February 4, 2003
DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT GASSING THE KURDS?:
'Arab CNN' producer offers different view of Iraq crisis (JENNA PORTNOY, February 04, 2003, The Express-Times)An outspoken al-Jazeera producer explained to 200 people Monday at Lehigh University why the Arab world loathes American foreign policy.To the Middle East, President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld symbolize the United States, which is now turning on the very dictator it helped install, said Imad Musa, who works in the network's Washington, D.C., bureau. [...]
In his State of Union address last week, Bush said Saddam Hussein is guilty of human rights' abuses.
"So are about 22 other leaders in the Arab world, just about all of them," Musa said. [...]
The producer, who spoke and answered questions for two hours, injected humor into a straightforward talk about international relations by defending his network -- which after Sept. 11, 2001 became famous for airing tapes of Osama bin Laden and al- Qaeda operatives.
You'd like to be able to take the Arab world seriously and to believe they're capable of reforming themselves. But when you've got a joker like this flippantly dismissing Saddam's human rights record--1,000,000 killed--because "all of them" do it, you have to wonder if we're going to have to democratize all of them ourselves. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 4, 2003 6:52 PM
Hey, that's my line!
Anyhow, despite hopes in some quarters, the cookies fail to crumble in Venezuela, Iran etc.
Mr. Judd;
So this guys solution to the problem that 22 other dictators get away with these abuses is to let Saddam get away with it as well? Doesn't seem very forward looking.
No, no, that's not the point. This way they can hate America for tolerating (and even supporting) Arab dictators, and then hate America again for trying to reform some of them (if only those who are perceived pose a danger to America, though one wouldn't want to inject any serious reasoning here).
So it's a win-win situation.