Fort Hood massacre spurs hate crimes. What a shocker.

Why exactly do we fight the War on Terror? Well, I have my own theories. However, I'm going to entertain one of the more widely accepted (yet still asinine) reasons given by right-wing pundits and followers: that we are protecting our freedom and values here, the great western society of tolerance and justice we claim to esteem so much (as if being non-western are liberty loving are mutually exclusive). 

So imagine my surprise when I read that just the other day a Marine reservist attacked a Greek Orthodox Christian Priest when confusing him for a crazy, "Arabic speaking Muslim". He beat him with a tire iron. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/10/alexios-marakis-assaulted_n_353022.html

Now, the priest claims that as he was pulled over, stopping people to ask for directions, the man started to attack him after 'freaking out' over his accent. Be honest, here. What sounds more likely to you?

First, let's get something straight. At the heart of all of this lies a simple truth. The man confused Greek for Arab, and Arab for Muslim. Why? He saw it as non-white. And deep down, that scares white people. Of course, I don't mean every individual white person. As a general rule for the population, of course it does. 

That is why a Greek (European) man of Mediterranean origin can be attacked for confusion with a "Muslim" (which is a religion, not a race, by the way). That is why there is no movement amongst white people to be paranoid over Christians after the death of Dr. Tiller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Roeder) by an anti-abortion extremist. Why is this? The reservist and Scott Roeder are white. Therefore, according to the laws of white privilege, they're a couple of "troubled individuals", not a representative sample for white christians. Don't expect this same standard to be held for dark-skinned Muslims after a handful of domestic incidents.

It is this kind of conditioned exceptionalism that allows White-males to get by with no sweeping generalizations of themselves after the terrorist attacks by Ted Kazinsky, Timothy McVeigh, and Scott Roeder, yet the acts of a handful of Muslims lead to this type of nonsense: 

The link above shows footage of Fox anchors seriously advocating the idea of interrogating Muslim-Americans serving in the military to "make sure" they're 100% on board. Imagine if the tables were turned, and all Christians were being interrogated for the actions of Scott Roeder. What kind of outrage would we see from the right-wing in this country? The thing is, the latter won't happen nearly as quickly as what we've seen happen with Muslims.

Now, let's see how fast the right-wingers move to decry the violence and abhor the actions this Marine took against an innocent man. I'm guessing little to no commentary over it in the news. However, had this been a Muslim man attacking a Christian man for "speaking the language of infidels", we would label it a terrorist attack. Interesting set of standards we hold here in the high and mighty, 'secular', and tolerant West.