Taliban in Tennis Shoes
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Posted on 01/04/2003 2:46:23 AM PST by DocFarmer
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It was the type of rhetoric we have become accustomed to hearing each week from the pulpits where radical Muslim clerics throughout the Middle East regularly thunder their anti-American diatribes to throngs of worshippers. "Why are people so supportive of [bin Laden] in many countries?" this particular speaker asked rhetorically, and then continued: "He has been in many countries that are riddled with poverty. People don’t have phones, no sewers, no roads, no schools, no health care, no facilities just to make sure their daily lives are okay. He’s been out in these countries for decades building roads, building schools, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. It made their lives better. [The US has] not done that. [The US has not] been out in many of these countries helping them build infrastructure. How would they look at [the US] today if [it] had been there helping them with some of that, rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?" Remarkably, the person who spoke these words was neither an extremist cleric in Saudi Arabia, nor a columnist for Egypt’s government-run newspaper Al Ahram, nor an instructor in one of Pakistan’s 5,000 notorious madrassas. Rather, it was United States Senator Patty Murray of Washington, speaking to an audience of high-school students at Vancouver’s Columbia River High School on December 18. Soon thereafter her comments appeared on the pro-bin Laden Website, Taliban Online, under the heading "Democrat Senator Praises bin Laden." When some media commentators later characterized Murray’s statements as offensive and misleading, Murray accused the critics of twisting her words. "Having a challenging and thoughtful discussion about America's future reflects the best values of a free democracy; to sensationalize and distort in an attempt to divide is not," she said. "I am astonished the Republican Party would try to spin out of control a conversation with high school students," she added. "Republicans have been trying for six months to use the war on terrorism for political purposes." But it is nothing new for Murray to assert that all the hullabaloo about terrorism amounts to needless alarmism. Following the Democrats’ poor showing in last November’s elections, for instance, she complained that "we weren't able to get our message out because of so much talk about terror and war in Iraq." Murray’s supporters were quick to explain that the Senator’s statements about bin Laden referred to the fact that he had imported heavy equipment to build roads, tunnels, schools, hospitals, and storage facilities in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. Michael Swetnam, who co-authored a book on bin Laden and al-Qaeda, explained that since 1988 bin Laden had also endeavored to build homes for Afghan widows whose husbands were killed in the war against the Soviets. But whereas Senate Appropriations Committee member Murray seemed well acquainted with bin Laden’s humanitarian efforts, she offered her impressionable listeners no evidence that the US has done anything overseas other than conduct bombing raids. Indeed she said nothing about the $848 million the US has already spent for humanitarian relief and reconstruction in Afghanistan – including the rebuilding of schools, roads, and irrigation systems that were destroyed in conflicts long predating any American presence in that country. Nor did Murray mention that thanks to America’s provision of more efficient seeds, Afghans this year reaped the benefits of an 82 percent increase in wheat production – meaning that an extra 843,000 tons of that vital grain helped feed millions of people. Neither did she utter a word about another US project that spurred a 400 percent increase in Afghan cotton production. The aforementioned initiatives comprise but a small fraction of our country’s efforts to help resurrect Afghanistan from the rubble left behind by the Soviet war and the Taliban’s brutal reign of terror. Andrew Natsios of the US Agency for International Development reports that American money and technological assistance have already rebuilt sixteen of the country’s government ministry buildings that were in virtual ruins. The US has distributed some 30,000 transistor radios to Afghan villagers, thereby giving them some access to world and national news. American dollars have rebuilt the Afghan Teacher’s College, where two-thirds of those being trained to teach are women – the very people whose human rights were virtually nonexistent under bin Laden’s former protectors, the Taliban. The US has also provided 1,300 teacher trainers to help improve the quality of Afghan education, and produced 97 million textbooks for the children there to use. One wonders why Senator Murray chose to mention none of this. American money has refurbished many bakeries run by Afghanistan’s widows and indigent women – bakeries that were closed by the Taliban, who deemed it improper for women to be involved in any ventures that might provide them with the barest shred of dignity or self-sufficiency. Further, the US has funded 6,100 water projects in Afghanistan, and has rebuilt 4,000 kilometers of roads, 70,000 homes, 72 health clinics, 31 bridges, and 142 schools and day-care centers. In the coming months, several hundred more Afghan schools will be built with American money. Our government is also financing the vital task of locating and disabling the millions of land mines that still imperil the lives of Afghan civilians – mines that are exceeded in number only by those in Cambodia and Angola. Contrary to Senator Murray’s implications, the US has clearly done a great deal to help the people of Afghanistan, the very land wherein the masterminds of 9-11 planned and coordinated their murderous plots. No other nation on earth has even come close to providing Afghans with as much assistance as has the United States. Nor is such American generosity to suffering populations around the world anything new. Indeed, in recent years our country has similarly spearheaded reconstruction efforts in Mozambique, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Nicaragua, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Given the aforementioned facts, it is plain to see that Senator Murray’s assertions of two weeks ago rank among the