John McCain has done the right thing in condemning Representative Steve King’s creepy assessment of an Obama presidency’s impact on the world. Here’s Newsmax.com on the Iowa Republican’s comments:
“I don’t want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name, whatever their religion their father might have been,” King said.
“I’ll just say this: When you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected president of the United States, I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?”
King then said: “I will tell you that if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this war on terror.”
If by “optics” King meant (and I think he must have) the color of Obama’s skin, his statement was not merely offensive, but amazingly dumb. Radical Muslims are far more accustomed to killing people of darker shades than to killing Caucasians. The geography and ethnography of Asia and Africa make this a natural fact. An Islamist does not, on the whole, consider the race of the infidel target. But of the instances in which racism does work its way into extremist violence, the inclination tends to be of the old-fashioned “go after the dark ones” variety—Arab racism against blacks thrives in various parts of northern Africa today. So, King’s optics argument is a non-starter. (By the way, so is the related argument made by Obama’s supporters who claim his racial composition a diplomatic asset in U.S.-Muslim relations.)
However, Islamic terrorists may indeed prefer that the U.S. be led by Obama—because of his policies. Iran’s mullahs, for example, are undoubtedly looking forward to a president whose vision of deterrence centers around talk. And they may very well dance if he’s elected, too. After all, we saw their joyous Rockette kicks when their scientists enriched uranium.
