Ben Carson, foot in mouth again
by digby
This is a good point about Ben Carson’s idiotic racist comments comparing Muslims to dogs:
“If there’s a rabid dog running around in your neighborhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good about that dog,” Carson said at an event in Alabama this week. “And you’re probably going to put your children out of the way. That doesn’t mean that you hate all dogs.”
Conservatives will play like this isn’t outright bigotry and fear mongering. But they can’t play like Carson hasn’t once again revealed stunning cultural and geopolitical obliviousness.
To the practicing Muslims we hope to enlist against ISIS, dogs are unclean and disfavored animals, and to compare a Muslim to a dog is a profound insult. This isn’t some obscure dogma. It’s there for anyone with the patience to Google two words. Whatever their private views, most serious Republican foreign policy eminences would advise against antagonizing potential allies with heedlessly inflammatory language like this. But if they recognize the strategic value in not antagonizing Muslim populations, they’re basically ceding the point that “war against radical Islam” language is barely concealed incitement.
The dog thing is a big deal among a lot of Muslims who are not radical in the least. It’s really foolish to go there for a dozen different reasons. It wouldn’t matter as much if he were just some random racist citizen. There’s not much you can do about them. But he’s running for president and people who run for president should be knowledgeable enough to know to choose their words carefully when it comes to national security. Apparently, they don’t teach that in medical school.
.