Jon Ward reports:
President Obama on Saturday said he had not expressed an opinion the day before on whether a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero is appropriate, as the White House scrambled to limit the political damage from the president’s seeming expression of support for the project at a dinner with Muslim leaders at the White House.
“My intention was simply to let people know what I thought,” Obama said Saturday, after causing a stir Friday at a White House Iftar dinner to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Ramadan.
“In this country, we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion. I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” Obama told reporters accompanying him and first lady Michelle Obama on a trip to the Gulf Coast…
But deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton said in a statement Saturday: “Just to be clear, the President is not backing off in any way from the comments he made last night.”
Of course not! He’s not saying they’re acting stupidly by building a mosque there. He’s not accusing them of clinging bitterly to their scimitars and religion. But he’s also not supporting it… he’s just not not supporting it. (Unless you think he should support it, in which case he definitely does, but keep it under your hat.)
Of all the arguments for not not supporting it, perhaps one of the dumbest is, “It’s not actually at Ground Zero! It’s a whole three blocks away!” The next time somebody says this to you, remind him or her that the Burlington Coat Factory building closed on 9/11/01 and has been vacant ever since, which is why the owner let the Cordoba House developers have it for a song.
And why did it close on 9/11/01? Because the landing gear from one of the planes crashed into it.
Would it be possible to build a mosque someplace where wreckage from an attack by Islamic terrorists didn’t land? That’s now considered a racist and bigoted question, which must be why 70% of the country is asking it.
I’m also told that conservatives should be happy about the construction because it’ll improve the local economy. Apparently the idea is, “You Break It, You Buy It.”