The Blue And The Gray (Area)

CNN's Roland Martin responds to critics of his takedown of Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's Confederate History Month proclamation conveniently omitting slavery by upping the score:  comparing Confederate soldiers to terrorists.

When you make the argument that the South was angry with the North for "invading" its "homeland," Osama bin Laden has said the same about U.S. soldiers being on Arab soil. He has objected to our bases in Saudi Arabia, and that's one of the reasons he has launched his jihad against us. Is there really that much of a difference between him and the Confederates? Same language; same cause; same effect.

If a Confederate soldier was merely doing his job in defending his homeland, honor and heritage, what are we to say about young Muslim radicals who say the exact same thing as their rationale for strapping bombs on their bodies and blowing up cafes and buildings?

If the Sons of Confederate Veterans use as a talking point the vicious manner in which people in the South were treated by the North, doesn't that sound exactly like the Taliban saying they want to kill Americans for the slaughter of innocent people in Afghanistan?

Defenders of the Confederacy say that innocent people were killed in the Civil War; hasn't the same argument been presented by Muslim radicals in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places where the U.S. has tangled with terrorists?

We can't on the one hand justify the actions of Confederates as being their duty as valiant men of the South, and then condemn the Muslim extremists who want to see Americans die a brutal death. These men are held up as honorable by their brethren, so why do Americans see them as different from our homegrown terrorists?

Now, I'll give Roland Martin an uncommon amount of credit.  There are very few people brave enough to do this on the national stage as a media figure.  One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, the saying goes. 

Is Martin correct?  There are those who will savage Martin by saying that if the Confederacy was 1862's Taliban, then the American Revolution, French Revolution, South African resistance to apartheid, India's colonial revolution from the Raj, and the various South and Central American, Caribbean and African colonial revolutions and eastern European revolutions are all acts of terrorism as well.

History's full of revolutions and resistances to occupations, frankly.  But Martin's more refined point is that the Confederacy wasn't a brave and honorable resistance movement, they were fighting to keep slavery as an economic engine of the Southern economy.  It was couched in all sorts of noble terms and rhetoric, but let's never forget the Civil War was a group of states that banded together militarily to defend slavery, because without it the wealthiest landowners in those states were going to lose a staggering amount of that wealth.  These were the guys who also happened to be in charge of these state governments, so they basically went to war over it.

It wasn't the War of Northern Aggression, it was the War Of Using Colored People As A Natural Resource Rather Than Treating Them As Human Beings.  And that particular war is still being fought in some parts of the country 150 or so years later.

So, were the Confederates the original domestic terrorists?  Martin is correct to point out the similarities in rhetoric and mindset.  Terrorism and a shooting war is a matter of degrees, but at the core Martin is correct.  His conclusion:

Even if you're a relative of one of the 9/11 hijackers, that man was an out-and-out terrorist, and nothing you can say will change that. And if your great-great-great-granddaddy was a Confederate who stood up for Southern ideals, he too was a terrorist.

They are the same.

As a matter of conscience, I will not justify, understand or accept the atrocious view of Muslim terrorists that their actions represent a just war. They are reprehensible, and their actions a sin against humanity.

And I will never, under any circumstances, cast Confederates as heroic figures who should be honored and revered. No -- they were, and forever will be, domestic terrorists.

Keep an eye on the reaction of the right to this one.  It will not be pretty.  But what Martin said needed to be said, and he's a brave man for saying it.