Rich makes the simple but brilliant point that the same U.S. conservatives who say you can't trust any Muslim, even a U.S.-born Muslim in American uniform, are the same ones totally committed -- no matter what the cost in U.S. lives or treasure -- to continuing the futile effort to win over Muslim hearts and minds in Iraq and especially Afghanistan.
See the disconnect?
(That feeling you're feeling in your head right now is called "cognitive dissonance." Don't fear it. Learn from it. Let your brain do its thing and then do what it tells you.)
By Frank Rich
November 14, 2009 | New York Times
[...]
As their Fort Hood rhetoric made clear, McChrystal's most vehement partisans don't trust American Muslims, let alone those of the Taliban, no matter how earnestly the general may argue that they can be won over by our troops' friendliness (or bribes). If, as the right has it, our Army cannot be trusted to recognize a Hasan in its own ranks, then how will it figure out who the "good" Muslims will be as we try to build a "stable" state (whatever "stable" means) in a country that has never had a functioning central government? If our troops can't be protected from seemingly friendly Muslim American brethren in Killeen, Tex., what are the odds of survival for the 40,000 more troops the hawks want to deploy to Kabul and sinkholes beyond?
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