Gabler Praises 'Cool' British Reaction to Terror, Condemns American 'Hysteria;' Cal Nails It

If Neal Gabler had been around in the late 1930s, would he have been praising Neville Chamberlain's complacency toward Hitler while condemning Churchill and FDR for their "hysteria"? Maybe so, judging by the liberal Fox News Watch panelist's comparison of the reaction of the British and the Americans to terror.

Gabler appeared on last evening's Fox News Watch.

FOX NEWS WATCH PANELIST NEAL GABLER: The [British] coverage was I think very responsible, very even-tempered, very fact-based, very cool, and I'm wondering if this isn't a function of the way the British government responded, which was very even-handed, very temperate, very cool . . . When we get terrorist threats in this country, I mean they are hyped, there's hysteria, and is that a function of the fact that the admistration hypes these things?

View video here.

So Gabler likes the British government's cool and even-handed reaction to terror. Let's have a look. Here's a report from the Sunday Express (U.K.) on the government's reaction:

Gordon Brown has banned ministers from using the word “Muslim” in ­connection with the ­terrorism crisis. The Prime Minister has also instructed his team – including new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith – that the phrase “war on ­terror” is to be dropped.

The shake-up is part of a fresh attempt to improve community relations and avoid offending Muslims, adopting a more “consensual” tone than existed under Tony Blair....

Mr Brown’s spokesman acknowledged yesterday that ministers had been given specific guidelines to avoid inflammatory language.

Officials insist that no direct links with Muslim extremists have been publicly confirmed by police investigating the latest attempted terror attacks. Mr Brown himself did not refer to Muslims or Islam once in a BBC TV interview on Sunday.

Ms Smith also avoided any such reference in her statement to MPs yesterday. She said: “Let us be clear – terrorists are criminals, whose victims come from all walks of life, communities and religions. Terrorists attack the values shared by all law-abiding citizens. As a Government, as communities, as individuals, we need to ensure that the message of the terrorists is rejected.”

Is that how Gabler thinks we should go about dealing with terrorism: refusing, in the name of political correctness, to look reality in the face?

Cal Thomas had a very different approach. He suggested that the media need to take the lead in investigating hotbeds of radical Islam in our midst.

FOX NEWS WATCH PANELIST CAL THOMAS: The media ought to be investigating, they ought to be infiltrating, they ought to have their hidden cameras, their hidden microphones, going into some of these Wahabi-funded [largely by Saudi Arabia] schools, some of these mosques that preach hate right here in the United States . . . Bad food at Food Lion, that was a big ABC investigation some years ago. How about bad doctrine in some of these schools and mosques?"

Precisely.

Contact Mark at mark@gunhill.net