I just got this e-mail...
Dear Friend,
I just received a terrific email from Mr. Herb Meyer of Friday Harbor, Washington. His perspective on the outrageous comments of Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash) is on point. Please read it and pass it along to your friends and family.
In the last 4 days, nearly 25,000 Americans have called for Senator Patty Murray to resign from the United States Senate.
She told a high school class that the United State should follow Osama bin Laden's example if we want Middle Easterners to love us. When her ridiculous statements were publicized, she refused to apologize, claiming she was stirring a needed debate about bin Laden's popularity.
Herb -- a GOP congressional candidate in last fall's election -- lays out the truth. Forward his comments to your friends and, if you haven't already, please add your name to the petition.
Tell Senator Murray to step down now!
Online Petition http://millionsofamericans.com/home/murray1.cfm
Bruce Eberle
-----Original Message-----
From: Herb Meyer
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2002 12:59 PM
To: Bruce Eberle
Subject: Herb Meyer responds to bin Laden comments by Patty Murray
Bruce,
I wrote the following op-ed piece for our local newspaper. Feel free to pass it on.
- Herb
------------------------------------------- Patty Murray Goes Too Far
By Herb Meyer
The only thing more preposterous than Patty Murray's recent comments about Osama bin Laden's popularity among Moslems, is the Senator's subsequent defense of what she said.
Talking to a high school class in Vancouver, Washington last week, Senator Murray said that bin Laden is popular among Moslems because of all the roads and schools that his Al Queda group has built. She added that the US should be building more "infrastructure" in the developing world, and implied that it is our failure to provide enough aid that led to the September 11 attacks. When word of what Murray said leaked out and became a national issue, the Senator tried to explain away her comments by congratulating herself for having "deliberately stirred" a discussion of the terrorist leader's appeal.
That's like Trent Lott congratulating himself for having "deliberately stirred" a debate on race relations when he said the country would have been better off if Strom Thurmond had been elected President in 1948. If words have any meaning at all, Senator Murray's clear intention was to slam the Bush Administration for not providing as much foreign aid to developing countries as she would like us to provide. She was merely using bin Laden as an excuse to make her point. And it's a very silly point, because - as she neglected to tell the students -- our country has provided more aid, to more developing countries, than the rest of the industrial world combined. Moreover - as she also neglected to mention -- the last four times our country's armed forces went into action before September 11, we did so to protect and defend Moslems -- in Somalia, Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo. (And in both Bosnia and Kosovo, we were protecting Moslems from aggression by Serbia, which is Christian.) So why should these people be angry with us?
Moreover, the Senator seems to think that until she spoke out, no one had thought to even raise the question of why bin Laden and his form of radical Islam is so popular. That too is nonsense. Literally since the day of the 9/11 attacks, this question has been at the core of the most extensive, comprehensive debate about an enemy's popularity in our country's history. It has been taking place in books, such as Bernard Lewis' excellent What Went Wrong, in magazines such as Commentary and National Review (especially through Victor Hanson Davis' superb analyses), and on The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. On television the Fox News Network has provided an endless stream of commentators on the subject of bin Laden's appeal. Just because Senator Murray was unaware of this ongoing debate doesn't mean it hasn't been taking place.
Murray says her only intention was to "raise the level of thinking among the students." But what kind of "thinking" does she raise when she praises bin Laden for having built schools - but fails to tell the students that when his Al Queda took control of Afghanistan, the first thing it did was kick all the girls out of those schools? She also failed to mention that while bin Laden built a few schools, what he mostly built were training camps for terrorists. And nowhere in the Senator's remarks did she raise the issue of Islam, and its historic failure to do what Judaism and Christianity accomplished centuries ago - namely, to reconcile with the modern world.
Of course we ought to try and understand bin Laden's appeal. And by all means let's have a debate on whether to increase the amount of foreign aid our country provides. But the Senator's comments accomplished neither. They were silly, simplistic, misleading, and intended solely to gain political advantage. Amazingly, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote an editorial last week praising Murray for her "guts." But does it really take "guts" to stand up before a high school class in Washington State and slam the Bush Administration? And even if she does have "guts" - so what? Our country is at war, and our very survival is at stake. What we really need right now in a senator, is brains.
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