Fortunately, Obama and Holder had the corporate media to bury the story; and with corporate media outlets ignoring the carnage, the liberal rank-and-file missed it through either ignorance or obscene partisanship. Liberals are perfectly willing to shriek at the top of their lungs about terrorism that they can claim is inspired by conservative women or talk radio, but terrorists who were literally armed by a Democrat President are evidently less useful in a campaign than — say — throwing grandma off a cliff.

And then, last Friday afternoon, the monotonous buzz of liberal mendacity, gender bias and racism was shattered by the roar of a terrorist attack in Oslo, Norway. Once it became apparent that the perpetrator was not striking a blow for Muhammad — despite The New York Times’ latest bout with erroneous reporting (“Helpers of the Global Jihad?” What is that, the Hamas junior varsity?) — I started counting the moments until someone tried to link the actions of some fruitcake in the land of the midnight sun to the Tea Party or Sahara Palin. It did not take the Times long to change their story and pronounce that right wing Christian fundamentalists were responsible.

As expected, the wait was shorter than Jayson Blair’s post-scandal career. Knowing that the corporate media’s big outlets would need a few moments to figure out the best way to spin the tragedy to some twisted advantage, I took an off-ramp from the Information Superhighway to the seedy part of town: the Democrat-friendly hate speech site Dailykos.com. As expected, the cacophony was full-throated in the maximum-security wing of the liberal movement. But the wing nuts were trying an interesting new tack; they were actually accusing American conservatives of being more terrifying than the alleged Oslo shooter, Anders Behring Breivik. According to the lead tinfoil hat brigadier Markos Moulitsas:

“…in the United States, (the Tea Party) movement is indeed fundamentalist Christian, populated by sects of millions that would seem strange to an Europeanist of the sort Breivik is. Those people are the actual mirror image of Al Qaeda, or more correctly the Taliban, and they don’t need to go around putting car bombs and driving planes into buildings because they have the US Armed Forces do that for them.”

A comment like that (which apparently has been removed from the website) is made doubly interesting given the fact that Moulitsas is on record excusing Islamofascist murder of Americans. I’m half surprised he didn’t retroactively blame the Tea Party for the 2004 Fallujah incident he infamously celebrated. And not that I’m going to be a stickler for accuracy from the bottom of the blogosphere barrel, but when did the “U.S. Armed Forces” start driving planes into buildings? Something tells me ol’ Kos might want to avoid Fort Stewart forever.

I’m actually fascinated by the ability liberals possess to abandon logic on the altar of their political prejudices. They can accuse Grandpa and Grandma Kettle of Anytown, U.S.A., of being somehow complicit in the Oslo horror because they have a Gadsden flag bumper sticker on the back of their ’99 Grand Marquis, while simultaneously suggesting that the Islamofascists who dress their women like freak show beekeepers and stone people to death are merely misunderstood.

Meanwhile, the sole factor identifying Breivik as “right wing” is his apparent aversion to the spread of Islam. Imagine the logical contortions necessary for liberals to simultaneously claim not only is Islamofascist tyranny like the Taliban “right wing,” but so are the people who most vehemently find it objectionable. To put that in American terms: “Charles Rangel is a scumbag; let’s make him President.”

Look, people. There are different kinds of terrorism. Among them: religiously inspired terrorism, which involves flying planes into buildings (which the Democrat Moulitsas says is a common tactic of the U.S. military), or murdering four people, dismembering them, burning the corpses and hanging them from a bridge (to which the Democrat Moulitsas says: “Screw them.”). There’s governmental terrorism, which involves running people over with tanks, or forcing them to spend 30 years in a Siberian diamond mine in return for suggesting Lenin was a jerk, or shooting their wife and children in Idaho because they didn’t vote for Bill Clinton. There’s narcoterrorism, which lately involved drug dealers shooting people with guns supplied by the Obama Administration. And there’s American terrorism, which involves a Gadsden flag sticker on the bumper of your Grand Marquis — at least that’s what Mr. Soros says.

