The Arizona Shooting and Jihad: Immoral Equivalency?!

Few noticed a disturbing and remarkable comment made by Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton yesterday. While taping a satellite television show for Arab women at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, Ms. Clinton compared the alleged psychotic killer in the tragic Arizona shootings, Jared Loughery, to Islamic extremists. Her comments; “look, we have extremists in my country, a wonderful, incredibly brave young woman Congress member, Congresswoman Giffords, was just shot by an extremist in our country. We have the same kinds of problems.” These comments are not as insignificant or benign as they may seem. All indications are that Loughner is a crazed killer, not a terrorist. Clinton’s comments draw a kind of “immoral equivalency” between a severely mentally ill person and Islamic Jihad; an organized, worldwide and religiously motivated extremist movement bent on destroying the West and replacing it with their view of what the world should be.

Although par for the course for the ever-placating Obama administration, these statements which were uttered on Arab soil, are emblematic of the perfectly wrong approach adopted by the current administration in their dealing with Islamism. Rather than hold Muslims accountable for the heinous Islamist ideology that plagues their religion, Ms. Clinton gives the sick culture of global Jihad yet another pass by comparing them to a mentally deranged individual.The implication is that they’ve got a few crackpots in a cave somewhere and we’ve got a few too. Personally, I prefer the past two days reprehensible leftist comments blaming Loughners alleged shooting spree on the political right’s usual suspects to Clinton’s words that effectively deflate the significance of Islamists and thereby insulate them. The ridiculous and desperate attempts to exploit this tragedy for partisan gain by the political left have no real promise for traction. The Secretary of States comments, on the other hand, intensifies the very real threat we face from radical Islam.