Oh Really? Bill O’Reilly Laments Inability To “Kill All The Muslims”

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by Steve Krakauer | 9:07 am, November 11th, 2009

» 9 comments

Bill O’Reilly praised Pres. Barack Obama‘s Fort Hood memorial speech to begin his Fox News show last night, before launching into another “Talking Points” segment about political correctness and the media playing down the “Muslim terror” angle.

But it was later in the show, when he got into why we need to “win hearts and minds,” that he waded into some murky territory.

With New York Post columnist and frequent Obama critic Lt. Col. Ralph Peters as his guest, the pair continued their disappointment with the rise in PC since Nidal Malik Hasan‘s Fort Hood shooting. O’Reilly decided to play devil’s advocate:

It was an act of terror, but let me play devil’s advocate here. Barack Obama wants to win hearts and minds in the Middle East, in the Muslim world, which is a good thing, you know that, as a soldier, we can’t kill all the Muslims. So we want to win as many hearts and minds of good moderate Muslims as we can. So he goes out of his way, you’re absolutely right, to avoid the Muslim terrorist label which clearly applies for Hasan. But he doesn’t do it, because he wants to tamp down the anger in the Muslim world rather than ratchet it up, so is that not a worthy strategy?

Peters is immediately dismissive. “No it’s not because it doesn’t work,” he said. But what exactly did O’Reilly say? Yes, he’s playing devil’s advocate here, but the implication is that because we can’t kill all the Muslims, we have to try to win their hearts and minds. One possibility is that O’Reilly simply misspoke – maybe he meant “terrorists” instead of “Muslims.” But when you hear it in context, it just doesn’t sound like it’s a mistake.

Later, O’Reilly turned his attention to the Army, which he feels is partially responsible as well. Peters turned it back to political correctness. “Because he was a minority of a minority, a Muslim doctor in the Army, a psychiatrist, Hasan kept slipping through because nobody wanted to take him on,” he said.

Here’s the full interview:

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Bill O'Reilly, fnc, Fort Hood shooting, fox news, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, Nidal Malik Hasan, Pres. Barack Obama, The O'Reilly Factor

http://www.facebook.com/people/Chuck-Varrick/1170421091 Chuck Varrick

Memo to EVERYONE: Fort Hood Shooter Is A Jihadist. Brother Hasan forgot this is a volunteer military. If you’re a Muslim and have these types of sentiments my advice would be not to join the Army. There are stories that many convert to Islam when the become members of the military. By the time of his shootings, this wasn’t a man with PTSD or one who just “lost it” because of deployment or harassment. Brother Hasan was filled with anger and hate because that’s what it took to do what he did. I would HOPE he was harassed as he has been reported to have uttered anti-American sentiment to other servicemen. Why can’t we say Islamic Jihadist mentality is a disease, a pathology if you will. They could defend him by saying he succumbed to a cult. They say he acted alone yet it seems the FBI had been investigating him and keeping tabs on him being in contact with Al-Qaeda. So we now know others had been encouraging him on his journey. We also know there are a multitude of Jihadists here. Those who committed the acts on 9-11 were here for sometime. Our laws and liberties protect them. Amazing in a good way, yet horrifying. The bottom line is this guy was a terrorist perhaps a lone one at that. Why are we afraid to call him what he really is, a terrorist bent on destroying our way of live. This isn’t an indictment on Muslims, it’s an indictment on those who practice terror against innocent people. Political Correctness gone awry.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/11/memo_to_us_government_fort_hoo_1.asp
Pablo

“Yes, he’s playing devil’s advocate here, but the implication is that because we can’t kill all the Muslims, we have to try to win their hearts and minds.”

Then why is the word “laments” in the headline?
straitshooter

Steve,

I saw the show, and I think what O’Reilly meant is that we can’t kill all the radical muslims — those who support the jihadists even if they are not actual terrorists themselves — so we have to find a way to show them why those views are wrong.

O’Reilly’s main point remains solid. There is a conscious effort — both in the press and within the upper echelons of the FBI, CIA and Army — to avoid even the use of the word terrorism in the discussion of the attack on Fort Hood. Hasan is absolutely a terrorist, and it is foolish to dispute the point. The only question is, was he an Islamic terrorist or a domestic terrorist, and I think that is a question only he can answer. I hope he does.

The popular argument on the right is accurate even if it is becoming a cliche. If this were a white Army psychiatrist with ties to neo-nazi web sites, or a black Army psychiatrist who supported Louis Farrakhan, they would have been reprimanded and/or bounced from the military. They handled this man with kid-gloves because they feared a backlash for appearing overzealous.

Now they’ve got a whole new backlash on their hands, and I will bet all the money in my pockets, some high-profile people will lose their jobs when the facts come out about what intelligence agencies knew about Hasan.
ImNotBlue

I think O’Reilly was speaking to the mentality (of some) who said, “Just kill them all!” But we can’t do that… most have done nothing wrong! And O’Reilly said that, a breath away: “So we want to win as many hearts and minds of good moderate Muslims as we can.”

In other words, we can’t just go in there and nuke the place… we have to get the good guys on our side. This seems pretty obvious to me, Steve… you’re not known for being one of “those guys,” but this is a pretty big stretch… especially for you.
libra blue

@ImNotBlue, I saw the segment too and I agree.

@Steve, This post was a pretty big stretch, maybe you can post a follow up to clarify. Why not do a blog about CNN’s over the top PC reporting? Since this massacre happened, Anderson, has been trying to make Hasan into a victim and has almost totally ignored the real victims in this case. He has tried to suggest that this guy was somehow pushed into doing what he did. Making every excuse possible, trying to shift the blame from the perpetrator to the military for not preventing this tragedy. He said that 360 was looking for the student who talked about the Power Point presentation, giving viewers the impression that he was going to challenge his/her claims about it. Unfortunately, the Power Point presentation was not the only time this mass murderer tried to justify the actions of radical Islam.

Anderson also keeps saying that this guy “snapped,” but fails to mention that he carefully chose a confined venue of unarmed soldiers to commit this act.

He also kept emphasizing that these radical Muslims are a very small group, but as we all know it didn’t take a lot of people to crash those three planes on 9/11.

Oh yeah, and let’s not forget the censorship that is going on on Anderson’s live blog.
bourekas

where the hell did the headline come from. O’Reilly is not clearly “lamenting” anything–he is saying that such an extreme approach isn’t an option. Whether he is lamenting it or ridiculing it or using it as hyperbole is up to the viewer, not this headline writer, to decide.
libra blue

BTW, didn’t everyone think that Major Nidal Malik Hasan was a ” good moderate Muslim?” How many other violent radicals are masquerading as “good moderate Muslims” in this country? There is no way to tell how many there are, especially when we refuse to even acknowledge the red flags sent up by those who fit Hasan’s description?
Nachi

Another great Repunk patriotic Murcuhn hero. One who appeals to the Minds of Darkness. Yup.
ImNotBlue

Nachi… what in the crap are you trying to say? I have Googled “Murcuhn” over and over again, and the only thing that comes up is a few posts on this site, and other sites. Those posts always use things like “Repunks” and follow your general principal of not saying anything worthwhile. However, there is apparently no definition, no reference to this being a real word, name, term, or anything. So what the heck are you trying to say?! I know it’s asking a lot to try to understand your particular type of crazy… but when even Google can’t explain it to me, I’ve got to go back to the source. What are you trying to say?