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| Fifth Column |
| Thobani: US is "soaked in blood" |
| 2001-10-03 |
The moral-equivalency crowd was out in force Monday at a feminist conference in Ottawa where Sunera Thobani said United States foreign policy was "soaked in blood." Thobani, a former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, also called the U.S. "the most dangerous and powerful global force unleashing horrific levels of violence." So that's it. The Americans got what was coming to them. Six thousand people are dead under the rubble of the World Trade Centre. Guilty of going to work in the morning, they obviously deserved their terrible fate. Hundreds of thousands more have lost their jobs, and it's all their fault. Perhaps Thobani could explain her views to the widowed spouses, orphaned children, broken families and grieving communities, including dozens in Canada. Perhaps she could elaborate her position to the people who have been thrown out of work, including thousands of Canadians. Sitting beside Thobani, as she made this intellectually disgraceful and disgusting statement, was Hedy Fry, the secretary of state for the status of women. Did Fry get up and leave the hall in disgust? Did she summon reporters and disavow Thobani's remarks? No, she simply did not join in the applause and a standing ovation. "People in this country are allowed to say what they want," she later told the Commons. "I did not support it. I did not applaud it. I got up and left immediately following. I stand in the House right now and say I condemn the speech." There is no doubt that the U.S. made some foreign-policy choices in the 1980s that have since come back to haunt it, notably supporting Iraq's Saddam Hussein against Iran, and the mujaheddin against the invading Soviets in Afghanistan. But from there to suggest that America's hands are soaked in blood, or that it is the most dangerous force in the world, is simply odious. But wait, there's more. Thobani wondered who felt the pain of "the victims of U.S. aggression." The victims of aggression are precisely the women of Afghanistan who suffer under the unspeakable cruelties of the Taliban theocracy, a tyrannical and repressive regime that publicly executes women in soccer stadiums. Who is speaking up for them? Not the women at the Ottawa conference, dripping with a sanctimonious sense of Canadian superiority. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |