I am not typically one who cries sexism. Anyone who knows me, or who has read anything I have written, can attest to that. These comments from a Syrian author, however, just strike me as not only disgusting and nasty, but also incredibly sexist. I can’t imagine anyone making such statements about a male secretary of state.
Colette Khuri: “There are people in America and Europe who do not know that resistance makes you walk with your head high. How can they possibly call it terrorism? They do not realize that the world’s greatest terrorist is Bush, who in my opinion resembles Nero.”
[…]
Interviewer: “Let’s talk about the ‘birth pangs’ mentioned by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, when she talked about the Middle East plan, with its various names. Who suffers pain here?”
Colette Khuri: “If I were asked, as an author, to portray malice, I would sketch an image of Condoleezza Rice. This woman is grim, both in the way she looks and in the way she is inside. I don’t know why she is always malicious from within. Malicious over what? What have we ever
done to her? This woman has no right to talk about birth pangs, since she does not know the meaning of birth pangs.
“I want to explain to the viewers that birth pangs are that painful yet delightful moment that precedes the most important moment in life – childbirth. The birth of a child is the birth of hope, the birth of love. Birth pangs are a delightful moment. It is a combination of pain and delight. That is the moment that precedes creation – the creation of life. How can she possibly call the destruction and crimes in Lebanon birth pangs? She is killing children, and calling it birth pangs. This phase leads to the destruction and the death of the Arabs. How can she?
How come she has the right to talk about birth pangs? This is nauseating. More than rage, I feel nauseated. True, I am enraged, but I feel nauseated.”
[…]
Interviewer: “In any case, her external ugliness reflects her internal ugliness…”
Colette Khuri: “It’s the other way around, my dear. It is the internal ugliness that is reflected in one’s face. A woman can only be ugly from the inside.”
Interviewer: “True.”
Colette Khuri: “Any woman can be beautiful, if she is beautiful from within. It is the internal ugliness of this woman that reflects her looks.”
Interviewer: “She has the right to feel pain, because her baby-plan was stillborn.”
I guess by this principle no man can ever refer to “birth pangs” or anything else associated with childbirth. I had my first child via natural childbirth after about eight hours of intense labor. With my second I had some complications and ended up having an epidural after many hours of excruciating pain. I know what birth pangs are and I think the comparison to the pain of war is entirely appropriate. My husband has not felt birth pangs, but he witnessed them, and trust me, he knows what they are. (I made sure of that.) It is certainly not necessary to have experienced childbirth to know that it is painful and to be able to make the comparison. The vicious and sexist attacks on Secretary of State Rice are not only disgusting and sickening, but they are completely without reasoning.
The absolute ugliness of the comments in the interview above, by both the interviewee and the interviewer, are completely lost on them, as they accuse Condoleeza Rice of being the one with ugliness coming from inside. They are blind to what is right before their eyes. They did get one thing right, though. Ugliness truly does come from within, and of that, they provided a perfect example.
Update: Above I said “the vicious and sexist attacks on Secretary of State Rice are not only disgusting and sickening, but they are completely without reason.” A reader commented there were plenty of “reasons.” I should have said “reasoning” instead of “reason.” There are absolutely plenty of reasons for those who hate America to use sexist and nasty comments and to make ridiculous statements indicating that only those women who have experienced childbirth can talk about birth pangs. The reasons are as ugly as the statements though. The “reasoning” is what I intended to refer to. I have revised the post to reflect that.
“The vicious and sexist attacks on Secretary of State Rice are not only disgusting and sickening, but they are completely without reason.”
Disgusting and sickening, perhaps… but hardly “without reason”. Outright hatred for the United States, which was spawned thanks to the Republicans in power, extends from our enemies to our allies. Lying about the reasons for entering Iraq, letting criminals like Osama bin-Laden run free and unfettered, and the mishandling of despots in N. Korea and Iran have greatly destabilized the world.
Now we see Iraq falling into a civil war, egged on by Iran (as they move towards nuclear armament), and the prospects for peace and democracy in Iraq slip further and further away. Meanwhile our own economy is starting to feel the pinch of oil prices as we slip towards inflation and a possible recession.
