Do NPR executives get nervous, too?

Regarding NPR's firing of Juan Williams, I have one thought: It would be interesting to hook the NPR execs up to a polygraph machine and ask them, "If you're on an airplane and several men board wearing obviously Islamic-style attire, would that make you nervous?" Williams' ouster was reportedly based on his comment on a Fox News program that he got nervous when he was on an airplane and men in Islamic (or Arabic) dress board. After 9-11, what Americans or Europeans wouldn't get nervous?

The fallacy in this reaction is that the 9-11 hijackers were not wearing Islamic attire. They were dressed in Western-style clothes as they took control of four airliners and attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and were stopped from attacking the White House or Capitol. But radical Islamist doctrine was behind the attacks; we have it on the authority of Osama Bin Laden himself.

Williams, whom I enjoyed listening to on NPR, was admitting a personal but nearly universal reaction, a fear of Islamic radicals. Later in the program that got him fired, Williams pointed out that most Muslims are peaceful followers of mainstream Islam, not terrorists. Nevertheless, a handful of radicals can taint an entire group in the same way that a rape victim might experience panic attacks when alone with men. If Williams was fired solely for one comment on Fox News, then he was fired for being honest about something that some other Americans — apparently including NPR executives — are in denial about. Ask them to submit to a lie detector and see.