MOSQUE MADNESS – AT 8:53 A.M. ET:  The mosque controversy continues.  The president made this into a national issue Friday night in one of the biggest political blunders I've seen a president make. 

Yesterday, the people behind the mosque rejected an invitation to meet with Governor David Paterson of New York to discuss ways of easing the tension.  This is outrageous behavior.  These people claim they want the mosque at Ground Zero as a means of "healing."  Healing whom?  They won't even meet with the governor of the state.  And one of these worthies also refused to rule out funding from Saudi Arabia and Iran.  Maybe we'll have stonings at Ground Zero just to celebrate "diversity."

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York has entered the picture with a thoughtful suggestion:

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in New York, said Wednesday that he would gladly help mediate between the proponents and critics of an Islamic center and mosque planned for a site two blocks from ground zero.

The archbishop said that it was his “major prayer” that a compromise could be reached, and that while he had no strong feelings about the project, he might support finding a new location for the center.

Speaking during an impromptu news conference at Covenant House, a Catholic shelter in Manhattan for homeless youth, Archbishop Dolan invoked the example of Pope John Paul II, who in 1993 ordered Catholic nuns to move from their convent at the former Auschwitz death camp after protests from Jewish leaders.

“He’s the one who said, ‘Let’s keep the idea, and maybe move the address,’ ” the archbishop said. “It worked there; might work here.”

COMMENT:  The archbishop is a good guy.  All sides should accept his good offices.  If the people behind the mosque turn down the archbishop, as they turned down the governor, they will prove their ill intent, and show that this isn't about healing, but about Muslim triumphalism. 

One really weird idea to emerge yesterday, and it came from Maureen Dowd and from a surprisingly inept editorial in the Washington Post, was for former President Bush (43) to intervene and throw his support for the mosque.  The logic apparently is that Bush showed respect for Islam right after the attacks of 9-11.

Huh?  I thought it was liberal doctrine that Bush ruined, for four or five hundred years, our relationship with the Islamic world.  Now the cry seems to be, "Bring him on!"

Bad idea.  A better idea would be for Bush and former President Clinton to join Archbishop Dolan in offering to mediate.  Even Obama could send a representative, but we hope it isn't the professor who got into trouble with the Cambridge police.

August 19, 2010