Posted on 06/07/2002 1:32:47 AM PDT by HAL9000
Killed Burnham, its wounded but released wife
Friday June 07, 2002 - 8h27 GMT
ZAMBOANGA (the Philippines), June 7 (AFP) - the American hostage Martin Burhnam was killed while his wife, blessée, were released at the time of an operation of help carried out by the army philippine Friday, indicated a General Filipino to the AFP.
The General was not able to specify the gravity of the wounds of Gracia Burnham.
But there are larger national interests involved. Our resources are getting stretched to the limit. It required a very large force to hunt down these rebels - more than we can afford to base in the Philippines without incurring greater risk in other areas. It makes a lot of sense to help the Philippines build up their own forces to combat this evil over the long term.
Many Philippine soldiers have been killed and injured trying to protect our mutual interests during this ordeal. Seven Philippine soldiers were injured in today's operation.
Although we cannot EXPECT an automatic U.S. military rescue when in danger overseas, it does happen when feasible, thanks to the bravery and heroism of our soldiers.
Even at home, some folks expect their local law enforcement officers will sacrifice themselves to protect a civilian. It is an unreasonable expectation - but it still happens sometimes. When it happens, it's because of the officer's personal decision - the ultimate act of nobility - not because some law or policy requires it.
Oh Lord,
You gave them ears
but they will not hear.
You gave them eyes
but they will not see.
(So, what in the world am I doing trying to wake them up if you can't, Oh Lord?!!)
Afghan Islamism Was Made in Washington
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National
Security Adviser in 'Le Nouvel Observateur' (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76
Translated by Bill Blum
***
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
***
Note: There are at least two editions of 'Le Nouvel Observateur.' With apparently the sole exception of the Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States is shorter than the French version. The Brzezinski interview was not included in the shorter version. *
------------------
AND---although I know it's hopeless--from another unimpeachable source, (although eminently compostable):
".... Organizations accepting funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development must certify that tax dollars will not be used to advance religion. The certification states that AID “will finance only programs that have a secular purpose. . . . AID-financed activities cannot result in religious indoctrination of the ultimate beneficiaries.”
The issue of textbook content reflects growing concern among U.S. policymakers about school teachings in some Muslim countries in which Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism are on the rise. A number of government agencies are discussing what can be done to counter these trends.
President Bush and first lady Laura Bush have repeatedly spotlighted the Afghan textbooks in recent weeks. Last Saturday, Bush announced during his weekly radio address that the 10 million U.S.-supplied books being trucked to Afghan schools would teach “respect for human dignity, instead of indoctrinating students with fanaticism and bigotry.”
$6.5 MILLION IN GOVERNMENT MONEY
The first lady stood alongside Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai on Jan. 29 to announce that AID would give the University of Nebraska at Omaha $6.5 million to provide textbooks and teacher training kits. AID officials said in interviews that they left the Islamic materials intact because they feared Afghan educators would reject books lacking a strong dose of Muslim thought. The agency removed its logo and any mention of the U.S. government from the religious texts, AID spokeswoman Kathryn Stratos said.
“It’s not AID’s policy to support religious instruction,” Stratos said. “But we went ahead with this project because the primary purpose . . . is to educate children, which is predominantly a secular activity.”
Some legal experts disagreed. A 1991 federal appeals court ruling against AID’s former director established that taxpayers’ funds may not pay for religious instruction overseas, said Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law expert at American University, who litigated the case for the American Civil Liberties Union. Ayesha Khan, legal director of the nonprofit Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the White House has “not a legal leg to stand on” in distributing the books. “Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to supply materials that are religious,” she said.
Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.
ONE TANK, TWO TANKS, THREE TANKS, FOUR
During that time of Soviet occupation, regional military leaders in Afghanistan helped the U.S. smuggle books into the country. They demanded that the primers contain anti-Soviet passages. Children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines, agency officials said. They acknowledged that at the time it also suited U.S. interests to stoke hatred of foreign invaders.
“I think we were perfectly happy to see these books trashing the Soviet Union,” said Chris Brown, head of book revision for AID’s Central Asia Task Force.
AID dropped funding of Afghan programs in 1994. But the textbooks continued to circulate in various versions, even after the Taliban seized power in 1996.
Officials said private humanitarian groups paid for continued reprintings during the Taliban years. Today, the books remain widely available in schools and shops, to the chagrin of international aid workers.
“The pictures [in] the texts are horrendous to school students, but the texts are even much worse,” said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, an Afghan educator who is a program coordinator for Cooperation for Peace and Unity, a Pakistan-based nonprofit.
ONE BOOK, 43% VIOLENT
An aid worker in the region reviewed an unrevised 100-page book and counted 43 pages containing violent images or passages. The military content was included to “stimulate resistance against invasion,” explained Yaquib Roshan of Nebraska’s Afghanistan center. “Even in January, the books were absolutely the same . . . pictures of bullets and Kalashnikovs and you name it.”
During the Taliban era, censors purged human images from the books. One page from the texts of that period shows a resistance fighter with a bandolier and a Kalashnikov slung from his shoulder. The soldier’s head is missing. Above the soldier is a verse from the Koran. Below is a Pashtu tribute to the mujaheddin, who are described as obedient to Allah. Such men will sacrifice their wealth and life itself to impose Islamic law on the government, the text says.
