Why are so many conservative bloggers ignoring the context of Tom Tancredo's ill-considered remarks and accusing him of recommending that we bomb Mecca?
Let's back up the tape a few seconds, shall we?
Campbell: Worst case scenario, if they do have these nukes inside the borders and they were to use something like that — what would our response be?
Tancredo: What would be the response? You know, there are things that you could threaten to do before something like that happens and then you may have to do afterwards that are quite draconian.
Campbell: Such as...
Tancredo: Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, um, you know, you could take out their holy sites . . .
Campbell: You're talking about bombing Mecca.
Tancredo: Yeah. What if you said — what if you said that we recognize that this is the ultimate threat to the United States — therefore this is the ultimate threat, this is the ultimate response.
I mean, I don't know, I'm just throwing out there some ideas because it seems to me . . . at that point in time you would be talking about taking the most draconian measures you could possibly imagine and because other than that all you could do is once again tighten up internally.
While I'm certainly not going to endorse Tancredo's comments, I'd expect a little less hyperbole from his right-wing critics. There's a difference between suggesting, in a very tentative manner, that the threat of bombing Muslim holy sites might have a deterrent effect on terrorists (highly doubtful) and recommending such bombing as policy. Note also the language of the AP report that's being cited for this story.
The congressman later said he was “just throwing out some ideas†and that an “ultimate threat†might have to be met with an “ultimate response.â€
"The congressmen later said," giving the impression that Tancredo offered this as some sort of after-the-fact exculpatory explanation, when in fact the transcript shows that those words were spoken in the very next two sentences of the original interview.
Tancredo should have realized that his response would be seized on and distorted, by his political opponents as well as by terrorist apologists and recruiters. Moreover, the notion of threatening the holy sites of any faith in response to, as he himself put it, the actions of its extremists, is obviously flawed and unacceptable. When you smell a skunk, your natural instinct is to quickly put as much distance between you and it as possible. But it should be honest distance, is all I'm saying.
