Thomas Friedman in today’s NY Times wrote about “Bush’s Shame”. What caught my attention was his contention that post 9/11 “America is not interested anymore in law and order, just order, and it is not interested in peace and quiet, but just quiet.” He may be right, but I would hope he is not.
He has seized upon Egypt’s condemning a sick older man to years of hard labor because he was helping to teach Egyptians how to do electoral things that we do as a matter of course here in America. Mr. Friedman’s point was that the United States and its Political Chief did nothing to protest the man convicted of this “crime”, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, being sentenced to seven years at “hard labor”. Our State Department produced a statement that it was “deeply disappointed”. It is interesting that Arabic names are not automatically in my spell checker. They now are.
The United States got up the courage to condemn Palestine’s leader Yasir Arafat finally after horrendous murders in the name of Allah destroyed the peace attempts by previous administrations. The United States almost immediately over-reacted and produced nothing more than a devastated land when it tried to catch Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the attacks on America. The question must be raised, what is the rationale for invading Afghanistan, for planning an attack on Iraq and for intervening in conflicts throughout the world? Is it to bring American democracy along with its military even when it says nothing when an injustice created by Islamic fundamentalism overrides the power of elected officials in Egypt?
The abandonment of Israel by Mr. Bush when Europe actively practiced Anti-Israel (it was claimed that this was not Anti-Semitic) boycotts has now only been rethought when 5 Americans were killed by Hamas (has Hamas become the de facto Palestinian government?) sponsored and trained murderers? It is our bull being gored. Nothing is said when innocents under totalitarian regimes are ground into the dust. Thus it is to Mr. Bush’s shame that he only just now became upset and woke up to the fact that democratic people and policies are trampled by fundamentalists and anti-democratic forces not only in other countries but also here at home. Mr. Bush’s shame is also magnified when one realizes that he unashamedly encourages despoliation of our land in the insatiable search for oil as power. When did the sun stop shining?
We cannot rail at Mr. Mubarak in Egypt while we do not protest and do something about Mr. Attorney General Ashcroft who tries to pit neighbor against neighbor in spying on each other - in the name of what – democracy? Mr. Ibrahim, an American citizen, should be set free and the world should join in condemnation of such practices. We should also condemn Mr. Ashcroft and his boss, George W. Bush, for anti-democratic lunacies