This one is sensitive, but it deserves discussion. The following article, from NRO, was written by Michael Barone, and the big question, besides What do you think of these clips?, is “How do we talk about Islamic radicals or Islamic terrorists without impugning Islam or without betraying a desire to engage civil discourse?” Do we help society and culture by pretending that someone like Shahzad was not linked to Islamic terrorism? By not distinguishing peace-loving and civil Muslims from terrorists do we impugn all Muslims?

If you want to watch someone squirm, take a look at the two-minute videotape of Attorney General Eric Holder dodging Republican representative Lamar Smith’s question of whether “radical Islam” motivated the Times Square bomber. 

Holder, who last year called America “a nation of cowards” for refusing to talk frankly about race, plainly didn’t want to say what is plain to everyone else, that Faisal Shahzad, back from five months in Waziristan, launched his terror attack because of his Islamist beliefs. ….

Why the reluctance to state the obvious truth, that we are under attack from terrorists motivated by a radical form of Islam? 

My theory is that these well-intentioned folks see the American people as a Howling Mob. They think that if Americans find out that Islamists are attacking us, they will go out and slaughter innocent Muslims. They think that Americans are incapable of understanding the simple truth that, while most terrorists are Islamists, the large majority of Muslims are not terrorists. 

Of course, the evidence is that Americans are quite capable of holding these two ideas in their heads. Even after September 11, there were only a miniscule number of attacks on Muslims, and many more Americans went over to their Muslim neighbors and offered to help if they had any trouble. They didn’t even need to hear the almost instant assurances from Rudy Giuliani and George W. Bush that all Muslims are not terrorists to bake a cake and bring it over.