There is actually another mosque two blocks further. So the acceptable distance is somewhere between 2 and 4 blocks. 
So, OOPS, we fucked up.
More like “damn, some bad stuff happened that we maybe could have prevented if we ignored civil rights in the past”, but yeah, same idea.
Now please tell me how this exchange means anything in the here and now.
There were two Dopers which responded to my initial query. Everyone else not so much.
I get the feeling Darth is trying to pull a Stephen Colbert on us, by “playing” the idiot Fox-News-watching mouth-breather, but I can’t be sure.
Darth, did you miss my suggestion that you take this to a poll in IMHO? I’m totally serious about the coolness-factor of the color chart which would be produced, automatically.
No I’m not. Just asking a question that you answered a page ago. It’s apparent that the board doesn’t want to say ‘aye’ or ‘nay’ on this. You, however, did so.
Now I’m just utterly baffled. Your point was just to see if people would respond? You weren’t trying to get the answers people made to illustrate some argument? Because right now what you seem to be presenting appears to be similar to this:
“Yes or No. If One World Trade Center has structural flaws and collapses 20 years from now, will that change your mind about building it now??”
Then you have already received more answers than you can typically expect for a hypothetical question that has no relevance, based on the fact that it will not actually occur. Will you or any of us think the same thing if bin Laden smuggles himself into the U.S. and surrenders at the gates to the White House?
If this is important to you, then open a thread in IMHO to ask the question. Stop attempting to hijack this thread with the grown-up equivalent of the seven-year-old’s whiny “Whyyyy?”
Everyone else, stop posting responses that you already know that Darth will reject.
[ /Modding ]
Just wow.
Can you reasonably state if an attack can originate from there? And if not, why?
And tomndebb if an attack on the US should happen that is traced back to this community center, would your viewpoint be changed?
even sven has given the best anwer anyone can give to your question in post 615. I think it should speak for everyone who is the least bit sane on this issue.
Larry, while I appreciate your input, that wasn’t my question.
The Park51 building is sponsored by a group that is led by a Sufi Muslim and includes Christians and Jews among its membership. Everyting about the organization is antithetical–even inimical–to the Wahhabists and other Islamic Fundamentalist extremists. There is no way that they are going to permit a Wahhabist or other Islamist group to meet for the express purpose of plotting the ruin of the West.
It is hypothetically possible that a Wahhabist group could rent a room, flying false colors, in which they met to plot another attack. If that was the case, then it would be no different from them renting a room in the Moonie headquarters or the Republican National Committee headqurters or the Fox News building–they would have succeeded in scoring a major triumph for irony, but it would not in any way reflect back on the owners of the building. And given that the Islamists have never, thus far, staged a stealth movement, (as opposed to a covert operation), and that they tend to be almost over-the-top in their forthright hatred of the West, there is no reason to believe that they are suddenly going to change their movement or that the haters and idiots are correct and that Imam Rauf is already a sleeper agent.
If you would like to have your thread shut down with a Warning for deliberately flouting a Mod’s instructions, you may continue this silly game.
You mean, is my commitment to human rights and religious freedom so feeble and shallow that the merest gust of wind will blow it away? No.
I have NO problem with being shut out of the Straight Dope forums as much as enjoy them tomndebb. Because I asked a valid question?
The question might have some validity, although it is rather silly, in context of the real situation. However, your persisitent little game of repeating the question over and over is simply a waste of bandwidth and borderline trolling.
If it were determined that a terrorist attack was launched from the Ground Zero Mosque, I would have no choice but to swear allegiance to Al Qaeda and begin roasting white Christian babies over a pile of burning Bibles. Clearly, Islam is the superior ideology if they could pull that off.
An attack can originate (be conceived and organized) from anywhere-- in a community center or outside a community center; inside a mosque or outside of one; nearby the former World Trade Center or at any putative distance from it. The planning of an attach can take place wherever the planners can physically meet, or anywheres (plural places) that they can meet by short or long distance communication. As long as any “places” at all remain available, and as long as conspirators have some means by which to communicate, there is no possibility of preventing attacks by withholding any specific list of places.
That said, I favor the upholding of our principles of religious tolerance (meaning I favor allowing the owners of the property to use it in any manner they wish, subject only to NY’s applicable building and zoning ordinances, including use as a Muslim community center including a mosque) and would not change my mind or feel any regret even if in some hypothetical future those facilities were used by bad guys to plan an attack on the US.
Is that responsive to your original and this follow-up question?