Hillary Compares Arizona Shooting To...9/11?

The Telegraph has the story from Abu Dhabi, where Hillary Clinton compares Gabrielle Giffords shooting to 9/11 attacks

In a television broadcast filmed before students in Abu Dhabi, Mrs Clinton was asked why the 9/11 terror attacks, the work of a handful of men, had been allowed to colour American views of a whole people.

She replied that America was "proud" of its many Muslim citizens and public servants, and said that the media exaggerated the voices of those who presented hostile views of the Muslim and Arab worlds.

She then raised the shooting at the weekend of the Arizona Democratic congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords.

"We have extremists in our country," she said. "A wonderful and incredibly brave young woman congress member was just shot by extremists in our country.

"We have the same kinds of problems, so rather than standing off of each other we should work to try and prevent the extremists wherever they are from being able to commit violence."

Clinton is really going out on a limb here, claiming that a deranged individual is actually symptomatic of extremists and comparable to a group of extremists--and in this case, the article itself calls her on this:

Ascribing the Arizona shootings to political extremism rather than the work of a mentally deranged loner has already proved controversial, and President Barack Obama avoided doing so directly in his address to the American people afterwards.

Mrs Clinton may be taking an even bigger risk in comparing the attack, even obliquely, to al-Qaeda's war on America.

Clinton is doing nothing more than towing the line with Obama's policy of befriending the Muslim world.

And how far will she go in towing that line?

She said that since 9/11, Islamist terrorists had been far more destructive to the lives of Muslims, and said they were often nihilists whose actions could win support from no one.

Short memory:



Reading the article, I was wondering if the difference between a diplomat and a politician is that the diplomat sugarcoats in an effort to appease, while a politician cuts down those who stand in the way of a goal.

If that is so, which is Hillary Clinton--a diplomat or a politician?

Note: Melanie Phillips reminds us that the Hillary Clinton who is blaming the Arizona shootings on extremists is the same one who decried "the vast right wing conspiracy" when she was First Lady.

Some habits die hard.

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