U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) testifies during a hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 20, 2007 in Washington, DC.
The punchline to some old, racist joke roughly goes: "they all look alike to me." The set up to the joke was rewritten the other day by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). On a radio station in Iowa, King claimed that were Barack Obama elected president, al-Qaida would be "dancing in the streets" in greater numbers than on Sept. 11, 2001. King bases his assertion on three things, the first being that Obama favors a withdrawal from Iraq. While that point might be at least worthy of debate, King's next two points remove logic from the discourse. What will bring on the outbreak of public jubilation among OBL's minion's are Obama's middle name — Hussein; a name nobody had a problem with when we were funneling the guy guns and money during the Iran/Iraq war — and Obama's Kenyan heritage.
What King is basically saying is; anyone who's got a "funny" name and African lineage is a kissing cousin of the ilk who took down the Twin Towers.
We all look alike to him.
Of course the Christian, biracial, Harvard-educated Obama is as far from being a terrorist as George Clooney is from being lonely on Friday nights. And in his rush to link Obama with "those people," King ignores a fact that al-Qaida makes over and over again: their ideological hatred cuts across racial and religious divides. They care nothing about where someone's ancestors are from or who they worship. All they care about is chalking up a steady body count.
I would remind Congressman King of the August 7th, 1998, bombings by al-Qaida of U.S. embassies in both Tanzania and Kenya. There was no dancing in the streets on that day. Just Tanzanians and Kenyans pulling victims from the rubble. Estimates are that more than 200 people were killed and 4,000 injured. I imagine many of them had "funny" names. I would say what would get the survivors of those and other al-Qaida massacres dancing, rather than Obama's election, would be Bin Laden's head on a pike or platter or stuffed in a bowling bag for lack of other display options.
The fact is that al-Qaida doesn't really care who's in the White House come next year. They will do as they do no matter if it's a woman, a man of color or an old white guy. Much as with the victims of their violence, they don't really discriminate that way. You could say that to the terrorists, we're all alike.
Is that something Steve King and Osama Bin Laden have in common?
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