Zalmay Khalilzad, currently working as part of the liaison “project” to Iraq is being put forth by many in the Bush administration as our next United Nations Ambassador. Khalilizad is a Muslim of Afghan parentage and has been a part of Republican administrations since the 1980’s. He is highly respected as a man who can work with people of different cultures and backgrounds and represents a complete reversal in style and substance from ex-Ambassador John Bolton.
Obviously, the Conservative right will hate him!
Khalilizad has impeccable neo-con credentials, having worked with Paul Wolfowitz in the 1990’s and having been part of the Project for a New American Century. But he has also grown in stature and understanding over the past 5 years and has been instrumental in bringing together the different factions in Iraq. He understands, unlike many in the administration, that working behind the scenes with countries to negotiate acceptable alternatives to all is what the U.N. Ambassador must do. So what is Khalilizad doing working in the Bush administration which seems to eschew any such nonsense as negotiation and compromise? Part of the answer is that he has become very much a political insider by being associated with the right people as well as doing good work in international assignments. The other part of the equation is that he is trusted by the White House as being a man who will still represent U.S. interests, which is obviously the most important part of working for George Bush.
Obviously, the Conservative right will hate him!
Why should this be true? Consider the case of Keith Ellison, the Muslim member of Congress from Minnesota, who went out of his way yesterday to introduce himself to Virgil Goode of Virginia after Goode’s smear and fear letter sent to constituents. Yes, this is the same Keith Ellison who went on Glen Beck’s CNN show, even though Beck, a notorious racist and fear monger, asked him to prove he was not a terrorist. But overriding Ellison’s Americanism (or Khalilizad’s for that matter) is the fact that they are Muslims so they must be, by association, traitors to our country and represent foreigners, usually illegal, who want to kill everyone of us! Why, wasn’t it just yesterday that Pat Robertson told us that God told him that millions of Americans would die this year in a terrorist attack? Done by whom? Muslims (since we must assume Islamo-fascists would be at the bottom of every evil thing)!
So what is Bush thinking in allowing a Muslim and someone from a strong Middle Eastern inheritance to represent our country in the United Nations? How callous must Bush be to so hatefully disrespect his 30% approving right wing?? Has he lost all touch with reality in a world where Democrats control Congress and Nancy Pelosi with her San Francisco values are leading representatives towards a change in the MINIMUM WAGE!!!
Perhaps Bush is playing to the Democratic liberal base, putting forth a man who will feed their desires to destroy America by making a Muslim a new tool to their ambitions. Maybe Bush is looking for a new 30% of the public, even if it means we have Muslim terrorists in our bakery departments with AK-47’s (supplied, interestingly, by the National Rifle Association). Or maybe, just maybe, the conservative right has been just as crazy, just as fringe as moderates and progressives have always thought they were.
Perhaps Bush has finally realized that there is a way for him to have people who represent both America’s interests as well as his own available. Perhaps all of this “Muslims are murderers” crap that shows up in the media everyday is just that: CRAP!
So here’s a friendly suggestion to my right wing friends: put out your candles burning for the likes of John Bolton, Dennis Prager and Virgil Goode. Even Bush is starting to search in the dark for reality. Maybe you should too.
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Comments: 19
http://leavworld.blogspot.com/2005/04/banging-doors-and-throwing-things-why.html
In the meantime, if you had used paragraphs, I could have read the article instead of just seeing words here and there.
It was correctly paragraphed when posted. It changed sometime between Saturday morning and Saturday night. I have corrected the problem. Please reread it, and as always, interested in your opinion.
What, in your opinion, is "with it" amongst those who hate Muslims so much on the right? I read this all the time on Gather, how Virgil Goode is right and that allowing a man to take his Congressional oath on a Quran is somehow, politically sacrilegous, even if the Quran was owned by Thomas Jefferson?
Secondly, in regards to Bolton... His style in the U.N. made him irrelevant because you can't "bully" either European countries nor Russia and China. Can't you see that?
An aside benefit for Bush is that history will have to honestly write that he hired a Muslim. All kinds of wonderful accolades will be applied which will help paint a future picture of this president that is antithetical (but complimentary) to his presidency. Another example of this will be his recent demand for bi-partisanship.
