Duplicity and Dishonesty Go Hand in Hand

There is so much discussion in the media about the Ground Zero Mosque, but in my view the questions being asked are wrong because they miss the important points. For example the President implied to the attendees of a Ramadan dinner at the White House that he supported the idea of building the so-called Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero. The next day he said he was talking about the right to do it, not the wisdom of doing so. He was accused of backtracking. That is the wrong accusation. He should have been accused of duplicity because he said one thing to a Muslim audience and something else to the American People. Had he indicated that he questioned the wisdom of building it to his Muslim audience the entire issue of backtracking and saying different things to different groups would have never come up. The President's duplicity is the issue. Let’s move on to the Mosque itself. The founder of the project, Imam Faisel Rauf, named the project the Cordoba Initiative. For the average American Cordoba is the Spanish explorer who discovered the Yucatan Peninsula. For Muslims it represents the Islamic conquest of Spain in 711. The project is named Cordoba as a signal to all American-hating Muslims that they were victorious in the 911 attack and the Islamic Center is a testament to that victory. Americans did not name the project. Imam Rauf did. Americans do not agree that we were complicit in the attack on the World Trade Center. The Imam Rauf does. It is the Islamic tradition to build Mosques over enemy ground that has been destroyed. Eventually Americans will have to decide what is worse: The duplicity of our President or his support for our avowed enemies.