Bill O'Reilly isn't often the one making sense during a back and forth on his show, but that was the case tonight in this exchange he had with Bernard Goldberg:
In the segment, Goldberg rehashes the conservative argument that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's comments about 9/11 are somehow extreme and symptomatic of something sinister. As O'Reilly explained, Rauf's comments that “I wouldn't say the United States deserved what happened. But the United States' policies were an accessory to the crime that happened,” are similar to the views of many (including the chairman and vice chairman of the 9/11 commission) on the role U.S. foreign policy had with regard to the attacks.
As Media Matters has pointed out, Fox News' own Glenn Beck has said “When people said they hate us, well, did we deserve 9-11? No. But were we minding our business? No. Were we in bed with dictators and abandoned our values and principles? Yes. That causes problems.”
To O'Reilly's credit, he explained to Goldberg that the imam's comments weren't the extremist statement Goldberg made them out to be. But Goldberg wanted no part of it. He told O'Reilly he was “tired” of hearing such arguments about U.S. foreign policy, and that if a Christian minister made similar comments “the media wouldn't call him a moderate.”