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McCain refers to Taliban as 'freedom fighters'
Something that didn't register with me when I watched the debate on Friday: John McCain referred to bin Laden and the Taliban as " freedom fighters":
of Friday night’s debate, here’s John McCain:
From the transcript
"First of all, I won’t repeat the mistake that I regret enormously, and that is, after we were able to help the Afghan freedom fighters and drive the Russians out of Afghanistan, we basically washed our hands of the region. And the result over time was the Taliban, Al Qaida, and a lot of the difficulties we are facing today. So we can’t ignore those lessons of history."
Those “freedom fighters” were of course the mujaheddin in Afghanistan waging jihad against the Soviets, including one Osama bin Laden and one Zayman Al Zawahiri. We backed and funded them–sort of. We didn’t “create bin Laden,” as some have alleged. But we certainly supported the factions fighting alongside him, factions every bit as militantly Islamic as bin Laden–as even the State Department concedes.
The reason it didn't register is that I've grown so used to Republicans referring to terrorists like the Nicaragua's Contras and Angola's UNITA as "freedom fighters". Apparently, all the reporters in the mainstream media also became inured to the Republicans' doublespeak, because I haven't seen anything about this in mainstream outlets. But you can bet that we would have heard about it if Obama had called bin Laden a "freedom fighter", however indirectly.
(cross posted at appletree)
Labels: Afghanistan, Al-Quaeda, American politicians, John McCain, Osama bin Laden, Taleban
posted by gordo at Monday, September 29, 2008
3 Comments:
They WERE freedom fighters
Actually they were not freedom fighters, they were Mujahadeen, conservative Islamic and ethnic leaders who objected to social changes introduced by Khan when the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan had control.
The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan was overthrown by the Afghan Communist Party who proclaimed independence from the Soviet Union and declared their policies to be based on Islamic principles, Afghan nationalism and socioeconomic justice, but the Mujahadeen begin an armed revolt in the countryside. (By the way, the U.S. supports this Afghan Communist Party until the American Ambassador is killed, then we leave them on their own to fight against the Mujahadeen who oppose the rights established by the People's Democratic Party).
When the president of the Afghan Communist Party, Taraki, is killed by another Communist leader, Amin, the Soviet Union intervenes. At this point the Mujahadeen would have been called "freedom fighters" because they were now battling the Soviet invaders and the USSR-backed Afghan Army, but at this time they were already forming the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and they were fully funded by the U.S. regardless of their ideology.
I personally don't have a problem referring to the Taliban as "freedom from Communism fighters" even though they are not democratic themselves, but they absolutely were not "freedom fighters," unless you mean they were fighting against freedom, and not fighting for freedom.
From one dumb_ss American to another.
If you watched the last debate, then you also know that the press also isn't discussing the many recent and ongoing associations that McCain and Palin have with terrorist groups, the exact reason that they protest so much over Ayers, because they know how dangerous they are due to their association with right-wing fundamentalist domestic terrorist groups who actually target Americans and not just empty buildings.
You also won't hear the press talking about how McCain declared that he wouldn't use a litmus (test) to choose Supreme Court Appointees, but he uses that litmus to determine who is qualified to be considered. Double talk.
And you will not hear the press talk about how he actually referred to the assassination of JFK as the "intervention," which I find most disturbing considering the hate speech and riot inciting (both unlawful acts) that McCain and Palin are promoting.
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