Check this out! Where is the outrage and call for censure that we heard when a Republican put his foot in mouth??
The silence is deafening.
DOC
Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, took heat Thursday from House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for remarks she made in an interview that ran in The Toledo Blade over the weekend.
Among the more controversial quotes, Kaptur said: "One could say that Usama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped to cast off the British crown."
"This is not a gaffe and should not be treated as such," DeLay, R-Texas, said in a statement Thursday.
"Marcy is dead wrong and it is very sad, and I know Marcy and I am sure that she regrets this remark and it is not reflective of the true Marcy Kaptur that I know," added fellow Ohio Rep. Deborah Pryce, House Republican Conference chairwoman. "But to equate Usama bin Laden with our founding fathers is a dishonor to those men and women that we lost on 9/11 and it's totally off base and a sad remark on her part."
Kaptur's main message was that the United States should be careful about getting involved in fiery religious revolutions, particularly in Iraq and other Arab nations, according to the Blade's description of Kaptur's interview.
Kaptur, who is speaking Friday at a workshop for Toledo-area Catholic leaders titled "Preaching and Teaching Peace in the Face of War," said that when America "cast off monarchical Britain" in 1776, it involved the help of religious people who had fled repression and persecution in other countries.
Among the nontraditional American revolutionaries she cited were the Green Mountain Boys, a patriotic militia founded by American revolutionary Ethan Allen in 1770 in Bennington, Vt.
She doesn't mention that the Green Mountain Boys "took no lives" in the use of their intimidation tactics nor that their leader Allen repudiated religion, saying that ministers were hypocrites for promising life after death, and the Bible is unbelievable.
"I think that people of faith understand that for many of the terrorists, their actions are acts of sacred piety to the point of losing their lives. And I think that people of faith understand that there is a heavy religious overtone to the opposition," she said.
DeLay, a Republican from Texas, predicted that Democrat leaders would look the other way despite Kaptur's "outrageous utterings."
"It seems the Democrat leadership dons their earmuffs when it comes to insensitive and extreme rhetoric from their friends. We know the Democrats want this to go away, but not before we find out if they agree and if they are outraged like we are," DeLay said.
Democrats earlier this year made little noise when various corners blasted Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., for remarks she made that seemed to praise bin Laden for his humanitarian efforts.
Speaking to a group of advanced placement students in a Vancouver, Wash., high school, Murray asked why bin Laden is so popular in some places around the world. She answered the apparently rhetorical question by saying he has done more for the countries he inhabits than the United States has done.
"He's been out in these countries for decades building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities and people are extremely grateful," she said in a speech caught on tape by the school's video department. "He's made their lives better. We have not done that."
Experts criticized Murray for saying that most of the roads built were used to take soldiers to and from training camps; the schools built were madrasas, which often indoctrinate students to the bin Laden brand of Islam; and the hospitals were not intended for average Muslims but for injured Mujahadeen fighters battling the Soviets.
After the outcry, Murray clarified that she was offering suggestions about what the United States can do after it captures the "evil terrorist" bin Laden.
Likewise, Kaptur warned in the Blade article that the United States must be careful not to get into the middle of the religious fervor that is sure to evolve in the formation of a political structure after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
"Even if we take the ground, we do not share the culture," she said, "and in the end we have to learn to co-exist in a world with religious states that we may not agree with and find ways to cooperate."
Kaptur, 56, made an unsuccessful run in November against now House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to become the first woman to hold that position. She said she ran mainly to get her message across that the Democratic Party is spending too much time campaigning and not enough time proving its case on the issues.
Kaptur, who is the longest-serving female Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, is a 10-term member re-elected last year with 74 percent of the vote. She has served on several subcommittees dealing with agriculture, housing, environmental protection, veterans and NASA. She has also been a member of the Budget; Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs; and Veterans Affairs Committees.
On Middle East issues, Kaptur was responsible for directing the first surplus farm commodities in 1999 to support the peace process in the Middle East among Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. She has spearheaded private charitable efforts for peoples of underdeveloped nations, including Ukraine and Vietnam and has been involved in trade and worker issues surrounding the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Fox News' Jim Mills and Liza Porteus contributed to this report. |
