King's Charlie Sheen-like self assessment is at best inflated and, more often than not, flat out wrong. It's not that King is politically incorrect that is troublesome; it's that he's empirically incorrect. From his wide-ranging positions on the Guantanamo prison camp, torture, civilian trials for terrorists, profiling, Muslim-American involvement with terrorism and support for ever more intrusive security measures, King engages in wild demonizations and irresponsible fear mongering that exaggerates the jihadist threat and alienates Muslim-Americans. By doing so, King, a potent symbol of US Homeland Security policy, conceivably makes recruitment and radicalization easier for the very jihadists who prey on young Muslim-American alienation. His obsession with radical Islam also leaves more American forms of extremism and, therefore, less conspicuous, unexamined. To see why a general sense of uneasiness surrounds this week's fast approaching hearing is as easy as reviewing some of King's controversial and inaccurate statements relating to the war on terrorism and Muslim-Americans.
Truthout
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