Lighten up Weezy. You "War on Terror" protagonists should be happy. After all, Obama's lived up to his campaign promises to redeploy troops from Iraq to Afghanistan and to root out terrorist cells in Pakistan.
But if you think for one second that Bush's (and now Obama's) "War on Terror" will not bring blowback on the U.S. and Western Europe for generations to come, then you have achieved a level of denial that's normally only seen in battered wives, Catholic priests & Cubs fans.
Trench
Priests cursed with same lot as Muslims
Joe Fitzgerald By Joe Fitzgerald
If you?re big on compassion and fair play, then these past few days have been heartening, watching civic leaders and media pundits circling their wagons around the Muslim community, railing against the injustice of blanket indictments.
Their point is unassailable: Every man of Middle Eastern descent is obviously not responsible for the savagery of a lunatic fringe that shares their heritage and their faith.
Since last week?s arrests of three New England Pakistanis in connection with the attempted Times Square bombing, we have been deluged with stories of how innocents are now feeling the heat of unmerited suspicion.
But that?s nothing we haven?t seen here before; indeed, no group has been more wrongfully profiled than priests whose ministries have been besmirched by reprobates in their ranks.
Brookline selectwoman Jesse Mermell cried out against ?painting people with broad strokes,? showing solidarity with Elias Audy, at whose Brookline filling station one of the arrested Pakistanis worked.
Good for her. By all accounts, Audy, a Lebanese immigrant, has been a model citizen and pillar of the community.
?Of course this has affected us,? he told reporters. ?We?re human. It?s tension; it?s pressure; it?s stress.?
Audy was talking about guilt by association.
But is that any less unfair to a brutally maligned priesthood?
A parochial vicar in a bustling Boston parish raised that issue here in 2002.
?There?s a retired priest I?m friendly with, a very traditional guy rarely seen not wearing his clerics,? he noted. ?But he stopped wearing them as often, and when I asked why, he said, ?I feel ashamed.?
?I knew exactly what he meant. When I go into a CVS or supermarket now, people either look through me as if I?m not there, or I get a contemptuous stare.
?I feel like telling them, ?Look, I didn?t do it!? It wouldn?t surprise me if these are the same people who say, ?Now let?s not profile all Middle Eastern men because a few blew up the World Trade Center.? ?
He was right when he said it and he?s still right eight years later.
Good Muslims are not hard to find, which seems to be the message of the day. But neither are good priests. What?s hard to find is anyone willing to give them a similar benefit of any doubt.
