Susan Estrich: Oops! I Commented on the Wrong Mosque

The dog ate my homework.

That's not much of an excuse but at least it is better than the one Susan Estrich came up with as to one of the reasons why she changed her mind on the Ground Zero Mosque controversy. Estrich claims she thought they were talking about another mosque when Fox News asked her to comment on the mosque controversy. What other mosque? Anybody even slightly knowledgeable about current events will now instantly think "Ground Zero Mosque" when they hear about a mosque controversy. Not Susan Estrich. Here she is delivering her laughable excuse:

Recently, I found myself on Fox News defending the "Ground Zero mosque" before I'd fully thought it through. Truth be told, when someone called to set up the "hit," I thought they were talking about another mosque project I'd heard about on the radio. So there I was, invoking the First Amendment, arguing that our enemy is terrorism, and that the only way we would ever win that fight is by gaining the support of the overwhelming majority of Muslims who are not our enemies and who we need to respect as friends. All true.

When Estrich subsequently discovered that the mosque in question was the same one that everyone else (except her) was referring to, she still clung to her original opinion...for awhile:

When I discussed it with my son later, he asked me whether I actually agreed with what I'd said on television, and the fact is that I do. Nothing I said was wrong in my book. We can't make Islam our enemy, or we will find ourselves in a war that, frankly, terrifies me. So what's wrong with my position, and that of the president of the United States, who waded into the fight entirely of his own accord?

And now that Estrich got the right mosque, she finally tells us why her original opinion was wrong:

 Just this: the convent at Auschwitz.

That might annoy a certain USA Today religion blogger but it makes sense to Estrich:

Some years ago, an order of nuns announced plans to build a convent at the infamous death camp, and a community I am very close to — the community of survivors and their children — strongly protested the plan. How could they? It wasn't a matter of "right." Presumably, the nuns had as much right as anyone else to build a convent wherever they wanted.

But for those who survived the Holocaust, and for those of us who are committed to preserving the memory of the millions who were lost, building a convent on the site was just not appropriate.

...The presence of a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, in the home of a former Burlington Coat factory, clearly strikes many of those who lost loved ones on that horrible day in the same way that the convent at Auschwitz struck me. It doesn't mean that Islam is our enemy. It's not a matter of right.

Tolerance is a two-way street.

So congratulations to Susan Estrich for finally figuring out that the mosque in question is the Ground Zero Mosque...and for eventually coming around to a common sense opinion on the controversy.