Our once respected nation is not longer the world power we were, thanks to the mistakes made in Washington in the last 6 years. That our leaders in Washington should be so universally villified is not “without reason”, nor surprising in the least. We have a chance to start the process of correcting that at the ballot box.
The same liberals with those silly PRACTIC TOLERENCE stickers in the car windows are the same ones who want all conservatives removed from public life forever they can say it will their stickers but they sure dont practic it
During WWII would we have publizised the ranting of the German or Japanese propaganda machines? Why does anyone give any credability to what any of them has to say. The sooner we figure out that the radical muslims all want us on our knees to Mecca, or dead, the quicker we will start wiping the SOB’s out.
Lorie: You can’t argue with a tiger. You either shoot it, or get eaten. I have reached the stage where I would like to see a tremendous increase in effort towards fighting the radical muslims.
On one point I agree with the writer. Quit calling them terrorist, and realize that they are a mortal enemy who use terrorist tactics. One of the problems with Viet Nam was that we thought of them as little guys in black pajamas, instead of hard core fighters who wanted us dead. We need to now realize that this is a fight for our very way of life, and start fighting with every ounce of our strength.
If Iraq and Lebanon turn into another fundamentalist state like Iran, the terrorism exported around the world will be unbelievable. If people think a lot of innocent civilians are being killed now, just wait until the radicals become stronger, better financed and armed.
I should have said “reasoning” instead of “reason.” There is absolutely plenty of reason for those who hate America to use sexist and nasty comments and to make ridiculous statements indicating that only those women who have experienced childbirth can talk about birth pangs. The reasons are as ugly as the statements though. The reasoning is what I intended to refer to. I will revise.
Lefty,
All the screaming, pouting, wailing about, stomping, pounding of fist, crying, whining, lower lip pooching, loud repeated claiming, rolling on the floor and general wild-eyed goofy assed behavior will not change the fact that the sky is not green just because you want to be.
Lefty,
All the screaming, pouting, wailing about, stomping, pounding of fist, crying, whining, lower lip pooching, loud repeated claiming, rolling on the floor and general wild-eyed goofy assed behavior will not change the fact that the sky is not green just because you want to be.
Lefty:
Your hatred reminds me of the muslims; no solutions, just blind desire to destroy your perceived enemy. The rest of the world doesn’t hate us, in fact we are rather admired. At least you would think so, since most of the immigration of the world is toward the United States. The French are worthless and they know it, which causes them to envy our success.
Since both the interviewer and subject were women and Condi Rice introduced the metaphor, I don’t see how you can call this sexist , and it took place on television in Syria after all, where the shelling may expand soon.. As for the sujject of Lebanon democacy and birth pangs, the president continued today: “And what Condi is working on and I work on is to remind people about the stakes in the Middle East. And those stakes include not only helping the Lebanese government firm up its democracy.” More destruction, more bombing directed at them, a whole lot more actually, is what is needed to encourage them that the non-violent way democracies such as Israel and the US solve conflict, would work best for them.
Yes, right, of course. A few hugs and a rousing chorus of “Kum-bay-ya” around a campfire on the beach, accompanied by some burned-out hippy on a guitar with five strings, and the Islamists will just morph before our eyes into cute little fuzzy Koala bears, won’t they?
This is one reason why there can be no “meeting of the minds” with the left. They’ve completely lost theirs.
Lefty:
I hear you Lefty. Remember the good old days before Bush when our embassies and military bases were never bombed, when the World Trade Center was never bombed, when Somalians never dragged our soldier’s corpses through the streets and cheered at their deaths, when no one ever resented and outright hated the only world power. Back in those days when our military or political intervention was lauded as selfless and noble…and flowers were thrown at our feet wherever we went. Dogs and cats frolicked together through fields of daisies in the days of liberal power, in the days of the great liberal utopia.
Remember those days Lefty? Those days that never were?
This didn’t just happen in six years. Middle Eastern vetrinarians, dog walkers, school teachers and businessmen didn’t suddenly pick up arms and a wealth of military knowledge to attack civilians and U.S. troops the minute Bush took office. World hatred for the U.S. is not republican dependant, the clock counting down to armed confrontation did not start six years ago my friend.
