The new voice of a former liberal: America Left Ignoring All Else To FOcus On Loathing Bush
Joe Bell
March 24, 2006
opinioneditorials.com
It is no secret that the American left has turned its back on the nation and is ignoring mounting perils at home and abroad. For liberals everything takes a backseat to criticizing President Bush and ranting on a daily basis against America’s efforts to defend itself from the threat of Islamic radicalism. Two recent examples glaringly illustrate the point.
First, the New York Times’ reporters who uncovered the Bush Administration’s domestic eavesdropping program recently won the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. The honor, which carries a $25,000 award, is given annually by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Here we have a major university heaping accolades upon the media for exposing a government program that makes America safer by connecting the dots with respect to domestic terrorism - something the press condemned the government for failing to do after the attacks of September 11, 2001. What would some enterprising journalists have won if they had broadcast in advance the Allies’ plans to invade northern France in 1944 – a Pulitzer?
America is an open society but that should not equate it with being an insane society. Openness is not analogous to the outlandish notion that everyone has a right to know everything the government is doing all the time. Grow up. The government doesn’t care who is taking “Catcher in the Rye” out of the local library and neither does it care to listen in on your phone conversation with your brother-in-law about your upcoming camping trip to Montana.
The second issue focuses on the situation of Abdul Rahman, a Christian in Afghanistan who is on trial for his life because he converted from Islam to Christianity, in relation to protests against the third anniversary of the invasion that removed Saddam Hussein from power.
Earlier this month protestors across America demonstrated against U.S. policy in Iraq. CBS News reported that in Chicago more than 7,000 people marched through the downtown area demanding that President Bush pull U.S. forces out of Iraq. In Washington about 200 people gathered outside Vice President’s Cheney’s residence with signs saying, “No More Lies” and “Bush Step Down.”
On March 22, William Greider wrote in The Nation, that Bush “brilliantly orchestrated the nation’s fear of terrorism into a winning position” but now the public fears his leadership.
While this nonsense, which pathetically attempts to present itself as serious discourse and thoughtful commentary, parades across newspapers and television screens, Abdul Rahman painfully reminds the world where the threat really lies. Freedom and justice are not menaced by President Bush, domestic surveillance, the removal of a tyrant from Baghdad, or efforts to dismantle the global terrorist network. The danger comes from an ideology that would even consider putting a human being to death because of the way he chooses to worship God.
Those who demand Bush step down because he threatens world peace and freedom need to answer the question: How many individuals in the United States are on trial for their lives for the crime of worshiping as they choose?
In October 2001, U.S. forces removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. The regime was permitting al Qaeda to use that nation as a base of operations from which to launch attacks against America. It was a repressive regime that denied human rights and demanded universal adherence to its rigid ideology. The type of oppression experienced by Abdul Rahman was common under the Taliban but it is not expected under the current government headed by President Hamid Karzai.
Among the most precious of all liberties is the right to decide how, or if, one will worship God. Americans should not and cannot expect others around the world to adopt our way of life and accept our traditions and laws as their own. But there are certain unalienable rights that all people possess simply by virtue of our common humanity. The uncompromising ideology that would execute a person because of his or her religious conviction poses a threat to everyone because that fanaticism, if left unchallenged, will eventually infiltrate even the most tolerant societies. It is that ideology that threatens freedom, not George W. Bush.
President Bush said he will use the nation’s influence to try and secure freedom for Abdul Rahman. He must speak and speak clearly.
In addition, this is an opportunity for the government of Afghanistan to take a genuine step forward with respect to human rights. No government can be considered “moderate” if it will put to death someone because of their choice of religion. Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic and by law an individual who coverts from Islam to another religion commits a crime that is punishable by death. Prosecutors in Kabul have suggested the prisoner may be mentally unstable and unfit to stand trial. That could signal the government is trying to find a way out of the controversy. In the long run Afghanistan will have to address contradictions in its constitution. Written in 2004, the constitution endorses human rights conventions but simultaneously declares that no law will break the principles of Islam.
Meanwhile, the American left still has to account for its deafening silence on this issue. Hollywood stars have grabbed microphones to speak in favor of those who sit on death row. Protestors have marched through city streets brandishing placards that shout “Bush Is Hitler.” Yale University has opened its door to a former Taliban official. Why aren’t these sanctimonious inhabitants of the left demanding Abdul Rahman’s life be spared?
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Joseph Bell has hosted a radio talk show and is a former editorial writer/columnist for several Connecticut newspapers. A former liberal Democrat, Bell has not been on the conservative side of the aisle for very long. He voted for Clinton/Gore in 1992. Abandoning the convictions that he had held and defended through adolescence and into adulthood was not easy. Sincere soul-searching and a commitment to distinguish fact from fiction compelled him to accept that liberal ideology was bankrupt.
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