WaPo's Marcus Defends King Hearings

You can find my thoughts on the IC mainpage with regard to Representative Peter King's hearings on the radicalization of Muslims in the United States which are scheduled to take place tomorrow.

Well, King's hearings have an unlikely defender in Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post. While Marcus does criticize the New York Republican's language and temperament ("His manner is blustering verging on crude.") she does defend the legitimacy and necessity of the hearings.

Marcus begins the article by taking us back to when Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the House Judiciary Committee last May. During the hearing, Texas Republican Lamar Smith pressed Holder about the role radical Islam played in the Fort Hood massacre, the attempted Christmas underwear bombing aboard Northwest Flight 253 and, of course, the attempted car bombing of Times Square. Holder held out as best he could before grudgingly acknowledging "it's possible that people who espouse a radical version of Islam have had an ability to have an impact" on the Nidal Malik Hasans, the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabs and the Faisal Shahzads of the world:

The roots of Holder's reticence are admirable: He wanted to avoid tarring an entire faith with the sins of a few extreme adherents. But the unavoidable fact is that, however much violent terror reflects a distortion of the tenets of Islam, it is not only practiced by adherents of the religion but practiced in its name.

To ignore the religious nature of the terrorist threat is to succumb to politically correct delusion. To ignore the homegrown religious nature of the terrorist threat is to succumb even further.

Well, I don't think I would characterize Holder's reticence as particularly admirable. Holder and the Obama Administration do our country a disservice by pretending radical Islam doesn't drive these terrorist attacks or attempted terrorist attacks. But otherwise Marcus' observations are spot on. The Obama Administration would thus be wise not to dismiss King's hearings out of hand.