The “Ground Zero mosque”: Obama cowers before right-wing hysteria

[Antid Oto]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

The “Ground Zero mosque”: Obama cowers before right-wing hysteria
18 August 2010

With the US mid-term elections less than three months away, the issue that has
become the focus of this campaign season is a telling indicator of the intensely
reactionary character of official politics in America and of both big business
parties.

Employing unbridled hypocrisy and cynicism, right-wing forces centered in the
Republican Party, but aided and abetted by leading Democrats, have attempted to
whip up mob hysteria against a proposed Islamic cultural center that has been
approved by local authorities for construction in lower Manhattan.

The center, the Cordoba House, is to include a swimming pool, a gym, an arts
center and a memorial to the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks. While its supporters have stressed its inter-faith character, it has
been almost universally dubbed as the “Ground Zero mosque.”

Semi-fascist elements have denounced the proposed center—to be built two and a
half blocks from where New York City’s World Trade Center once stood—as a
desecration of the “sacred ground” where over 2,700 people were killed on 9/11.
Former House Speaker and probable Republican presidential candidate Newt
Gingrich has compared the backers of the project to Nazis protesting outside the
Holocaust museum.

The reality is that, nearly nine years after the attacks, the former World Trade
Center largely remains a hole in the ground, a sprawling construction site in
which little has been built. No memorial has been erected to those who died, as
real estate developers and government officials have haggled year after year
over financial terms.

Within roughly the same walking distance from this “sacred ground,” one passes
strip joints, porn shops, betting parlors and dance clubs, none of which appear
to have wounded the sensibilities of these patriotic defenders of the sanctity
of Ground Zero. The center itself is to take the place of a dilapidated
warehouse, previously the site of a Burlington Coat Factory outlet.

The real aims of those attacking the Cordoba House are not the protection of the
nonexistent sanctity of Ground Zero or the shielding of the sensibilities of
9/11 victims’ families. It is a vicious attempt to foment and exploit religious
bigotry, xenophobia and outright racism to drive politics ever further to the right.

The far-reaching implications of this campaign entail an assault on the First
Amendment of the US Constitution, guaranteeing freedom of speech and religion
and barring the government from establishing a state religion or lending
preference to one religion over another. This includes the right of Muslims, or
any other religious minority, to worship how and where they choose, without the
interference of the government or other religious institutions. The “Ground Zero
mosque” campaign is consciously directed at mobilizing elements of the religious
right that reject this principle.

It is entirely in sync with a parallel attempt to foment mass hysteria over
immigration, portraying immigrants as a criminal class responsible for the loss
of jobs and social services. Increasingly, this campaign has embraced the demand
for the repeal of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment—which guarantees
citizenship to every person born in the US—in order to clear the way for the
deportation of millions of children born in the US to undocumented immigrants.
This amendment is the Constitutional foundation of equal protection under the law.

In both cases, the assault on core Constitutional principles and democratic
rights has been coupled with venomous rhetoric that serves as an incitement to
violence against immigrants, racial minorities and Muslims.

For months, the Obama White House refused to comment on the controversy,
insisting in the face of an assault on core Constitutional principles and a
nationwide hate campaign that the dispute was little more than a local zoning
matter.

Then, last Friday, Obama delivered a speech to a Ramadan dinner at the White
House affirming that “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as
everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of
worship and a community center in Lower Manhattan … This is America. And our
commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.”

Within the space of 24 hours—and in the wake of a firestorm of Republican right
criticism—Obama demonstrated that his commitment was anything but unshakeable.
“I was not commenting and will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision
to put a mosque there,” he told reporters. “I was commenting very specifically
on the right of people that date back to our founding.”

In other words, Obama’s White House speech was nothing more than a formal
recognition of the Constitutional rights that he is sworn to defend, upholding
them in principle, while refusing to lift a finger in their defense against
those who would deny these rights in practice.

Obama’s cowardly retreat was followed by a similar statement from Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada), who on Monday issued a gutless
statement acknowledging that “The First Amendment protects freedom of religion,”
while insisting “the mosque should be built someplace else.” Needless to say,
the senator did not propose any alternative site, much less offer to have the
center built in Nevada.

There is little to distinguish Obama and Reid from Gingrich, Sarah Palin and
others on the Republican right, who also formally acknowledge freedom of
religion, while demanding that this freedom be denied to Muslims. Both parties
are content to turn the Constitution into a dead letter, replacing it with
statutes more suited to police-state repression at home and permanent military
aggression abroad.

Why did Obama bother giving the speech if he was prepared to repudiate it so
quickly? Clearly, it was not motivated by any concern for religious freedom or
democratic rights.

The real motivation was suggested in a Washington Post column by Michael Gerson,
the former speechwriter for George W. Bush, who aptly noted that with his speech
and speedy backtracking, “Obama managed to collect all the political damage for
taking an unpopular stand without gaining credit for political courage.”

The US president, Gerson continued, was compelled to make such a speech, because
he “leads a coalition that includes Iraqi and Afghan Muslims who risk death each
day fighting Islamic radicalism at our side. How could he possibly tell them
that their place of worship inherently symbolizes the triumph of terror?”

Obama acted not out of commitment to Constitutional principles, but rather, in
all likelihood, at the prodding of the Pentagon and the US foreign policy
establishment. They fear that the anti-Muslim campaign being whipped up by the
Republican right could undermine US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan
to affirm Washington’s hegemony in the overwhelmingly Muslim Middle East and
Central Asia, the world’s two most important sources of oil and gas.

Indeed, the principal figure involved in the Cordoba House project, Imam Feisal
Abdul Rauf, plays a direct role in these US efforts. The State Department
announced last week that it is sending Rauf on a goodwill tour of the Middle
East, the third such mission by the Muslim cleric, with whom the State
Department acknowledged having “a long-term relationship.” The Imam has also
provided training for the FBI and police agencies in dealing with Muslim
populations.

The “Ground Zero mosque” controversy has ensnared the Obama administration in an
unavoidable contradiction. On the one hand US imperialism needs to recruit
Muslim allies and puppets to further its two ongoing wars, as well as to support
aggression against Iran. On the other hand, it has whipped up anti-Muslim
sentiment within the general population and among US troops in order to generate
religious-based support for these wars.

In the final analysis, the fascistic agitation against the Islamic center in
Lower Manhattan, together with the cowering response of the Obama administration
and the Democratic Party, demonstrate that the militarism and imperialist war
abroad coupled with ever-widening social inequality at home are incompatible
with democratic rights. The escalating attacks on rights that go back to the
founding of the American republic constitute a stark warning. The defense of
these rights requires a counteroffensive by the working class against the
reactionary social and political forces being mobilized to subvert them and
against the profit system that gives rise to these attacks.

Bill Van Auken

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/pers-a18.shtml

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********