Despite the best efforts of the Democrats to smear conservatives with the tar brush of terrorism, the Tea Party has yet to bomb a single government office, shoot a single person or fly a single plane into a single building. In fact, the most the Tea Party has deployed is the occasional strong condemnation; it’s not as if the Tea Party is the Service Employees International Union or anything. And the tendency of liberalism’s leading lights to suggest the alternative is either true or is simply a “matter of time” isn’t just defamatory, it’s — well — rude.

The very same New York Times which erroneously issued the initial report that the Oslo attacks were the work of Islamofascists got back in line with the rest of the liberal storm troopers breathlessly assigning American bloggers like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer complicity in Breivik’s actions. As Geller pointed out, this is paper-thin logic on a par with suggesting the Beatles were responsible for Charles Manson’s murder spree. To shine a current light on it: It’s akin to suggesting the Quran is responsible for… hmm.

Let’s be honest with each other for a moment. Anders Breivik is a Norwegian Tim McVeigh, not a Norwegian Osama bin Laden. Putting aside liberal mendacity, his actions don’t relate to the political ideology of anyone but the perpetrator. Breivik’s brand of terror is spooky-loners type stuff. It’s obviously devastating, but it’s terror with a finite growth curve, a career path with no long-term prospects. It’s sad, tragic and painful for the victims and those who seek a more peaceful world. While Breivik may identify himself as a “Christian,” even the bats in Fred Phelps’ Westboro belfry aren’t blowing up buildings and shooting kids

What’s worth noting in the wake of the Oslo attacks is an apparently visceral need for liberals to link Breivik to their fellow citizens. Granted, with Obama on the ropes just eight months after the GOP dropped a hammer on the Democrats in the House of Representatives, the Democrats are understandably desperate. But the implication that American conservatism is any way the birthplace of Anders Breivik borders on schadenfreude.

I recognize the liberal addiction to authority. But 76 people are dead in Norway. Surely, the Democrats in the United States could have waited for the funerals before turning this tragedy into a campaign slogan.

Now enter Sally Quinn, the “faith” writer of The Washington Post, a self-proclaimed Catholic who supports abortion gay marriage and every other human behavior condemned by the Pope. This week Quinn had a dust up with Bill O’Reilly on his Factor program and vehemently stated Breivik was a Christian, yet her Muslim “friends” tell her terrorists the likes of Major Nidal Hassan and all the other radical Islamists who fly planes into buildings, strap on bombs and blow up kids in the market square or slaughter a family in the home are not real Muslims. The dust up went something like this as reported by mediaite.com:

“Of all the headlines of the bombing and shooting incident last weekend in Norway, Bill O’Reilly has taken most objection to the description of insane butcher Anders Breivik as “Christian.” After a monologue last night on the matter, O’Reilly challenged the author of one of those headlines, the Washington Post’s Sally Quinn, to defend the label.

Quinn opened the floor by nothing that Breivik himself had used the words “I am a Christian,” but that was not anywhere near enough for O’Reilly. “There is no evidence at all that ties this guy to Christianity,” O’Reilly argued, “no evidence this guy is in any church.” Quinn countered that there were texts he had written with the label in them, noting particularly his claim that “we believe in Christianity as a cultural social identity and moral platform.”

“What?! That’s insane!” replied O’Reilly, responding to Breivik’s words. “Mussolini called himself a Christian,” he argued, but in neither example is there any Christian activity– certainly killing is not approved of in Christian teachings. To Quinn, this didn’t quite matter because he self-applied the label: “if someone says they’re a Christian, you have to take them at their word.” She also argued that the same conversation had come up after the attacks at Ford Hood, where Nidal Hassan fired at his colleagues and killed a number of them. O’Reilly didn’t see the analog, as “he carried a business card that said ‘Soldier of Allah,’ and he committed his crimes in the name of Allah.” The Christian God, on the other hand, did not seem to play into the reasoning behind Breivik’s attacks. Nonetheless, Quinn countered that “most Muslims would tell you that guy is not a Muslim,” leaving writers with the same identity dilemma. She also concluded– being given the last word, that Breivik did have a religious goal: “the guy wants to rid the Christian Europe of the Islamic faith.”

You can view the complete video by clicking here.

