New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's ongoing defense of the proposed Park 51 project should make New Yorkers proud -- and it should shame Republicans and Democrats who have either failed to speak up or sided with those who believe Muslims are collectively responsible for al-Qaeda's actions:
But if we say that a mosque and community center should not be built near the perimeter of the World Trade Center site, we would compromise our commitment to fighting terror with freedom.
"We would undercut the values and principles that so many heroes died protecting. We would feed the false impressions that some Americans have about Muslims. We would send a signal around the world that Muslim Americans may be equal in the eyes of the law, but separate in the eyes of their countrymen. And we would hand a valuable propaganda tool to terrorist recruiters, who spread the fallacy that America is at war with Islam.
"Islam did not attack the World Trade Center -- Al-Qaeda did. To implicate all of Islam for the actions of a few who twisted a great religion is unfair and un-American. Today we are not at war with Islam -- we are at war with Al-Qaeda and other extremists who hate freedom.
"At this very moment, there are young Americans -- some of them Muslim -- standing freedoms' watch in Iraq and Afghanistan, and around the world. A couple here tonight, Sakibeh and Asaad Mustafa, has children who have served our country overseas and after 9/11, one of them aided in the recovery efforts at Ground Zero. I’d like to ask them to stand, so we can show our appreciation. Thank you.
"The members of our military are men and women at arms -- battling for hearts and minds. And their greatest weapon in that fight is the strength of our American values, which have always inspired people around the world. But if we do not practice here at home what we preach abroad -- if we do not lead by example -- we undermine our soldiers. We undermine our foreign policy objectives. And we undermine our national security.
This speech hits all the right notes -- from the national-security imperatives to the vital message that Muslims are no less New Yorkers or Americans for being Muslim. On the one hand it's the kind of speech you'd like to hear the president give, on the other this really is, in a fundamental way, a local issue, and Bloomberg is an appropriate person to make this case. Still, it's somewhat weird to hear a big-city mayor lay out the intellectual foundations for what is essentially a national-security issue.
Video via Greg Sargent.
