Bin Laden's Willing Idiots

This post from Josh Marshall is spot on and his point is one everyone concerned about Al Qaeda and its influence in the Muslim world should be shouting from the rooftops. Whether or not one likes the idea of the Cordoba House, whether or not one thinks every Muslim is out to get America and whether or not you'd prefer no more mosques built in the US until there's a cathedral at Mecca (just for you Newt), this controversy is going to be OBL's best recruiting tool since America invaded Iraq.

Those who oppose the drive to block the Cordoba House project in lower Manhattan have mainly focused on the 1st Amendment and American pluralism in their public statements. And that is, in many ways, as it should be because those arguments go to the core of who we are as Americans. What's gotten far less comment is an at least as potent pragmatic or perhaps better to say strategic argument. Quite simply, the furor of opposition to the Cordoba House project and the spasm of Islamophobia is the best recruiting tool that bin Laden and his imitators could possibly hope for. As Ali Soufan, a near legendary FBI counter-terrorism interrogator has just written in Forbes, in the wake of the anti-Mosque furor, bin Laden's 'next video script has just written itself.'

A failure of leadership

Providing guidance, comfort, support and direction. Those are all recognized characteristics of a leader and there are many more such positive traits we regularly assign to our favored societal leaders be the social, cultural, military or political. One trait that all great leaders posses but often gets short shrift in popular awareness is a negating one. A great leader helps those who admire and look up to them banish the less worthy, prejudiced and fearful thoughts and ideas that all people hold, replacing them with positive desires, goals and methods of achieving them.

America's political system, with some important exceptions, lacks leaders with this trait and the Republican party's willingness to demagogue the issue of the Park 51 community center illustrate just how depraved the opposition has become as it fights to return to power. The litany of arguments that can and should be made for why there is no reason to oppose and many reasons to support the project range from the moral to the strategic to the constitutional to the juridical and have been made with greater eloquence than I can offer. Mayor Bloomberg's speech is a good example. However, the cravenness of its opponents has been little discussed by political and media commentary. 

Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, the Republican candidates for New York City Mayor and a huge selection of high level Republicans deserve all the opprobrium society can muster as they have pandered to America's basest, most xenophobic instincts. Democrats, led by the deplorable example of the Senate leader Harry Reid, who have meekly let the demagogues control the discourses and allowed bigotry to dominate any rational discussion. There is little good that can come of this episode, though a positive statement from former President Bush who understood the dangers of declaring a cultural war, would certainly help. All that can be done is for us as a society to move past this, reminded once again of the damage demagoguery and irresponsible leadership by those in politically powerful positions can wreak on our constitutional values.