For a millisecond, it appeared that President Obama was making a principled defense of religious tolerance and freedom: (via digby)
Let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances," Obama said.
"This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable."
But then (again via digby), not so much:
Speaking to reporters today, President Obama drew a sharp line under his comments last night, insisting that his defense of the right to build a mosque does not mean he supports the project.
"I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding," he said.
Obama's new stance is logically consistent with his words last night, if a bit less "clarion," as Mike Bloomberg called the first remarks. And there are certainly two possible stances here: Bloomberg's, that the Cordoba project itself represents the best of America; and Obama's, that the freedom of religion is an important American value.
Obama's new remarks, literally speaking, re-open the question of which side he's on. Most of the mosque's foes recognize the legal right to build, and have asked the builders to reconsider.
Osama bin Laden has just got to be tickled pink. For a moment there, he was probably worried. It almost sounded like Obama was going to turn a corner and start rebuilding trust in the Islamic Middle East--trust that had dramatically eroded in the past year:
But now haters everywhere can breath a sigh of relief. The great champion of tolerance is cutting them all the slack they could possibly wish for. He's not going to wage any sort of grand campaign on behalf of mutual respect and tolerance, so violent extremists on all sides--and their supporters--will be free to run amok and destroy any chance of peace breaking out.
You see, the folks behind Cordoba House are precisely the sort of Moslems that al Qaeda wants to destroy (Chris Martinez via digby):
[T]he Cordoba House is deliberately, expressly, and unequivocally intended to stand for the diametric opposite of what the 9/11 attackers believed. It would stand for inclusion, reconciliation, and understanding across faiths and cultures. In fact, in many ways, the Muslim founders of the Cordoba House (and its imam) are the sorts of Muslims that bin Laden and his adherents hate most. They are cosmopolitan and modern. The Cordoba House itself will contain many earthly luxuries and pleasures. Its founders (and location) actively embrace multicultural, multi-sectarian, quintessentially modern New York City, and many of its proponents have happily lived in Southern Manhattan for decades.
The Cordoba House, in other words, is not only separate and distinct from the identity and ideology of al Qaeda and the 9/11 terrorists, it is a direct repudiation ("refudiation," for Sarah Palin) of them.
Of course it goes without saying that every war we fight--in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Yemen, in Ethiopa, in The Sudan, wherever--will only make things worse, particularly when we make deals with strongmen (or wannabes) and spurn those--like the backers of Cordoba House--who have a far, far better understanding of what makes America great than we do ourselves.
So, way to go, anti-principle man! You're doing a much better job of fighting George Bush's self-destructive wars than Bush himself could ever have done.
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