The Rauf Tapes: meh
Over the weekend, the islamophobes went a twitter about their supposed gold mine of 13 hours of audio of Feisal Rauf going on about the evil of America and glorying in 9-11 or something. This was their Fitzmas and their Whitey Tapes all rolled into one.
Monday shall come the reckoning, they proclaimed!
Well, monday came, and it’s… meh. About the worst thing Rauf said on the tapes was the rather obvious point that more innocent muslims have died by Western hands than at the hands of Al Qaeda. Since we were actually waging a war in muslim countries, and collateral damage in a fact of war (one I have argued against, mind you), this is not exactly an earth-shattering observation. The same was true in spades during World War II of course but the key moral argument of war does carry that unfortunate reality: in war, civilians die more than soldiers do. And of course let’s not forget that the Clinton era sanctions against Iraq also disproportionately affected civilians, especially children, as well.
(I am not excusing the deaths of innocents. In fact I have long argued against the policy of collateral damage, I see it as a moral argument akin to nuclear weapons or land mines.)
However, trying to use this quote against Rauf is weak tea at best. It shoudl be noted that (my friend) Dean Esmay, longtime Iraq War hawk and who celebrated the withdrawal of the last combat troops last week as the final closure to a sucessful mission, has a defense of Rauf as well. I will close by quoting him:
The best part for me of Geller’s rant is where the evil, evil, evil (hiss! boo!) Feisal Abdul Rauf notes the absolutely factual, completely indisputable fact that the sanctions the U.S. used against Saddam Hussein’s brutal fascist regime, during the years of the Clinton administration, resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths–and she goes nuts.
Those of us who supported the Iraq intervention from the beginning–as I did, and still do, having never changed my mind at all–used as one of our primary arguments the fact that the sanctions regime of the Clinton administration had been utterly useless and had only killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
President Bush noted the exact same thing, along with the dozen-plus other reasons he gave us for going to war to take out Saddam. It’s good to know that Rauf knows it too, and confronted the Clinton administration about it.
I’m extraordinarily pleased to see a Muslim leader with the courage to note this–instead of attacking us for doing the right thing and taking out Saddam. The truth is that sanctions against tyrants often do more damage than good. I’m glad to see him recognize this.