Just as news emerged yesterday about the terror attacks in Norway, the right wing here in the U.S. rushed to judgement, declaring that they were perpetrated by Islamic terrorists. But Norwegian authorities have since charged Norwegian right-wing “Christian fundamentalist” Anders Breivik, a move that appears to have confused conservatives about terrorism in general.

Today on Fox News, former Bush administration State Department official Christian Whiton acknowledged that the case in Norway “wasn’t Islamic terrorism,” but he quickly downplayed terrorist acts committed by those such as Breivik, saying it’s the first of its kind since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Whiton then attacked the Norwegians for not being serious about terrorism and claimed that European countries are susceptible to terrorism because they’re “neutral in the war on terror”:

WHITON: This wasn’t Islamic terrorism. It’s one of the first instances since Oklahoma City when terrorism on this scale was not Islamic. But steps you can take to defend your people and your government and your society against Islamic terrorism would also come in handy against lone wolfs as this is turning out to be. It just looks like the Norwegians didn’t happen to take them, nor did they approach terrorism in what frankly, was a serious manner I’d say.

GREGG JARRETT: Islamic terrorism is a problem in the Scandanavian countries. Were they just sort of turning a blind eye to it? [...]

WHITON: You know the problem in a lot of European counties is they think by being neutral in the war on terror as if any civilized society can be, that they won’t face the threats that we face. But that’s just not true, we do know al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist movements are targeting Scandanavian countries just like the rest of us.

Watch it:

Of course Whiton is wrong that the Oslo attack is the first act of terrorism since 1995 that didn’t involve Islamic extremists. Various nationalist and political terror groups have committed violent terrorist acts around the world since then, for instance the Real Irish Republican Army bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland in 1998.

CNN contributor Erick Erickson had a similar bait and switch today on his Red State blog. He acknowledged that he was “wrong” to blame the Oslo attacks on al-Qaeda affiliated groups, but then defended his position saying that Christians aren’t as violent as Muslims:

First, those of us on the right who point out the now fairly common ties between terrorists and Islam do so largely because the secular left has become willfully naive. The fact of the matter is violence and Islam may not be very common among American muslims, but internationally it is extremely common and can fairly well be considered mainstream within much of Islam. Read Andy McCarthy if you suffer on the delusion that it is not mainstream.

With Christians, it is rather rare to see a self-described Christian engage in heinous terrorist acts. In fact, in as much as there is an Arab Street filled with muslims more often than not cheering on the latest terrorist act of radical Islamists, you will be very hard pressed to find a Christian who does not condemn the act regardless of the faith of the person doing the killing.

Erickson then asked, “why is the left so gleeful that the Norwegian is a ‘conservative Christian’?” No one is “gleeful” that Breivik is right wing or a “Christian fundamentalist.” Responding to terrorism requires dealing in facts and dispelling speculation based on pre-conceived ideology.

When news began to unfold on Friday of the terror attacks in Norway that has left more than 90 dead, many blogs and Twitter accounts immediately lit up with speculation about who was behind the massive bombings in Oslo and the subsequent attack on a youth camp 20 miles away.

But some pundits, mostly right-wing neoconservatives, proclaimed that this bore all the hallmarks of Islamic terrorism, even going so far as to draw policy prescriptions. At the Washington Post, normally a well-respected news outlet, Jennifer Rubin quoted the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies‘ Thomas Joscelyn and AEI scholar Gary Schmitt to say that the attacks were the result of Islamic terrorism. She then concluded the “jihadist” attack on Oslo means the U.S. shouldn’t cut military spending:

This is a sobering reminder for those who think it’s too expensive to wage a war against jihadists. [...] Some irresponsible lawmakers on both sides of the aisle…would have us believe that enormous defense cuts would not affect our national security. Obama would have us believe that al-Qaeda is almost caput and that we can wrap up things in Afghanistan. All of these are rationalizations for doing something very rash, namely curbing our ability to defend the United States and our allies in a very dangerous world.

The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, rushed up an editorial Friday, blaming “jidhadists” for the attacks and exclaiming, “Norway is targeted for being true to Western norms”:

…in jihadist eyes, [Norway] will always remain guilty of being what it is: a liberal nation committed to freedom of speech and conscience, equality between the sexes, representative democracy, and every other freedom that defines the West. For being true to those ideals, Norwegians have now been asked to pay a terrible price.

As more information came out about the attacks and the attacker, the WSJ rewrote the online version of the editorial, albeit by removing any trace of the above paragraph. Instead, it mentioned that it had falsely attributed the attacks to jihadists and called the attacker an al Qaeda “copycat.”

Many other conservatives committed similar follies. AEI’s Ahmad Majidyar published a post about the links between Norway and al Qaeda. FDD president Cliff May openly speculated at Pajamas Media that the attack was probably a “retaliatory” strike for the recent indictment of a radical Islamic militant in Norway. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin made multiple references to jihadist attackers on Twitter in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Josh Trevino, a GOP activist and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, sarcastically quipped that he “suspected Lutherans” for the attack while also saying it was part of a “jihad.” Conservative activist Andrew Breitbart and RedState’s Erick Erickson were quick to join in as well.

Even after the identity of the suspected attacker was known, Erickson went up with a bizarre new post claiming some sort of difference between Christian and Muslim terrorists.

Now, though, we know that these speculative hypotheses, presented with near certitude and no evidence, couldn’t have been further from the truth: The man now charged by police for both attacks is a right-wing 32-year-old Norwegian “fundamentalist Christian” (per Norwegian police) with — far from ties to Muslim extremist motivations — a particular animus toward Islam, which he’s labeled a “hate ideolog(y).”

Rubin, who has a penchant for credulously repeating unverified and incorrect claims that fit with her worldview, drew the ire of James Fallows and Steve Clemons at the Atlantic website, where they said the Post should correct her “fear-mongering” piece and issue an apology.