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Accepting A Terrorist: Bush’s Silence Speaks Volumes

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Dan Pashman

A terrorist who committed four bombings on American soil pleaded guilty last week. Two of those attacks killed Americans, one at the Olympics. After pleading guilty, the man said he refused to recognize the legitimacy of the U.S. government because of its sanctioning of abortion.

Before you assume that you know who I’m talking about, imagine that this man’s name was Ali Mohammed. Imagine him not with light skin and short brown hair, but with dark skin and a bushy black beard. And imagine that his stated cause was not one championed by Christian conservatives, but rather by Muslim fundamentalists.

Would he have been allowed to plead guilty and avoid a death sentence? And would President Bush have been so quiet on the issue?

The answer in both cases is an unequivocal "no." Had Eric Rudolph fit America and the president’s preferred image of a terrorist, Bush would have wasted no time calling reporters to the Rose Garden so he could remind Americans that he is keeping us safer. And considering that this president allowed the execution of a mentally retarded person, and that the current Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, was Bush’s accomplice during that Texas debacle, does anyone really believe he would have chosen a Muslim fundamentalist guilty of killing Americans on American soil for a rare show of leniency?

President Bush’s political calculus in choosing not to make hay from Rudolph’s conviction amounts to yet another tip of the cap to the far right. It comes on the heels of several comments by Republican legislators such as Tom Delay and John Cornyn that, only somewhat implicitly, excused physical violence against federal judges who don’t walk the right wing’s increasingly extremist line.

Sadly, the preferential treatment accorded to Eric Rudolph by the Bush administration is not isolated. Paul Krugman pointed out (Noonday in the Shade, 6/22/04) that the discovery of 60 pipe bombs and a chemical weapon in the basement of a white supremacist in April 2003 came and went without so much as a peep from the Attorney General’s office. Krugman wrote of this white supremacist, "It's hard to believe that William Krar wouldn't have become a household name if he had been a Muslim, or even a leftist."

It would be sufficiently disturbing if all the Bush administration did was choose not to classify white, right-wing Christians with penchants for bomb making as terrorists. But they don’t stop there.

Consider the case of Jose Padilla, a Muslim (via conversion) who has been labeled a dirty bomber and a terrorist by the Bush administration, even though they have been unable to muster enough evidence to bring a single charge against him, after holding him in a military prison for over two years. They wasted no time in telling the American people that Padilla’s arrest had made us all safer, but two years later, they haven’t even busted Padilla for unpaid parking tickets. Ah, but I guess I’m missing the point. If it looks like a terrorist, and it prays like a terrorist, it must be a terrorist. Case closed.

The Bush administration’s implicit defense of right-wing terrorism represents an unprecedented (and un-American) level of political pandering. It’s time that this double standard be called what it is: bigotry.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Dan Pashman is an Editorial Producer for Air America Radio.