Please read with pleasure the following political
mailpiece from Representative Jean Schmidt (R-OH).
Some orators and authors develop an ironic style, whether verbal ironic or dramatic ironic. Yogi Berra comes to mind.
But Jean, you are no Yogi Berra. Your excrescence is transcendent.
Why Do They Hate Us?
The Middle East has been a synonym for diplomatic challenges our whole lives. I hope that our children one day can tell their children it is the home of the Holy Land and no further explanation is needed.
We live in a world where trouble seems to be abundant. The world has become a much smaller place and at the same time increasingly more complex.
Our foreign policy for the last half century has been described by the word appeasement. It means that we were willing to support a dictator's oppression of his people as long as he did what we needed. We simply ignored the screams of his victims in exchange for regular trade or some such thing.
Some ask what is it that we did to these people to deserve their hatred. You have to step back and put yourself in their shoes to really find an answer.
On every continent in every corner of the planet you will find people that know of the United States of America. The United States is not just another country to them, we are utopia. The United States is a collection of wealth, might, and technology mixed into a culture where freedom is abundant.
Some people are oppressed by dictators, some by Mother Nature, others by disease, still more by economics. Regardless of the cause, the oppressed all share the same misery, tears, and despair.
Tonight, people are going to bed without food for yet another day. They know we have abundant food. Yet, we do not offer a helping hand. Some sleep in the prisons of their oppressors. They know we have the might to free them. But, we do not come. More lie in their death beds knowing that we have the treatments to save them, yet none is prescribed.
The United States is the kindest, most generous country to ever exist on this planet. We spend billions all over the world feeding, caring, protecting, and building.
It is easy to understand that when you know your liberator and he does not come, it must mean he doesn't care. Hearts begin to fill with hate. Evil takes root. Soon all of your problems only exist because the United States failed to solve them.
A young soldier in Baghdad told me a story of a local Iraqi who had questioned him. The local Iraqi wanted to know how a country as powerful and advanced as the United States could possibly send a man to the moon, defeat one of the world's largest armies in hours, and yet still not have the power restored to his apartment.
The Iraqi's perception is that we are all powerful. We watch them from space with technology they cannot even imagine. Surely if we wanted to turn on his electricity we could do so. He has no idea how large the problem is but he knows we can do anything. He was angry. Eventually his air conditioning began running and his anger cooled.
My point is the hatred towards America isn't always based on what we did but often simply not living up to the beliefs of what the oppressed think we are capable of doing.
Some are angry because in the past we made mistakes that compounded or even extended their misery. Many are angry because we fail to live up to their expectations. Ronald Reagan once said that our opposition is not ignorant it is just that so much of what they believe is just not true.
Today we are in a public relations battle across the globe. In this battle two things remain very important to keep in mind. First, we must understand the impressions and beliefs the suffering have of our capacity measured against our most generous efforts. Lastly, no matter how angry they become at the United States Government they do not let their anger diminish their beliefs that our country is the greatest most envied on earth.
For the United States the lesson must be -- as we head down a different path of foreign diplomacy - Evil that is ignored is indeed Evil that is assisted. The oppressed will always remember.
So it would appear that the U.S. is both the most generous and most stingy nation on earth.
They know we have abundant food. Yet, we do not offer a helping hand. Some sleep in the prisons of their oppressors. They know we have the might to free them. But, we do not come. More lie in their death beds knowing that we have the treatments to save them, yet none is prescribed.
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The United States is the kindest, most generous country to ever exist on this planet. We spend billions all over the world feeding, caring, protecting, and building.
Then, this idiocy:
The Middle East has been a synonym for diplomatic challenges our whole lives. I hope that our children one day can tell their children it is the home of the Holy Land and no further explanation is needed.
Then this piece of illucid illogic:
Today we are in a public relations battle across the globe. In this battle two things remain very important to keep in mind. First, we must understand the impressions and beliefs the suffering have of our capacity measured against our most generous efforts. Lastly, no matter how angry they become at the United States Government they do not let their anger diminish their beliefs that our country is the greatest most envied on earth.
We are not in a "public relations battle" - we are actively ruining our reputation. It's like saying that drunk exerting himself to speak without spitting is engaging in oratory. Or like saying that Schmidt attempted English in her letter but did not complete the crime. Of course, billions of people
DO in fact hate us, in part because they know that we elected Bush, at least we did in 04 and sorta maybe did in 2000. They hate us - you and me - for a lot of reasons, but that hatred has increased dramatically from a near universal love-and-sorrow-and-sympathy fest around 11:00 AM EST on 9/11, to now, including now our closest allies whose leaders suffer great damage when they help our government. But they hate us for relecting this administration.
Our foreign policy for the last half century has been described by the word appeasement. It means that we were willing to support a dictator's oppression of his people as long as he did what we needed. We simply ignored the screams of his victims in exchange for regular trade or some such thing.
I generally do not give Republicans an applause line, but Republicans including Ronald Reagan have been President for over 1/2 of the last fifty years (Nixon/Ford 8, Reagan 8, Eisenhower 4, Bush I 4, Bush II 6 = 30/50 years) and I don't recall those Republicans or Democrats doing a lot of "appeasing." Is Bush I an appeaser? Bush II? Reagan when he told Gorbachev to take at hike at Reykjavik? Whom is she really trying to insult? Regular trade? Whom is she really talking about? We have spent most of the last 50 years in sn adversarial posture with the former Eastern Bloc, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba? Does she think that our "public relations battle" would have been improved by invading even more of those countries than we did?
I tremble to write this, but Jean Schmidt may actually be stupider than George W. Bush. They do seem to share the same pre-adolescent speech patterns when discussing complex issues of foreign policy. But Bush has one excuse: there is no delete button on speech. Schmidt has paid staffers in Congress or in her campaign (I know you cannot mix the two but this rant could be easily be a House floor speech or campaign piece.) Schmidt has no excuse for this sort of childish garbage; she owes her 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grade teachers an apology.