In one of the most embarrassingly unconscious self-accusations in recent memory,
Newsweek weighs in on why Joe Stack, the guy who flew his plane into an IRS building, was "not a terrorist"
here. The brilliant Glen Greenwald tears
Newsweek a new one
here. Over at
Mother Jones, Kevin Drum teases out a possible argument that Stack doesn't qualify as a terrorist: his gripes against "the system" were too crackpot to qualify as political justification for what was, obviously, a terrorist act. Your mileage may vary on that one, but for me it's Drum's argument that doesn't quite qualify as a political justification for
not calling Stack a terrorist.
Meanwhile Mark P. Shea wonders aloud, "
Why aren't we waterboarding Joe Stack's daughter right now?" After all, she called her dad "a hero," and she certainly could be connected to the crazy-tea-baggin' underbelly of American culture. What does she know, and when did she know it?
Charles Krauthammer, what's your opinion?
[Update: It turns out Stack's daughter moved to Norway some years ago. Make that high-tax, but almost all-white, Norway.]
Taken together, all this "debate" does begin to get at a central question about those who support torture in this country, which is: are they racist, consciously or unconsciously? What does it mean when we're so reluctant to call a crazed white man who flies his plane into a building a terrorist? Why is waterboarding his white daughter so completely out of the question for these people? In other words, is support for torture really a form of racism?
Newsweek editors, discuss among yourselves!
