Cordoba House’s latest tactic is to treat the Ground Zero Mosque as a ‘fait accompli.’ They’ve rejected NY Governor Paterson’s offer of state property as a more harmonious location. They argue that moving the Mosque now is unacceptable because it ‘validates the idea that all Muslims are responsible’ for 9/11. Simply by announcing their plans for a Mosque at Ground Zero, Cordoba imagines they’ve already maneuvered Americans into accepting the Mosque, rather than insult all Muslims. That’s what they imagine.
First of all, moving the Mosque does not mean we blame all Muslims for 9/11. It only ‘validates’ that the Ground Zero Mosque was a huge diplomatic blunder in the first place, that Cordoba House acknowledges their blunder, owns it, and is willing to fix it. But I’ll get back to that.
It’s this fait accompli tactic that raises my antennae. ‘Fait accompli’ is an aggressive diplomatic ploy. You establish a foothold in such a way that it’s too costly for your adversary to drive you out. A quick google finds ‘fait accompli’ associated with terms like ‘coercive diplomacy’ and ‘power play’:
“Kurdish parliamentarians had to give in to the fait accompli.”
“… the effective use of coercive diplomacy to improve the status quo in an actor’s favor is Hitler’s strategy of encroachments … a German fait accompli strategy …”
“The view from Tehran is that Mr. Obama has already accepted Iran’s nuclear program as fait accompli.”
“The American and British leaders acquiesced in Stalins fait accompli …”
“But Karamanlis refused to negotiate under the pressure of a fait accompli.”
The use of fait accompli coercion ploy by Cordoba House demolishes the Mosque’s purported purpose of fostering harmony with Islam. But it’s clear Cordoba House has abandoned the Mosque’s ‘purported purpose.’ One must ask now, were they ever sincere? No rational person can claim the Ground Zero Mosque promotes harmony; it obviously promotes conflict. With the initial rationale for the Mosque lost, now Cordoba shifts to the position that relocating the Mosque would even worsen American-Islamic relations — as if those relations were a one-sided street. As if Islam was the victim of 9/11, not America.
If Cordoba House accepted Paterson’s proposal, the groundbreaking ceremony would be a big to-do, attended by the Governor, the Mayor, maybe even Secretary Clinton, a public embrace between Fareed Zakaria/ADL. This is a much better result for Islamic-American relations than the spiraling diplomatic screw-up on which Cordoba has become insistent. So yes, Cordoba’s intransigence is a red flag. And Governor Paterson’s offer looks like a shrewd feeler of Cordoba’s true intentions.
Back to the toxic, coercive claim that Governor Paterson’s generous offer to mediate the dispute means Americans blame all Muslims for 9/11. As I said, that is false.
False and offensive. In New York City, all subway riders are subject to random bag searches by the police. All subway riders, not just ‘Middle-east looking.’ New Yorkers gladly cooperate. On his NY Times blog, the ultra-leftist Krugman actually bragged about being searched. When Zionist crackpot Dov Hikind said the police should only search Muslims, New York shouted him down almost unanimously. I personally had a letter published in NY Metro requesting Mayor Bloomberg should just tell Hikind to shut up.
In fact, Cordoba’s tactic is grotesquely offensive. In Afghanistan, General McChrystal agonized over civilian casualties, to the point where his rules of engagement risk the lives of American troops in order to minimize the death of innocent Muslims:
“… top U.S. commander General Stanley McChrystal issued tough new guidelines that made it infinitely harder to call in a strike from the sky. The idea was to eliminate the civilian casualties that were alienating the Afghan population. But the effect of the new rules has been to make life much more dangerous for the U.S. troops on the ground there.”
So American troops die rather than call in an airstrike to knock out a Taliban ambush, in order to spare Muslim lives–whom the Taliban use as human shields–yet Cordoba has the grotesque audacity to say Americans blame all Muslims for 9/11. If we did, we’d do a lot more than object to a Mosque; we just recently recognized the anniversary of Hiroshima.
But if Mosque supporters indeed believe Americans blame all Muslims for 9/11, then they believe the Ground Zero Mosque symbolizes a lie: that everything is hunky-dory Kumbaya between America and Islam. If they believe the Mosque symbolizes a lie, why were they so determined to build it?
