Modern political discourse is largely devoid of nuance. Every Republican is a Nazi, every Democrat is a communist, every election is the “most important election in history,” and every war is a genocide. There are plenty of valid reasons to oppose President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran. Congress has not declared war since World War II, and the U.S. is now nearly $39 trillion in debt. The latter alone is reason enough to oppose any proposed expenditure until the debt crisis is addressed. Fears of spiking oil and gas prices are entirely justified, as are concerns that the Iran War could become yet another Middle Eastern quagmire.
The Bush-era claim that “terrorists hate us for our freedom” was a childish assertion. Equally childish, however, is the reflexive impulse from members of both the isolationist right and left to excuse away the actions of Muslims, up to and including the attempted slaughter of innocent children.
After a Lebanese immigrant attacked a Michigan synagogue and preschool last week, comedian and political commentator Dave Smith posted on X, “Islam is such a violent religion. Every time we murder a bunch of their children, they try to kill some of us. Disgusting.” Members of the press breathlessly attempted to justify the failed attempt to murder Jewish children by pointing out that the attacker’s brothers were killed in an Israeli airstrike, while avoiding the fact that the men were members of Hezbollah, a U.S. designated terrorist organization. To Israel-obsessed pundits, Muslims have no personal agency. They cannot be held accountable for their actions. In the words of one CNN pundit, “we are the bad guys.”
This is yet another example of the soft bigotry of low expectations. By excusing terrorism as a justified response to grievance, pundits infantilize Muslims. In their eyes, Muslims are the only group on Earth who cannot be expected to exercise restraint and moral judgement when provoked.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putin’s military has lost between 250-350k soldiers. Many of them undoubtedly met their end due to American arms, tech, and/or intelligence. Despite there being nearly three million ethnic Russians living in America, there have been zero violent acts by Russians against American civilians. Allahu Ackbar-screaming Islamists have committed terrorist attacks in Texas, Virginia, and Michigan since the beginning of the Iran War three weeks ago.
The U.S. has only been around for 250 years. Blowback can only be used to explain the many Muslim incursions into non-Muslim lands over the last 1,400 years if you consider opposition to Islamization itself an act worthy of violence. Muslim armies invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and conquered most of modern-day Spain and Portugal, even taking territory in Gaul before being defeated by Charles Martel’s forces at the Battle of Tours. Muslims conquered Sicily in the ninth century and laid siege to Rome in 846. The Ottomans gradually took control of modern-day Greece, Bosnia, Serbia, and Bulgaria, ultimately taking Constantinople in 1453, ending the Byzantine Empire, the last vestige of Roman power. Greece, the birthplace of Western Civilization itself, was occupied by the Ottoman Empire for nearly four centuries.
It took a heroic uprising by the Greeks, and the aid of the British, French, and Russian navies to push the Muslim invaders out of the Balkan Peninsula in the late 1820s. Was Ottoman oppression of the Greeks “blowback” from the Battle of Marathon, 1,000 years before Islam came into existence? Be serious.
WHY ANTHROPIC IS SUING THE PENTAGON
Violence due to radical Islamic ideology is as old as the religion itself. It predates Trump, the Iraq war, the modern State of Israel, the United States, and even the British Empire. Islamists killed both French and Danish illustrators for the “crime” of drawing caricatures of Mohammed, and last week targeted small children simply because they are Jewish.
No one would claim that a Christian, Jew, or Hindu is justified in committing violence against innocents; why are we supposed to give radical Muslims a pass whenever there is a war on?
Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a writer, musician, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.
