In another shocking — if potentially predictable — diatribe posted at the left-leaning DailyKos (and later at the Air Force Times), Michael “Mikey” Weinstein accused the US military of being no different than domestic terrorists.

As proof, he cited the thwarted attack by three men in Kansas who led a self-described militia called “the Crusaders.” The group had formed plans to blow up an apartment complex in which the main residents were Somali Muslims. They were explicit about their hatred of Muslims, including calling them “cockroaches” and saying:

“The only [expletive] way this country’s ever going to get turned around is it will be a bloodbath and it will be a nasty, messy [expletive].”

Of note, nothing at all is said about the religious beliefs of the militia (they even reportedly considered targeting churches, including burning one “to the ground”), though they were clearly anti-Islam.

Importantly, Weinstein did not claim any member of the US military said anything remotely like those men. Instead, he equated the US military with these terrorists for no other reason than certain US military units either do or did use the name “crusaders” [formatting original]:

This kind of terroristic behavior is exactly what we’ve been afraid of… Our own military is using “Crusader” visuals and verbiage on military bases and in military imagery.

That’s right. Our military, which has nearly 4,000 Muslim members bravely serving in the ranks, uses this type of offensive, condescending, hate filled rhetoric…

Weinstein then cited six instances in which the US military has been associated with some kind of “crusader” terminology or symbology — and he claimed that such symbology leads to “carnage”:

Crusader-themed imagery and language…only leads to gruesome, hate-filled incidents like the carnage narrowly averted…

That’s moronic, and it’s also untrue. As noted, Weinstein cited a half-dozen examples of such imagery — yet he cited zero examples of gruesome, hate-filled carnage ever occurring as a result.  In fact, he cited zero examples of anything happening as a result.

The Muslims in Garden City, Kansas, were threatened because these men said they wanted to blow them up — not because they called themselves “crusaders.”

Weinstein is either an idiot or a demagogue (or perhaps both).

Weinstein also demonstrated his aversion to being forthright — again — when he said [emphasis added]:

In 2006, the 523rd Fighter Squadron…was calling itself The Crusaders…This was one of MRFF’s earliest complaints on this specific subject…(The squadron was mothballed after MRFF’s exposure.)

Weinstein’s claim is chronologically correct. The squadron did shut down after his public statements.  But chronology is not causality.

The 523rd Fighter Squadron at Cannon AFB had been BRAC’d in early 2005 — meaning Congress and the DoD had already scheduled it to be mothballed months before the MRFF even existed.

Mikey Weinstein had nothing to do with the 523rd being shut down, but that hasn’t stopped him from taking credit for it. In fact, in 2010 Weinstein said he “stopped” the squadron, which he said the Air Force “suddenly mothballed,” presumably after his complaint.

Why tell the truth, when a lie makes you sound so much more influential?  If nothing else, it demonstrates how motivated Mikey Weinstein is by his own ego — and how far he’ll go to inflate it.

To the point: Nothing about the thwarted domestic terror attack has anything to do with the US military or the Christians Mikey Weinstein so loves to hate, despite Weinstein’s machinations to the contrary.

One final note: Remember the hate-filled language of the men who were planning the bombing?

The only [expletive] way this country’s ever going to get turned around is it will be a bloodbath and it will be a nasty, messy [expletive]…

Weinstein focused on their “crusader” name, declining to cite any member of the US military saying anything like that.

You know who does talk like that?

Mikey Weinstein [emphasis added]: (link 1, link 2)

• “I am not at war with Christianity or with evangelical Christians, but [I am at war] with a subset…”
• Weinstein is “engaged in…a bloody battle that only ends with the last person standing.”
• “Our job here is to…leave sucking chest wounds on the people…”
• “I would like to beat the [expletive] out of [Chaplain Klingenschmitt] in a boxing ring or in an alley behind a Safeway.”
• “We have a Christian Taliban within our US military…”
• “In Plan A, evangelical Christians with a smile on their face will ask you to please, please, please accept their biblical worldview of Jesus. The problem with that is, inevitably, Plan A morphs into Plan B. They stop asking so nicely, and then you have the Holocaust, the pogroms, the Inquisition…  This country is going through — right now — a transition from A to B.”
• “The train only goes to one town, ‘Slaughterville’…”
• “We end up with oceans of blood, and it usually starts with Jewish blood.”
• “As a Jew I confronted a situation through ears that still hear the cries of my people walking silently into the brick buildings that would reduce them to ash. I cannot stand still and let that happen to my country… We can expect violence…They may try to harm me but I will not go quietly.”

Advocating violence, “war” with other Americans, and a dire warning of a soon-to-occur Holocaust within the US demanding a response — all because of Christians?

That seems more consistent with the ideological vitriol of the Kansas “crusaders.”

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