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Opening Arguments

It's the jews, or the guns

Well, of course, he does, the old fool: Jimmy Carter blames recent terror attacks on Israel.

In the wake of the Islamist terror attacks in France against cartoonists and Jews, former President Jimmy Carter’s first reaction was to pin the motivation for such terrorism on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Appearing on “The Daily Show” Monday, Carter was asked by host Jon Stewart whether the violence the world saw on the streets of Paris was actually fueled by something else other than Islamic extremism.

“Well, one of the origins for it is the Palestinian problem,” Carter replied. “And this aggravates people who are affiliated in any way with the Arab people who live in the West Bank and Gaza, what they are doing now — what’s being done to them. So I think that’s part of it.”

In a world becoming more dangerous every day because of militant Muslim extremism, it seems peculiar to me to hope for anything but a strong Israel as our ally in the Mideast. Anti-Zionism has always perplexed me as much as anti-Semitism does, and it seems especially wrongheaded at this point in history.

But Carter's reaction, to me, wasn't the oddest. That distinction goes to syndicated columnist Eugene Robinson, who said that if the French terror attack had happene here, it would have been much worse, because you know, we have all those icky guns:

“Just to keep it in perspective, I don’t think we should imagine that the conditions and the threat are exactly the same in the United States as they are in France,” he said. “They are different.”

“In fact, one thing that is different here is weapons are universally available and so, uh, it is actually a very good thing that…that…that the tensions are not exactly the same because we would expect to have a lot more of that sort of carnage here.”

Er, well. The obvious point to argue is that one reason for the carnage was that none of the employees had the means with which to defend themselves because of France's very tight gun-control laws, which did not hamper the terrorists' ability to get automatic weapons and training in how to use them. There is at least a chance they would have met more resistance in this country, which would have meant less carnaege.

Comments

Larry Morris
Tue, 01/13/2015 - 10:51am

Gun control folks will say just about anything, and try to twist almost anything into their point of view.  No matter how stupid it sounds. 

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