Americans planning… II – just a little crazy and dangerous

William Jacobson asks (at home blog here):

Am I crazy and dangerous for pointing out [Frank] Rich’s intellectual laziness and predictability?

Well, since you ask:  Probably just a little, maybe not as dangerous as you’d like to be.  Otherwise, you’re just a blogger responding fatuously – not to mention lazily and predictably – to the argument you prefer to address, rather than to the argument that was being made:

Poor General Petraeus. Over the last week he has been ubiquitous in the major newspapers and on television as he pursues a publicity tour to pitch the war he’s inherited. But have you heard any buzz about what he had to say? Any debate? Any anything? No one was listening and no one cared. Everyone was too busy yelling about the mosque.

It’s poignant, really. Even as America’s most venerable soldier returned from the front to valiantly assume the role of Willy Loman, the product he was selling was being discredited and discontinued by his own self-proclaimed allies at home.

Rich takes the further position that the main facilitators of the smear campaign againstPark51/Cordoba – at Fox News and among allied politicians, activists, and bloggers – are hypocrites of the worst kind and twice over:  First,  most pretend to support Petraeus and his troops, but are busily undermining that “last ditch effort” at home and abroad, while relieving Al Qaeda and other enemies of the U.S. of challenges to an effective propaganda strategy.  Second, Fox and friends have been running an all-hands-on-deck attack on Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf for supposedly dubious connections and unacceptable rhetoric, while taking on as a major investor and partner (to the tune of billions of dollars) the same Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal whom, among other things, Rudy G famously snubbed after 9/11 on a similar basis.

Somehow, Mr. Jacobson, you seem to have missed both parts.  You were too busy providing decisively pessimistic quotes from Frank Rich on Afghanistan that Frank Rich is probably quite proud of, and that, in some small part with your help and the help of others like you, may even look quite prescient one day soon.

* * *

Reacting to the appearance on THIS WEEK by the Imam with the plan’s wife Daisy Khan, Don Surber one-ups William Jacobson in the trivially crazy-dangerous sweepstakes (h/t miguel cervantes).  In a post demonstrating a stubborn determination to oppose what he should be promoting (a pro-American re-interpretation of Islam), to lend support to what he claims to oppose (anti-American Islamism), and, most of all, to find new pretexts for taking offense, Surber focuses on one attention-getting quote from Khan:

We are deeply concerned, because this is like a metastasized antisemitism. It’s beyond Islamophobia. It’s hate of Muslims.

Surber interprets that statement as follows:

So not only are opponents anti-Islamic, but anti-Jewish.

Really, there’s just no arguing with that.

(Doubly really – I left a short comment drawing attention to the above statement at Surber’s blog – going as far as, prepare for your blood to curl and your hair to be curdled, to say that it was “adventurously offense-seeking.”  It seems to have been “moderated” into the cornfield.  Similar thing happened with a blogger-critical comment at that recent post of Karl’s at HotAir, too.  Will update if further exciting developments develop.)