Is it fair to call anti-Park51-mosque zealotry attempts at 'ethnic cleansing'?

[ProgressiveEconomist]

In Iraq, by the end of 2006 Sunni Muslim residents had been virtually completely driven out of predominantly Shiite neighborhoods, and Shiite residents had been driven out of predominantly Sunni neighborhoods. This widely was called "ethnic cleansing"--see http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1953066020080919 , for example.

In New York City, non-Muslims want to keep a Muslim mosque somewhat more than two blocks away from the vicinity of Ground Zero. Is it fair to call their efforts attempts at "ethnic cleansing"?

If so, I recommend calling Rick Lazio, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, etc. "Ground Zero ethnic cleansers".

WHAT'S YOUR OPINION?

[KharmaTrain]

1. It's Called Scaring Your Base...

Fortunately the xenophobia in this country is mostly rhetoric with a few dead-enders who went beyond. This is ethnic slurring but far from a systemic program to eliminate a group of people. It's a political ostrifacation...finding a boogie man/scape goat...the politics of fear and hatred that is all the rushpublicans can peddle this year. It's a lot of political posturing to generate the highest amount of "base" interest in a party that is rapidly falling into being an obsolete, regional party...not a national one.

I'd be careful in throwing such terms around. While the rushpublican xenophobes are amping up hatred not only of the Islamic faith but also Hispanics, blacks, gays, women and many other groups. It's what they do and all they can do as they can't run on their dismal record of the past or offer any real solutions to current problems...thus you manufacture "fauxrage".

Ethnic cleansing or genocide (the more appropriate term) can't flourish without a government or occupation force that condones or encourages it. Fortunately we don't have such a government and our job here is to fight the hate and fear and prevent intolerance from distracting from the real important issues facing all Americans.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

3. "Can't flourish w/o a govt ... that condones ... it.' That's why Rick Lazio

is at the top of my list of Ground Zero ethnic cleansers. What if he wins and becomes governor of New York?

[KharmaTrain]

5. He'll Set Up "ReEducation Camps" on Staten Island...LOL

Hopefully Andrew Cuomo will be the next Governor and Lazio will go back under whatever rock he came from. I wouldn't give that shitstain the credit of being a viable candidate...a major reason he pulled this stunt.

[TheKentuckian]

2. Hyperbole at the moment but the signs of the precursor to such extremes are popping up

[burnsei sensei]

4. No it's not.

Because Islam spans many ethnicities.
Islam is not ethnically specific.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

6. Are you saying it wasn't fair to call what happened in Iraq ethnic cleansing?

Sunni and Shiite aren't ethnic classifications, they're religious classifications, aren't they?

[burnsei sensei]

7. Sunni & Shi'ite are different theological and institutional

positions within Islam.
Islam is a religion that spans several ethnicities.
Iraq is a country that also encompasses several ethnicities.
I did not know that the U.S. was at war with a specific ethnicity within Iraq,
nor did I know that the U.S. was at war with a specific Islamic group.
I thought that the U.S. decided to invade and conquer Iraq for the purpose of exploiting oil!
And I still believe that-- because we constructed 17 permanent facilities there guarded, in the future, by private contractors like Erik Prince's outfit.
Do you really think the Iraq war had anything to do with religion?
Really?
Baghdad Year Zero-- that explains it best.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

8. Does that mean "yes" or "no"?

[burnsei sensei]

12. If the war was one of ethnic cleansing,

then I have yet to see the wholesale slaughter of the Iraqi population with another ethnic group moving into the territory.
The wars taking place in Yugoslavia were wars of ethnic cleansing.
The wars agains the Native Americans were wars of ethnic cleansing.
No, I don't think we are doing that.
The wars of Iraq and Afghanistan are wars of economic exploitation by a corporate class.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

13. I'll take that as "no". At least you're self-consistent.

[burnsei sensei]

14. I'm surprised anyone would

interpret these wars as "ethnic cleansing."
If the War on Terror is a War on Islam, then the government should so state and then call it "religious cleansing."

[stray cat]

9. Fair no - but people love inaccurate melodrama when they have been protected from real clensing

If you want ethnic cleansing go live in darfur

[ProgressiveEconomist]

10. "Go live in Darfur"--or read about America's historic treatment of Native Americans

--or, more recently, "urban renewal". IMO ethnic cleansing is more American than apple pie.

[izzybeans]

11. Yes it is.

A small scale one, but that is what it is.

They might as well say "Ni#$er get out"