Sen. Patty Murray On The Virtues Of Osama Bin Laden

by John Hawkins | December 20, 2002 3:21 pm

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington) On The Virtues Of Osama Bin Laden: Charles Johnson[1] sums up Washington Senator Patty Murray’s ignorant comments[2] from last Wednesday as follows, “Senator Patty Murray tells high school students the US needs to learn to be a “better neighbor” to the world-like Osama bin Laden.” Here’s what Charles Johnson was talking about…

“We’ve got to ask, why is this man (Osama bin Laden) so popular around the world?,” said Murray, who faces re-election in 2004. “Why are people so supportive of him in many countries … that are riddled with poverty?

“He’s been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven’t done that.

“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?”

I can’t believe that…

1) We have a US Senator romanticizing Osama Bin Laden and trying to turn a career terrorist into some kind of starry eyed global philanthropist…

2) That a US Senator could be so incredibly ignorant of everything the US does for the rest of the world.

Why has Israel not been crushed by her belligerent neighbors? How is it that Taiwan is still free? How it can it be that South Korea is free and has been protected from the North? Which nation blew off 3/4’s of the money of the money they were owed after WW2? What about the Marshall Plan, the rebuilding of Germany and Japan, and even the new Afghan Democracy? How many billions do we give in foreign aid to Jordan and Egypt each year or to Africa? Who may have stopped a nuclear war between Pakistan and India earlier this year? Which nation is almost always the first to help in an international crisis? What percentage of the money spent by non-governmental organizations out there comes the US government or US donors? Which nation was supplying the majority of Afghanistan’s food before 9/11 after helping them fight off the Soviets in the eighties? I could go on and on and on like this. The fact is that the United States has done more and continues to do more to help countries in need than any other 10 nations combined. But apparently, all of this is news to Senator Murray.

Then there is Senator Murray’s claim that Osama Bin Laden is popular in the Islamic world because he’s a philanthropist. That’s a ridiculous assertion. Do you really want to know why Bin Laden is popular? It’s because there are a lot of Muslims who detest Americans, Israelis and Westerners in general and they like Bin Laden because he kills the people they loathe. Trying to claim that Bin Laden is well liked in the Islamic world because of charity work is like claiming Michael Jordan is admired not because of what he’s done on the basketball court, but because of that Loony Tunes movie “Space Jam” that he was in a few years ago. In short, it’s a patently ridiculous idea and a US Senator should certainly know better.

***Update***: Rachel Lucas [3] weighs in on Murray’s remarks…

“Whatthefu-? He has? He did? Who? WHAT?

Maybe she’s referring to his family, who owns a construction company and built lots of stuff. Maybe she wants to be his fifth wife and breed some baby terrorists for him. Maybe I just got confused all those times I read that for the last several years, he’s been living in caves and plotting the destruction of the Great Satan. Maybe he had a few spare moments to build a Kinder-Care while planning for the mass murder of thousands of Americans. What a philanthropist!”