“We were quite shocked,” said Doug Pritchard, who reviewed the primers in December while visiting Pakistan on behalf of a Canada-based Christian nonprofit group. “The constant image of Afghans being natural warriors is wrong. Warriors are created. If you want a different kind of society, you have to create it.”
NEW BOOKS, OLD TEXTS
After the United States launched a military campaign last year, the United Nations education agency, UNICEF, began preparing to reopen Afghanistan’s schools, using new books developed with 70 Afghan educators and 24 private aid groups. In early January, UNICEF began printing new texts for many subjects but arranged to supply copies of the old, unrevised U.S. books for other subjects, including Islamic instruction.
Within days, the Afghan interim government announced that it would use the old AID-produced texts for its core school curriculum. UNICEF’s new texts could be used only as supplements.
Earlier this year, the United States tapped into its $296 million aid package for rebuilding Afghanistan to reprint the old books, but decided to purge the violent references.
About 18 of the 200 titles the United States is republishing are primarily Islamic instructional books, which agency officials refer to as “civics” courses. Some books teach how to live according to the Koran, Brown said, and “how to be a good Muslim.”
UNICEF is left with 500,000 copies of the old “militarized” books, a $200,000 investment that it has decided to destroy, according to U.N. officials.
On Feb. 4, Brown arrived in Peshawar, the Pakistani border town in which the textbooks were to be printed, to oversee hasty revisions to the printing plates. Ten Afghan educators labored night and day, scrambling to replace rough drawings of weapons with sketches of pomegranates and oranges, Brown said.
“We turned it from a wartime curriculum to a peacetime curriculum,” he said.--------
No they can't it's against a treaty with the Philippines. U.S. Soldiers have already died over there and they can't start kicking *** instead they're made to play footsie by training the filipino troops. Would Martin Burnham be alive today if U.S. troops were allowed to fight?
Their Constitution forbids foreign militaries from taking any actions on their soil so all our guys could do was train their guys. That's not what they wanted to do and I'm sure Rumsfeld was expecting Arroyo and her law-makers to make an exception. They wouldn't.
I bet our Green Berets are pretty pissed that Mr. Burnham was murdered while their hands were tied by the arrogant flip pin-heads.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, one question. I want to answer this. Yes?
Q Are you satisfied that the Philippine troops did all they could in the rescue attempt of the Burnhams? And have you contacted their family here at home?
THE PRESIDENT: First, let me say how sad we are that Martin Burnham lost his life. And I will call his parents. I'm pleased that Mrs. Burnham's alive; that's good.
I talked to President Arroyo of the Philippines. She told me that she had called the Burnham parents, and I thanked her for reaching out. She assured me that the Philippine government would hold the terrorist group accountable for how they treated these Americans, that justice would be done.
We are obviously going to look at all the particulars and the facts, and the State Department will be talking about that later on today.
I respect the spirit in which you made this post. Christianity is the hardest path of all and, clearly, Christians are not even close to agreement as to the true nature of that path. Another poster on this thread wondered where the outrage was. We've had months to prepare for this, almost inevitable, outcome. Outrage was there from day one for most of us. Perhaps some of us mourn differently than others.
We have also had years of observing the Sudan genocide. We've had decades of observing the East Timor annihilation. The ongoing oppresion of Christains in China while the US government plays realpolitik for the benefit of Big Business is a scandal. Is it merely a political scandal? Or is it something far, far more sinister? Something at the sick heart of American Christianity?
The passivity of Christians in the face of the brutalization of the Serbs is another scandal. As is the apparently endless war against the Iraqi people---AKA the war against the demon Sadaam--in spite of the fact that Iraq is one of the very few moslem-dominated countries where Christains are not third-class, sub-humans.
I suppose you skip over the part where Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple---too much negative sentiment.
That said, I can not imagine what the Burhham family here in Kansas is going through right now....it has got to be horrible since their son has died. And poor Gracia......this is just extremely sad.
I remembered reading it in the Weekly Standard earlier in the year. I found the article and I must admit that time has clouded my memories.
Here is a link to the article. I think that maybe the last paragraph stuck more in my mind than anything else. Also, the implication that Arroyo COULD have done more had she chosen to risk herself politically:
Weekly Standard Article The Philppine Front
Again, thank-you for publicizing this travesty and setting the story straight.
In other words, there are about 278 Filipino soldiers for every terrorist, and the potential field of operations is extremely small. Yet, the Burnhams languish and America must wait."
From the above-mentioned article. This is really from where my "attitude" stems.
The Phillipine military bungled some earlier opportunities due to corruption or incompetence, but I still believe this rescue operation was the best option available in this desperate situation.
The top priority now must be to utterly crush the Abu Sayyaf movement and do everything possible to ensure it never happens again.
You wouldn't be using such bluntly offensive language (and ignoring the content of LBDSM's post) because you're specifically trying to get LBDSM to express thoughts which are forbidden to express on FR and thereby get banned, would you?
A lot of people have gotten banned by getting suckered in to such taunts and provocations. I think the secret is out.
-- KotS
If you respect the spirit in which I made my original post then why slap me with your next comment? For heaven's sake. Martin Burnham is dead, his wife is wounded in many ways other than a gunshot...and you have the absolute audacity to continually bring up topics that don't honor the Burnham's in the least!
Please take it to another area to discuss. You are displaying a disrespectful, unloving, and disgusting attitude and certainly NO consideration of the many freepers who would like to honor his memory and support Mrs. Burnham and the children.
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