most ignorant and irresponsible utterances ever to emanate from the mouth of an American political leader – and that takes in a great deal of territory. Notably, she is the same Senator who called Trent Lott’s recent comments at Strom Thurmond’s birthday celebration "offensive, hurtful and wrong." "Worst of all," she added, "they do not appear to be isolated remarks. At a time when our country should stand as one, Senator Lott's comments serve only to divide." But it is difficult to see how Senator Murray’s own statements at Columbia High School contribute to her professed ideal of helping Americans "stand as one." Nor can her public criticisms of the United States that day be characterized as "isolated remarks." Indeed Murray has expressed support for a "peace movement" calling itself the Campaign of Conscience (COC), whose official position on Iraq is that "the UK and US must stop bombing in the so-called ‘no fly’ zones; and the US must negotiate – not demand – a regime change." Unfortunately, neither Murray nor the COC offer any suggestions as to how a bloodthirsty tyrant like Saddam Hussein might be persuaded to negotiate away the absolute power he has held for more than two decades. Murray characteristically traces most hostilities between the US and other nations to flawed American policies. "It seems that the Administration’s next phase in the ‘war against terror’ may be an attack on Iraq," she said recently. "I am worried by reports that Saddam Hussein is continuing to seek and develop weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, it could not be clearer to me that a decade of sanctions has done little to address our concerns about Saddam Hussein and his ability to threaten his neighbors or his own people. . . . [C]ontinuing to punish the Iraqi people through sanctions only harm[s] US efforts to work with Islamic countries on difficult issues that require US leadership." In other words, Iraqis now suffer principally as a result of the sanctions, rather than because of Saddam’s post-Gulf War choice to spend vast sums of capital on his military machine and the construction of at least fifty lavish palaces that serve only to glorify him. The fact that the sanctions were instituted because Saddam broke every pledge he made in the 1991 peace agreement seems lost on Murray. Senator Murray fits in quite comfortably with the Blame-America-First crowd. Her December 18 comments about bin Laden and American irresponsibility overseas make the recent stupidities of Trent Lott seem almost statesmanlike by comparison. Imagine for a moment that Lott had been foolish enough to praise the Ku Klux Klan for the fact that, notwithstanding its noxious nature, in past decades that organization had established an institution for homeless children, given food and money to the poor, and conducted a support program for widows. Inarguably, any American politician who deemed it appropriate to point out the Klan’s "good qualities" would be run out of office in everlasting disgrace. And rightfully so. Why, then, has nothing of the kind happened to Senator Murray? How can a US Senator remain a viable political entity even after enumerating the "good points" of a man and an organization already responsible for the cold-blooded slaughter of thousands of Americans – while simultaneously characterizing her own nation as an irresponsible member of the world community? Does something not seem amiss here? |
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Taliban in Tennis Shoes
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The award might even have to be renamed.
Furthermore, America spent around $180M dollars on aid to Afghanistan (and Afghan refugees in surrounding countries) in the year before 911. For more, including many links down thread, see the following:
Couple these comments by this DEMOCRAT senator, the overwhelming silence from this DEMOCRAT senator's DEMOCRAT collegues in the senate and the DEMOCRAT clinton administration's initiative to rush thru citizenship in time for middle easterners to vote DEMOCRAT in the '96 election and you have the makings of a real DEMOCRATIC 5th column.
I know you were just trying to be nice to the communist, but really...my wife is a lady, my daughter is a lady. Perhaps some desperate soul might tell Patty bin Murray that she is a lady at 10 minutes to closing time, but in the morning my wife and daughter will still be ladies.
Patty Murray is literally a drooling idiot. If she wasn't in Congress, she'd be checking groceries at your neighborhood Kroger.
No, that actually takes some brains. I doubt she'd qualify as a bagger (3rd class)...
The shrillest critics never offer a real alternative.
The word 'Lady' is one of the most overused and inappropriately used words in American English.
The word 'Lady' (which is functionally equivalent to the word 'Gentlemen') is not a title, in the British sense.
Nor is it an honorific, in the sense that many Oriental languages rigidly assign rank and social stature to certain classes with modifiers such as the Japanese San.
Properly used, the word 'Lady' is a term that specifies a particular and individual human female whose behavior is sufficiently superior to the societal average to merit special distinction. It IS NOT properly interchangeable with the word 'woman'.
Unfortunately, many American men tend to be overly deferential to women and apply this term indiscriminately.
This has the regrettable effect of elevating many mere women, and even some bitches, sluts, whores, harpies and tramps above their station, while robbing authentic ladies of the distinction they have -by their behavior- earned.
I NEVER assume that a human female is a 'Lady' by virtue of her gender.
In those cases where I simply don't know the nature of the human female I'm referring to, 'woman' is the term that I initially use, it being both properly descriptive and judgement-neutral.
Of course, in those cases where the human female in question is known to be a bitch, slut, whore, harpy and tramp I always attempt to use the term that best describes the nature of her debasement most accurately.
I lean toward the latter, with a healthy dose of the former!
(Time to start heating the tar, and plucking the chickens ;-)
Seriously, Murray is beginning to irritate me almost as much. I didn't think that was possible.
I'm just sorry there has to be an annual award. But it's looking like a necesssity.
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