Here is a transcription from a recording of Sen. Patty Murray's remarks at Vancouver's Columbia River High School on Wednesday, Dec. 18:
columbian.com
(This) is very highly debatable. I don't know which way I fall on it. But I want you to think about it.
Osama bin Laden has been very, very effective being we've got to ask, why is this man so popular around the world?
Why are people so supportive of him in many countries? He has been in many countries that are riddled with poverty.
People don't have phones, no sewers, no roads, no schools, no health care, no facilities just to make sure their daily lives are OK.
He's been out in these countries for decades building roads, building schools, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. It made their lives better.
We have not done that. We haven't been out in many of these countries helping them build infrastructure.
How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?
The argument back is that is going to cost a lot of money. Absolutely right.
And the second argument is that we have schools here and health care facilities here that are really hurting. Should our tax dollars go to pay for facilities in third world countries?
No easy answers, but expensive both ways. But war is expensive, too.
Right now we've decided that war is the way we are going to go, and your generation ought to be thinking about whether or not you believe that perhaps we should be better neighbors out in other countries so that they have a different vision of us.
It's going to cost money. You'll have to think about whether you want to do that or not, about whether we have the money to do that here. But it is a debate I think we ought to have." |
