By JAMES TARANTO
Two soldiers fresh from basic training were shot Monday at an Army recruiting center in Little Rock, Ark. The attack killed Pvt. William Long and wounded Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula. Police arrested a suspect, Abdulhakim Muhammed né Carlos Bledsoe, who has pleaded not guilty. Since it would belabor the obvious to mention that he was a convert to Islam, we'll use paralipsis instead. The Associated Press reports that available information points toward a political motive:
An FBI-Homeland Security intelligence assessment document obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday suggested Muhammad, of Little Rock, may have considered targeting other locations, including Jewish and Christian sites.
The FBI said Muhammad "conducted Internet searches related to different locations in several U.S. cities" including Atlanta, Little Rock, Louisville, Ky., Memphis, Tenn., New York and Philadelphia. The bureau notified authorities in those locations.
New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said investigators found Google Earth images of various places, including Times Square. In Atlanta, FBI Agent Stephen Emmett said Muhammad had information regarding a "Jewish entity within our jurisdiction."
The previous day, George Tiller, a physician notorious for performing late-term abortions, was murdered in Kansas (we noted it Monday). The suspect in that case, Scott Roeder, appears to be a Christian antiabortion extremist.
Predictably, these two cases have prompted comparisons, particularly from conservatives who see them as similar and argue that the higher profile of the Tiller murder reflects political bias--in favor of abortion and Islam, against Christianity and the "pro-life" cause--on the part of the media and public officials including President Obama.
Yet while such biases certainly exist, we are unconvinced that these two cases are a good example. The Weekly Standard's John McCormack makes the case by contrasting the president's statements on the two killings:
"I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence."
"I am deeply saddened by this senseless act of violence against two brave young soldiers who were doing their part to strengthen our armed forces and keep our country safe. I would like to wish Quinton Ezeagwula a speedy recovery, and to offer my condolences and prayers to William Long's family as they mourn the loss of their son."
Writes McCormack: "The contrast between Obama's statements is striking: He's 'deeply saddened' by the murder of a U.S. soldier, but 'shocked and outraged' by the murder of an abortionist? The murder of a U.S. soldier is a 'senseless' act of violence but the murder of an abortionist is a 'heinous' act of violence?"
To explain the disparity, McCormack turns to the always temperate Michelle Malkin:
When a right-wing Christian vigilante kills, millions of fingers pull the trigger. When a left-wing Muslim vigilante kills, he kills alone. . . .
Tiller's suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, was white, Christian, anti-government, and anti-abortion. The [alleged] gunman in the military recruiting center attack, Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, was black, a Muslim convert, anti-military, and anti-American. Both crimes are despicable, cowardly acts of domestic terrorism. But the disparate treatment of the two brutal cases by both the White House and the media is striking.
McCormack and Malkin both overlook an important distinction between the two crimes, one that goes a long way toward explaining their disparate treatment: By all indications, the Tiller killing was an assassination. The victim was a prominent person who was targeted specifically for his views or actions. The Long killing, by contrast, appears to have been more of a hate crime. The targets were not public figures, and one surmises they were selected because of the type of person they were.
This is not to say that the murder of William Long was any less abhorrent than that of George Tiller--only that in the hierarchy of public significance, assassinations rank higher than hate crimes, which in turn rank higher than "ordinary" murders. The murder of Martin Luther King was bigger news, and is a more important part of history, than any individual lynching, even though both were atrocious crimes spurred by similar ideological motives.
There is also a difference between the Obama statements that runs counter to the McCormack-Malkin argument. Although it's true that the president uses stronger language in condemning the Tiller murder than the Long one, notice what he has to say about the victims in each case.
The Arkansas privates were "two brave young soldiers who were doing their part to strengthen our armed forces and keep our country safe," and the president extends his good wishes to Ezeagwula and his condolences to Long's family.
By contrast, Obama does not endorse the view of some on the left that Tiller was a hero. (Slate's William Saletan provides the reductio ad absurdum of this view, likening Tiller to a soldier: "To me, Tiller was brave. His work makes me want to puke. But so does combat, the kind where guts are spilled and people choke on their own blood.")
The president's statement expresses no sympathy whatever for Tiller--or even for his grieving wife, who, according to an AP dispatch, was at the church, in the choir, when her husband was murdered. Instead, Obama goes out of his way to respect the sensibilities of abortion opponents, acknowledging "profound . . . differences . . . over difficult issues such as abortion," which he quite sensibly says "cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence."
If anything, we'd say it was a bit cowardly for Obama not to offer condolences to Mrs. Tiller on her personal loss. The conservatives who see scandal in the different adjectives Obama used to describe these two crimes, however, are trying too hard to find fault with the president and not hard enough to be thoughtful in their criticisms.
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