In this disturbing clip, former General Wesley Clark proposes a very alarming solution for the problem of homegrown terrorism: to round up and segregate possible radical Muslim-Americans. It’s an incredibly offensive thing to say, especially the way he puts it: “there are always a certain number of young people who feel alienated- they don’t have a job, they lost a girlfriend, their family doesn’t feel happy here, and we can watch for the signs of that.” Ignorant of the fact that he may have just described every single young person in America as a potential homegrown terrorist, the idea to profile distressed Muslim-Americans goes against everything this country stands for.
Then it gets worse: “We are at war with these terrorists…They have an ideology…in World War II, we didn’t say that was freedom of speech, we put them in a camp, they were prisoners of war. If these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States, and they’re disloyal to the United States as a matter of principle, fine, that’s their right. It’s our right and our obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.”
The internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War is one of our nation’s darkest moments. The humiliation and human rights abuses inflicted upon them will weigh on our collective soul forever, and to propose a similar thing in this day and age is absolutely reprehensible, not to mention incredibly foolish. If there is one way to ensure that we have more radicalized, homegrown terrorists, it’s to discriminate against Muslims and isolate them, to make them feel unwanted, to strip them of their dignity and their rights. That is not the American way, and it’s incredible that he dared to propose it.
Watch it here: