Webloggin » USA Today Lobbies for Taliban Student at Yale

Horses Ass It seems that the Daily Kos is writing most of the material for USA Today nowadays. The editor in brief has clearly fallen off the deep end with the latest editorial, “Ex-Taliban at Yale draws fire, invites thoughts about values”.

The pattern is all too familiar.

Blame America First

Calling U.S. public diplomacy toward the Muslim world ham-handed is an understatement at best.

Cultural exchanges that promoted American values during the Cold War have nearly disappeared because of budget cuts. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the number of Middle Eastern students in the USA has dropped by more than 20%.

In their absence, much of the Muslim world draws conclusions about America based on violence- and sex-laden fare from Hollywood.

Many Americans, meanwhile, don’t distinguish between Muslims friendly to U.S. interests and those aligned with radical Islam. As a result, small misunderstandings grow into large ones, such as the thwarted Dubai ports deal that created yet another black eye for America.

The obvious implication is that the Muslim world has offered diplomatic solutions to help us get over our misunderstandings about radical Islam; an overture we obviously rejected because we are so culturally challenged.

For the life of me I can’t seem to comprehend the thought process of these people. Where does one begin? Perhaps we can get through to them if we break it down into the simplest of terms.

The editor seems to believe that the Muslim world is of one mind that can be negotiated with in a diplomatic manner. This is a common misconception of the left.

Unfortunately nothing could be farther from the truth. Negotiation implies a middle ground or at the very least a mutually acceptable solution. There is no such place for radical Islam. This is compounded by the fact that the Muslim world has not taken it upon itself to address the radicals who have taken them over.

One can only draw the conclusion that the Muslim world is being represented fairly accurately by the actions and words of the terrorists. Thus it would be entirely natural for American’s to have suspicions about Middle Easterners as a whole.

Yet America is a forgiving place. We all work and co-exist with people from the Middle East. This is a far cry different than having doubts about a Dubai company controlling our ports. Such opposition does not shame our country nearly as much as those who make apologies and excuses for dictators, totalitarian regimes and terrorists.

For instance, the editor blames the decline of Middle Eastern students on a simple cultural misunderstanding as if the events surrounding 9-11 had nothing to do with it. It is pretty clear to me that there is a causal relationship between the murder of 3000 innocent Americans, anti-Muslim attitudes and the exodus of Middle Easterners in the ensuing war.

But this little fact doesn’t play into the left’s Blame America First mantra. So they naturally ignore it.

A third insight I draw from the USA Today editorial is one of historical context, or lack thereof. The editor seems to write the article from the perspective that radical Islam is a relatively new phenomenon. This is simply untrue.

Modern day Islamism became heavily radicalized in the late 70’s during the Carter administration. But the history of Islam goes back to the year 610. There were many wars and battles throughout its history. In each case the religious wars were and are still premised under the belief that Allah’s instructions to Muhammed commanded a belief in one God. We are in a war that pits radical Islamic values against the secularism of the west.

This is a large contrast to the simplistic cultural differences that USA Today is peddling.

The editorial stays close to the left’s playbook as can be seen in the subtle whiff of elitist superiority over us simpler, less insightful American’s on the right.

Now comes a rare opportunity to promote mutual understanding — unless it’s torpedoed by shortsighted opposition.

The opportunity involves Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, a young Muslim man who once was an apologist for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan but who now wants to earn a degree from Yale University.

Eventually, he ended up as a translator and “roving ambassador” for the Taliban, the ruling party at the time. In that role, Hashemi traveled in early 2001 to the USA on a hopeless mission to defend the bizarre Taliban regime, which was harboring Osama bin Laden, blowing up priceless archeological treasurers and oppressing women.

All of 22 at the time, Hashemi made a series of naive statements that linger as embarrassments. Most memorably, he appears in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, telling a female anti-Taliban protester, “I’m really sorry for your husband. He might have a very difficult time with you.”

….. After a year in a non-degree program at Yale, Hashemi, now 27, no longer sees the world framed as a religious conflict pitting Muslims against infidels. “You have to be reasonable to live in America,” he told a New York Times reporter.

Note how the editor plays the subtle race card as he segues between our shortsighted opposition and the naïve yet apologetic Taliban spokesperson who was obviously too young and uneducated to understand the error of his ways.

I would suggest that the editor is a bit shortsighted. The Taliban ranked up with the worlds most ruthless totalitarian regimes in terms of ferocity. He should educate himself on the atrocities committed by the Taliban before he advocates for our sympathy on the behalf of Hashemi.

We can even direct him to Vanity Fair, which is no advocate of the Bush administration. They had an article by author Sebastian Junger on the atrocities of the Taliban regime.

“I was told about one man whom the Taliban skinned alive and left in a field to die. I was told about another man who was forced to watch as his wife was gang-raped in front of him; his eyes were then stabbed out so that it would be the last thing he ever saw.”

These are the people that the left regularly elevates above the status of America. The USA Today went out of its way to paint a sympathetic picture of Hashemi even though he was not in the least bit repentant for the Taliban’s crimes against humanity. After all, it was the way he was brought up in the religious training schools. Hashemi explained that the public executions in the soccer stadiums at the hands of the Taliban were no different than U.S. executions of murderers in Texas.

This is a key to what it takes for the left to sell out it’s own country. All you have to do is advocate one of their agenda items and you are good to go.

The rest of the editorial is more of the same. The editor leaves us with the following conclusion.

Yale admissions staffers face a choice. They can listen to bullying protesters and reject Hashemi. Or they can do the reasonable thing and admit a remarkable student who has become a leading argument for the value of cultural exchange.

The saddest aspect of this USA Today editorial is that it represents a cross section of the American left. They blame America as the bully and apologize for the leaders of brutal murdering regimes.

I too would like to see something reasonable and remarkable. It would be nice to see the American left defend this country with the same vigor and principled beliefs they afford the enemies of this country. One can dream can’t they?

Others Blogging on this Story

Clifton Taylor replied to the USA Today Editorial here: Nail Yale

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