CNN senior editor for Muslim affairs Octavia Nasr mourns Hezbollah leader

Larry T. sends this:

CNN refuses to discuss repercussions for senior editor following Tweet mourning Hezbollah leader

and adds:

This lady has been with CNN for 20 years.

Another article reports that she has since been fired over this. Too bad. We just lost another moderate Muslim.

- end of initial entry -

Christopher L. writes:

I have to express a pet peeve of mine with most conservatives and in the particular case, Bozell. In the article, Bozell says:

Octavia Nasr chose this week to post her sadness about the death of the Hezbollah leader that orchestrated the murder of United States Marines in the 1983 Beirut bombings.

This is one of those situations where conservatives just do not think. Attacking a military force, in this case the Marine barracks, is not murder. One can complain that he orchestrated the attack. However, it was not an act of terrorism. Labeling anything that Muslims do as terrorism is lazy thinking.

LA replies:

I agree that it was not terrorism, and have said so before. But it certainly was murder. And Bozell didn’t call it terrorism, he called it murder. The Marines were not engaged in any military activity or attacking anyone. There were in a base, in the country to help provide stability. It was an act of mass murder.

Christopher L. replies:

I have to disagree with the statement that the US military was not engaged in “any military activity or attacking anyone.”

From Colonel Timothy J. Geraghty, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired):

The airport site was supposed to be one of the most secure areas in Lebanon. The Marine and the French headquarters were targeted primarily because of who we were and what we represented. The passive nature of the peacekeeping mission provided attractive targets that Iran and Syria were not about to pass up. It is noteworthy that the United States provided direct naval gunfire support—which I strongly opposed for a week—to the Lebanese Army at a mountain village called Suq-al-Garb on 19 September and that the French conducted an air strike on 23 September in the Bekaa Valley. American support removed any lingering doubts of our neutrality, and I stated to my staff at the time that we were going to pay in blood for this decision.

If we were bombing them in support of the Lebanese Army, then the Marines were legitimate targets.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 07, 2010 07:03 PM | Send