[Pen-l] Restrepo

[Louis Proyect]

The War in Afghanistan Hits Home: Michael Enright, Restrepo, and the 
Heart of Darkness

By Dan DiMaggio

On Tuesday, 21-year old Michael Enright stabbed a New York City cab 
driver because he was Muslim. Enright grew up in upstate Brewster, New 
York, the town next to mine, in an overwhelmingly white and conservative 
county that was the only one east of the Hudson River won by John McCain 
in 2008. He just recently returned from a trip to Afghanistan, where he 
was embedded with a group of soldiers who he was making a film about for 
his senior thesis.

There has been a concerted attempt to distance Enright’s crime from the 
Islamophobia being whipped up by the right wing. James Taranto, editor 
of the Wall Street Journal’s online editorial page, actually claimed 
it’s “a plausible theory” that Enright really stabbed the cab driver as 
part of his own personal left-wing conspiracy to “advance the narrative 
that America is filled with anti-Muslim bigots whose hatred is behind 
the opposition to the Ground Zero mosque.” Yet the Daily News reports a 
police source divulged they found a journal belonging to Enright calling 
Muslims “killers, ungrateful for the help they were being offered, 
filthy murderers without a conscience.” Presumably this was all part of 
his master plan, according to Taranto.

full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/restrepo/
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