THE DUOPOLY WATCH | Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Orlando: Yet another mass shooting, but this one in larger numbers than any previously in the nation. It happened, as is well-known, in an LGBT night-club. It has been widely (although not completely, see Frank Bruni in the June 15 New York Times and The Times editorial of the same day) reported as a “terrorist attack.” This is very convenient for much of the news media and certainly for the Repubs. For the latter it gives them yet another opportunity to lay all over President Obama for “doing nothing,” not even calling it by its right name (as if that really meant something, and oh, by the way, if he did use “radical Islam,” Fox”News” would find something else to hang around his neck), without of course offering any policy alternatives, other than calling it “radical Islamist terrorism.”
Well, let’s dispose of the “terrorism” thing, in the political sense that is, first. If Mateen was in fact a political terrorist, “inspired by radical Islamists,” he surely didn’t know much about them. For when he made his famous warning call to 9/11 he referred to being incited by ISIS and Hezbollah. The problem there is that the former is a Sunni organization while the latter is Shiite, and they don’t even talk with each other. In Iraq and other parts of the ME they have often fought each other in the most brutal and barbaric way, from the neighborhood level to widespread sectarian strife to that of nation states (the Iraq-Iran war, for example).
No, as more evidence about Mr. Mateen and his life and times becomes available it is becoming increasingly clear that he was very likely a closeted gay man filled with self-loathing and rage, which the homophobic prejudice that is clearly present in certain elements of Islam (just like certain elements of Christianity which, in this country, have become all too apparent in the wake of Orlando) certainly could have helped to create within him. But the Repubs., and certainly their current leader, just love to talk about “terrorism” (created of course in perfect bipartisanship by Democratic and then Republican policies alike going back to the US-supported insurrection in Afghanistan and the arch-criminal assaults on Iraq and Syria and Libya) and blame it all on Barack Obama, who, incidentally is by now, considering all the wars and coups he has instigated and supported, not to mention his abject “pivot to Asia”, which could land the world in a huge nuclear conflict, one of the most aggressive and hypocritical imperialists in modern times.
You can read the complete commentary here.
Source: The Greanville Post
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