Do you think the smell of desperation is a little heavy in the appointment? It's interesting that Lincoln is often credited for appointing a cabinet of his enemies because they were the best available, but as the old adage goes...."keep your friends close and your enemies closer!" In Bush's case, he ignores anyway not on the same page he is and tries to act like he listens to everyone. Khalilizad was successful in Iraq because he struck out on his own path in terms of putting the right people together to build coalitions.
Certainly not Bush's strategy, which is to make differing viewpoints fight for the right to convince him of what he should do.
Not to be too punny but "It's waning, it's pouring, the President is snoring..." Hehehe.
I have no objection to Khalilizad having not heard of anything that would disqualify him. Maybe that info will turn up at some point in the future - who knows?
I still have objections towards Ellison based on his earlier ties with groups that no right thinking American should have been associated with. I am one who has indicated that I supported Goode's remarks insofar as they related to non-American muslims. I think his point is that with all of the problems inherent in our immigration system, we may well end up with OBL Jr. on a path to citizenship. The fact that he turned his comments towards an American born legislator is unfortunate.
Dennis Prager was wrong. The important issue is whether the representative will uphold his oath to the people not what book he takes the oath on. I am not convinced that he will.
I don't think the President is a racist. I think he is open to Americans of all races, ethnic backgrounds and religions until they prove themselves to be terrorists. And rightly so.
I think Bush is fundamentally opposed to blacks in the sense that he sees them as voting against him and Republicans, and the New Orleans situation has racial overtones, or wouldn't you agree.
On religious grounds, he has some bias against Jews and Muslims, but not so much as hatred. He leaves that to the Robertsons and Dobsons. His father, of course, has worked with the Arab Carlysle Group (Saudi) since the mid-1990's.
In that regard, (Muslims), what was your take on Cheney's trip to Saudi Arabia after the election?
I think Bush is fundamentally opposed to non-republicans so if they are black, I think his opposition comes from their voting record. I bet he and Michael Steele could be best buds.
As for New Orleans, I think the main problem there came from a black mayor who couldn't get off his ass and come down out of his ritzy hotel room to do the right thing for his people compounded by a white governor that couldn't reach out and ask for help so that the NG and FEMA could move in. There were supplies and staff waiting right outside of NO but they were not invited in. That's the essence of the federal relief system - they need to be invited in. Only then can you get to the fact that the second wave of supplies wasn't as available as needs be. Maybe FEMA and the NG should have just invaded and to hell with Blanco and Nagin - that would have solved the problem but that was illegal.
Now, 18 months down the road, all I see is the poorest part of NO expecting the government to do for them rather than doing for themselves like they did in MS and AL. I think we have done enough.
Let NO get their act together before they expect any more help. So I suppose there are racial overtones but only because the white people (mostly with some blacks sprinkled in) have picked up and moved on while the black people (mostly with some whites sprinkled in) are the ones bitching and moaning. I don't think we will ever get past racial overtones as long as that is the case but I don't think there were racial issues going in.
If you look back at the record, the governor asked for help AND the levees, which really are a federal issue since the Army Corps of Engineers built them (incorrectly) AND Max Mayfield, the NWA meterologist told BUSH by videophone that Katrina was going to be a huge problem points to a lack of Federal response that was pointedly negligent.
One of the big issues about the Federal--State--City response is the amount of money that is necessary to do the work of rebuilding. Mush like stem cell research, the amount of money available to do the work requires a federal response.
The federal response (under a Republican Congress) was inadequate and the waste in the rebuilding effort was only exceded by the waste in Iraq.
One of the problems here seems to be your insistence that the problems of New Orleans are only a local issue. If you look at the record of national response to disaster, NYC got $20 billion in a week for 9/11 and significant funding since. How was NYC's disaster not a local issue, if you consider NO's local?
Today, NO has whole sections of the city unoccupied and the infrastructure (sewer, water, electric) has never been fixed either. The costs of rebuilding are estimated in the hundreds of billions and you think a city with a budget of less than $100 million to meet the needs?
But you think this has no racial overtones? No political overtones? Really?
I don't mean this to be offensive, but do you really "lump" all Muslims outside the U.S. together? How about all Christians? Am I, a Christian, "tainted" by the outrageous behavior of men like Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggert, Ted Haggard, and James Dobson?
Are you?