Posted on 10/11/2002 2:16:59 PM PDT by Gothmog
Six days after terrorists crashed two jetliners into the World Trade Center, Anne Sumers logged on to an Internet message board for former students of a school she attended decades ago in Afghanistan, where her father was working at the time.
President Bush was promising to hunt down Osama bin Laden in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, and aggression toward Muslims and others who looked Muslim had begun to surface in the United States. The day before Sumers logged into the chat room, a Sikh gas station owner in Mesa, Ariz., was killed by a gunman who apparently thought the man was Muslim because he wore a turban.
"Northern New Jersey is reeling. We have mothers and fathers from every little town missing and, we all realize now, dead," Sumers wrote to her former classmates at the American International School of Kabul.
"People understand so little about Afghanistan, and yet they are so angry," she continued. "It is hard to start a conversation defending Afghanistan. Harboring bin Ladin [sic] is heinous - and often people misinterpret any defense of Afghanistan as un-American."
Sumers, now running for Congress, went on to praise an essay published on the Internet shortly after 9/11 by Afghan-born American Tamin Ansary, who argued that a U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan would only harm civilians suffering under an oppressive Taliban regime that took power in the wake of a bloody war with the former Soviet Union.
The essay, Sumers wrote, "has helped me defuse and redirect the blind anger many people have towards Afghanistan. I have used his words and phrases over and over, and they work against jingoistic 'patriotism.' "
A year after those writings - as Sumers, a Democrat, tries to win the seat of retiring Rep. Marge S. Roukema -Republicans have used that Internet posting and others on the message board to question Sumers' patriotism.
National Republicans began airing a radio advertisement this week referring to one of the writings. And Sumers' GOP opponent, Assemblyman Scott Garrett of Sussex County, has been bringing up the same reference in candidate forums.
Campaign officials for Garrett say Sumers - an ophthalmologist from Upper Saddle River who at the time of the Internet postings had not yet entered the congressional race - should have shown more support for President Bush as America was on the brink of a war on terrorism.
"Her first response is to defend Afghanistan and not feel the same sense of pride in America" others were feeling, Garrett's campaign manager, Evan Kozlow, said incredulously. "To question why people were wrapping themselves in the flag?
"I think her comments on her chat board clearly show that she is out of touch with the voters of the 5th District."
Sumers says her opponents have recklessly taken her statements out of context - in addition to lifting them from a message board that she said was intended for her former classmates. The comments came five months before she declared her candidacy.
"I just think the electorate is too smart for this," Sumers said.
Three days after she wrote to her former classmates, Sumers said, Bush himself echoed many of her sentiments, warning Americans not to see Muslims as the enemy.
"He said that very specifically - that we all have to take a deep breath, look at a map, and figure out who the enemy is here," said Sumers, who during the campaign has expressed support for the war on terrorism and for the prospect of a preemptive strike against Iraq.
Others have come to Sumers' defense, including the head of a New Jersey firefighters union, which has endorsed the Democratic candidate.
"Since 9/11, you have people who are wrapping themselves in the flag and becoming almost pompous in nature," said Thomas P. Canzanella, president of the Professional Firefighters Association of New Jersey. "I don't think that belongs in a political campaign."
Democrats in Washington called it a low political blow.
"Questioning someone's patriotism is the most pathetic form of political desperation," said Kim Rubey, spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "A tactic like this speaks volumes about the trouble Republicans are in."
Republicans have tried to make an even bigger issue out of another message board posting by Sumers, who lived in Afghanistan as a teenager while her father worked for the University of Kabul.
Two years ago, she logged on and wrote of the "reverse culture shock" she experienced when returning to her hometown in America after her family's time in Afghanistan.
She said she often suffers from "international wanderlust."
"I really want to go back overseas (and stay there, I think!)" she wrote in an August 2000 message.
In a radio ad that started airing this week on behalf of Garrett, a narrator mentions that Sumers said she doesn't want to live in America.
Over the course of the campaign, Garret campaign officials have issued several news releases on Sumers' Internet comments.
"Don't the people of the 5th District at least deserve a representative who wants to live in America and wants to work for their concerns, and not those of liberal extremists?" Kozlow said in one news release.
Sumers said Republicans are misrepresenting her 2000 statements as well. She said she was merely expressing a desire to spend an extended time overseas on a medical mission. "Rather than going for two weeks or a month, to go over and actually live there," she said.
"This is not me wishing to renounce my American citizenship. This is me wishing to serve our country overseas. No one loves America more than someone who has lived away from America."
The Republicans seem to be using the Internet postings to knock Sumers off the moderate platform she has been running on and isolate her as a liberal, said Amy Walter, who analyzes House races for the Cook Political Report in Washington.
"She doesn't have a voting record," Walter said. "And if you're the Republicans, you have to figure out 'How can we discredit this person when we don't have much to work with?' "
"You're trying to find the issue that moved the most voters and made her out to be the exact opposite of what she says she is."
I think it is kind of obvious the slant here. If she or the paper were confident that she was making innocous statements, then they would actually report her comments and let the public know.
If "Bush himself echoed many of her sentiments," then she would have no problem having the paper post them. Or maybe posting her comments on her campaign web site:
http://www.sumers2002.com/
I searched it, and did not see any mention of Afghanistan. In her official bio, she mentions nothing about living in Afghanistan or wanting to live or 'serve America' overseas.
Yet the Democrats used GWB's 25-year-old DUI against him and that was okay?
Cynthia McKinney, Sheila "Jesse" Jackson Lee, Barbara Lee..
She does include her position about Israel, maybe she lived there, too. Or maybe she's just trying to curry favor w/ Jewish voters.
But she felt very strongly about Afhanistan and her experiences there a short while ago. Now, no mention?
You are absolutely right. I think she should present her full views about Afghanistan, US Afghani policy, etc. It sounds like she might have something interesting, maybe even enlightening, to say. But for some reason she is silent. Don't ask me, write her an email or something.
So now it is a year later. Would all those Afghanis that now want to return to Taliban rule please raise their right hand.
Didn't think so.
She has the right to believe whatever she wants. The issue is not her opinions but rather her judgment - clearly, she does not have the foresight to make accurate decisions.
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