[Rhodes22-list] POLITICAL-Maureen Dowd (NYTimes) on Gen. Powell's Obama Pick

[Andrew Collins]

Ben

Excellent post. My wife and I watched the news clip of Powell explaining his
position and were very impressed with his thoughtfulness and eloquence.

I'm sorry I couldn't pursue the 'smelt a rat' thread, as children, health
and life conspired to interfere. I hereby officially throw in the towel on
that one, but welcome any technical challenges.

sv Carmen
sadly on the hard
On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Ben Cittadino <bcittadino at dcs-law.com>wrote:

>
> Gentle Readers;
>
> I read this over my corn flakes today.  There isn't alot that brings a tear
> to my eye, but I gotta tell ya' I highly recommend this column to anyone
> who
> thinks they might be "on the fence" about this election.
>
> Ms. Dowd is usually not my "cup of tea". She is often too sarcastic and
> caustic for my taste.  She nailed it with this one.
>
> See the following:
>
> Moved by a Crescent
>
> By MAUREEN DOWD
> Published: October 21, 2008
> Colin Powell had been bugged by many things in his party's campaign this
> fall: the insidious merging of rumors that Barack Obama was Muslim with
> intimations that he was a terrorist sympathizer; the assertion that Sarah
> Palin was ready to be president; the uniformed sheriff who introduced
> Governor Palin by sneering about Barack Hussein Obama; the scorn with which
> Republicans spit out the words "community organizer"; the Republicans'
> argument that using taxes to "spread the wealth" was socialist when the
> purpose of taxes is to spread the wealth; Palin's insidious notion that
> small towns in states that went for W. were "the real America."
>
> But what sent him over the edge and made him realize he had to speak out
> was
> when he opened his New Yorker three weeks ago and saw a picture of a mother
> pressing her head against the gravestone of her son, a 20-year-old soldier
> who had been killed in Iraq. On the headstone were engraved his name,
> Kareem
> Rashad Sultan Khan, his awards — the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star — and a
> crescent and a star to denote his Islamic faith.
>
> "I stared at it for an hour," he told me. "Who could debate that this kid
> lying in Arlington with Christian and Jewish and nondenominational buddies
> was not a fine American?"
>
> Khan was an all-American kid. A 2005 graduate of Southern Regional High
> School in Manahawkin, N.J., he loved the Dallas Cowboys and playing video
> games with his 12-year-old stepsister, Aliya.
>
> His obituary in The Star-Ledger of Newark said that he had sent his family
> back pictures of himself playing soccer with Iraqi children and hugging a
> smiling young Iraqi boy.
>
> His father said Kareem had been eager to enlist since he was 14 and was
> outraged by the 9/11 attacks. "His Muslim faith did not make him not want
> to
> go," Feroze Khan, told The Gannett News Service after his son died. "He
> looked at it that he's American and he has a job to do."
>
> In a gratifying "have you no sense of decency, Sir and Madam?" moment,
> Colin
> Powell went on "Meet the Press" on Sunday and talked about Khan, and the
> unseemly ways John McCain and Palin have been polarizing the country to try
> to get elected. It was a tonic to hear someone push back so clearly on ugly
> innuendo.
>
> Even the Obama campaign has shied away from Muslims. The candidate has gone
> to synagogues but no mosques, and the campaign was embarrassed when it
> turned out that two young women in headscarves had not been allowed to
> stand
> behind Obama during a speech in Detroit because aides did not want them in
> the TV shot.
>
> The former secretary of state has dealt with prejudice in his life, in and
> out of the Army, and he is keenly aware of how many millions of Muslims
> around the world are being offended by the slimy tenor of the race against
> Obama.
>
> He told Tom Brokaw that he was troubled by what other Republicans, not
> McCain, had said: " 'Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.' Well, the
> correct answer is, he is not a Muslim. He's a Christian. He's always been a
> Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there
> something
> wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no. That's not
> America. Is something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid
> believing that he or she could be president?"
>
> Powell got a note from Feroze Khan this week thanking him for telling the
> world that Muslim-Americans are as good as any others. But he also received
> more e-mails insisting that Obama is a Muslim and one calling him
> "unconstitutional and unbiblical" for daring to support a socialist. He got
> a mass e-mail from a man wanting to spread the word that Obama was reading
> a
> book about the end of America written by a fellow Muslim.
>
> "Holy cow!" Powell thought. Upon checking Amazon.com, he saw that it was a
> reference to Fareed Zakaria, a Muslim who writes a Newsweek column and
> hosts
> a CNN foreign affairs show. His latest book is "The Post-American World."
>
> Powell is dismissive of those, like Rush Limbaugh, who say he made his
> endorsement based on race. And he's offended by those who suggest that his
> appearance Sunday was an expiation for Iraq, speaking up strongly now about
> what he thinks the world needs because he failed to do so then.
>
> Even though he watched W. in 2000 make the argument that his lack of
> foreign
> policy experience would be offset by the fact that he was surrounded by
> pros
> — Powell himself was one of the regents brought in to guide the bumptious
> Texas dauphin — Powell makes that same argument now for Obama.
>
> "Experience is helpful," he says, "but it is judgment that matters."
>
>
> All I can add is God Bless Colin Powell and God Bless America.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ben Cittadino s/v Susan Kay, Highlands NJ
> --
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> Sent from the Rhodes 22 mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
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