Al Qaeda attempts to destroy Brooklyn Bridge; mayor celebrates openness and opportunity

Concerning the arrest of a naturalized U.S. citizen from Kashmir named Iyman Faris, who in concert with Al Qaeda had tried to come up with a way to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, Mayor Bloomberg said:

[I]n a perverse way [New Yorkers] should be pleased that we are the target. We are the target because it’s the place where everybody wants to come, and we are the target because we give opportunities that other people find threatening, and we don’t ever want to lose that. [“U.S. Foils Al Qaeda Plot Against Brooklyn Bridge,” New York Sun, June 20-22, 2003]

In other words, our enemies in Al Qaeda wanted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, not because they hate America and the bridge is a tremendous symbol of America as well as a vital part of our infrastructure, but because they hate diversity and opportunity and the bridge is a symbol of that. Since liberals and mainstream conservatives do not believe in America as a concrete country but only as a set of ideas and procedures, to their minds it can never be anything substantive about America that our enemies want to destroy, such as our lives, our property, and our civilization, but only our “openness,” our “opportunities.” Furthermore, since opportunity and diversity are what define us, we should feel proud that Al Qaeda hate us because of them, and, therefore, in celebration of those values, we should continue letting in to America the very people who most hate us.

Or am I misunderstanding something here?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 21, 2003 05:55 PM | Send