Sally Quinn and her ilk just will not accept the fact that Muslims are responsible for 99% of the terrorist attacks in this world. They are typical of the liberal left wing apologists who run around screaming don’t blame Muslims for what Muslims do.

According to reporting done by the website NewsBusters, the Times wasn't so quick to brand the men who killed 52 people in the London subway back in 2005. The Times story on that terror incident described the situation this way: "The plot was carried out by a sleeper cell of homegrown extremists rather than highly trained terrorists exported to Britain."

Homegrown? The four London killers were all Muslim extremists, yet the Times avoided the religious label.

If the paper was consistent, it would have described Brevik as "homegrown," right? The guy was born and raised in Norway.

So why are the New York Times and some other liberal media playing the "Christian extremist" card?

Two reasons. First, some on the left want to make an equivalency argument between Muslim terrorism and other kinds of violent acts. The Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was often branded "a right wing terrorist" in the media. Terrorism is terrorism, the analysis goes; it's not fair to constantly emphasize Muslim terrorism without acknowledging the others. Besides, bad men like George W. Bush overhype the Muslim threat and use it to do evil things like invade Iraq.

The second reason is purely political. The left well understands that Christian opposition to things like abortion, gay marriage, and drug legalization makes those liberal causes more difficult to achieve. Thus, anything that diminishes Christianity is fair game to be promoted. Every newsworthy sin committed by a Christian is highlighted with a sneering reference to hypocrisy. Any whiff of Christian intolerance is celebrated in the press.

Just today three men were taken into custody by the authorities for planning another attack at Fort Hood, and low and behold they are Muslims. How about that one Sally? Fox News reports:

“An Army private has been arrested in connection with an alleged plot to attack Fort Hood soldiers that authorities suggest was close to being carried out. The arrest, first reported by Fox News, comes nearly two years after a deadly shooting rampage at the base.

Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, an AWOL soldier from Fort Campbell in Kentucky, was arrested by the Killeen, Texas, Police Department near Fort Hood and remains in custody at the Killeen jail.

Abdo, 21, was found with weapons, explosives and jihadist materials at the time of his arrest, a senior Army source confirms to Fox News. He was arrested at around 2 p.m. Wednesday after someone called authorities to report a suspicious individual.

Eric Vasys, a spokesman with the FBI's San Antonio Office, said authorities found firearms and bomb making components inside Abdo's motel room. Sources also say Abdo was attempting to make a purchase at Guns Galore in Killeen, the same ammunition store where Maj. Nidal Hasan purchased weapons that were allegedly used to gun down 13 people and wound 30 others at the base on Nov. 5, 2009.

Sources said Abdo had enough materials to make two bombs, including 18 pounds of sugar and six pounds of smokeless gunpowder -- a possible trigger for an explosive. A pressure cooker was also found. Another counterterrorism source said the bomb making materials and methodology came "straight out of Inspire (a terrorist magazine) and an Al Qaeda explosives course manual."

Killeen Police Chief Dennis Baldwin alluded to the severity of the threat at a news conference Thursday afternoon announcing the arrest.

"We would probably be here today giving a different briefing had he not been stopped," Baldwin said, and military personnel appeared to be the target.

ABC News reported, citing law enforcement documents, that the target wasn't the base itself but a nearby restaurant that is popular with personnel from Fort Hood.

Police in Killeen received information from the owners of Guns Galore about a suspicious male who entered the store and, after asking about smokeless gun powder, purchased as much as six pounds of the powder, three boxes of 12 gauge ammunition and a magazine for a Springfield 9mm. The man allegedly paid for the items in cash and then left in a cab.

Bob Jenkins, a Fort Campbell spokesman, told Fox News that Abdo was also being investigated for child pornography found on his government computer.

Abdo went AWOL on July 4. On the eve of his first deployment to Afghanistan -- after only one year in the Army -- Abdo applied for conscientious objector status as a Muslim. It was denied by his superiors at Fort Campbell but later overturned by the Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Army review board.”

So how long will it take Sally Quinn’s Muslims friends to convince her that Abdo was not a real Muslim, just a pretend Muslim trying to get out of the Army?