Sure, start “correcting that at the ballot box”.
If an anti-war democrat gets into office we can all watch Iraq implode when we surrender and run away. We can all watch as the hatred for us burns hotter than ever before on the “arab street” for getting a job half-done and throwing the people who believed in us to the dogs yet again. We can all look back an smile at all the poeple, soldiers and otherwise, who gave their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq for absolutely no reason.
We can watch the terrorists laugh and high five each other for defeating the Great Satan…secure in the knowledge that if you get a liberal American president in office that that’s more interested in his popularity than anything else, he’ll easily shrink under the glare of terrorism.
You go further to say that these people don’t hate us “without reason.”
I’ve lost patience telling morally misguided people like yourself, with their mental gymnastics, what they should already know through common knowlege. There’s a point where one realizes it’s a waste of time to argue with someone who can’t see past his own bias long enough to entertain another point of view.
But, I won’t insult your intelligence with more arguments, because you manage to show us with each of your posts that you’re almost completely devoid of it.
But, I won’t insult your intelligence with more arguments, because you manage to show us with each of your posts that you’re almost completely devoid of it.
Thank you for not posting any more replies to me. This last one was really long, and said virtually nothing. I take that to mean that you could not find anything with which to disagree, but you could have said that with much fewer words.
Instead of reducing “terrorism” the Bush administration has created circumstances which are causing terrorism to grow and florish. The young people of Iraq who have seen families and neighbors murdered by the “liberating” forces of the United States, and now see neighbor fighting against neighbor and countryman fighting against countryman, are the terrorists of the decades to come.
Republicans have done an excellent job of making matters much worse. Good thing we will have an opportunity to change things this November with the elections.
The difference between Lefty and us is rather simple. We understand and accept that there are practitioners of a Hitlerite ideology known as “Islamic Fascism” who want to subjugate us and exterminate the Jews of Israel. We do not pine for the deceptively quiet days of yore when the jihadists were left alone by liberals to plan their mayhem, murder, conquests, and Second Holocaust.
Lefty, on the other hand, merely wishes for a return to those days of yesteryear when we could all get along. His posts betray his naivete. He acknowledges no wickedness, nor evil, on the part of our enemies. This is key to understanding the contemporaty, postmodernist liberal for whom nothing is worth fighting for and everything is reduced to a cynical moral equivalence. This quote gives it away:
The original sin lies with the United States, not with the jihad, not with those who plan the extermination of Israel’s Jews by means of atomic weapons. “Despots” in Iran and North Korea are “mishandled”. They are not capable of wickedness or evil in their own right, but engage in malevolence only as a result of American ill will or stupidity. Kim Jong Il starves his own people and fires ballistic missiles at his neighbors because of the wickedness of the United States and George Bush. Mahmoud Ahmadhi-Nejad developed and has put into place a state policy of national genocide of Israel’s Jews precisely because of George Bush and the Republicans.
This is what people like Lefty truly believe in their hearts. It is why they will never be given power by the American people. The people do not loathe their own country in the ways that Lefty does. Oh, he can lie to us and tell us otherwise, but his own words betray him.
And that nuclear threat from North Korea was actually funded by President Bush to the tune of $94 million. That’s right, Bush gave Pyongyang $94 million to develop nuclear capabilities — and waived the requirement “that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors.”
The rightwing lunatics in Washington are creating more problems then they solve – more proof that the ugliness comes from within.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1908571.stm
And that nuclear threat from North Korea was actually funded by President Bush to the tune of $94 million. That’s right, Bush gave Pyongyang $94 million to develop nuclear capabilities — and waived the requirement “that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors.”
The rightwing lunatics in Washington are creating more problems then they solve – more proof that the ugliness comes from within.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1908571.stm
Lefty:
Perhaps I used too many words or laced the sarcasm too thick?
Nice try, however, I directly responded to what you said. That you can’t realize that directly reinforces the last sentence of my last post.
Don’t count on me not posting any more replies to you…(I don’t give up that easy) but I won’t be explaining the most basic of ideas because as I said, I’m tired of talking at a brick wall (like, for instance, that I have to explain my last post to you and correct your willful misconceptions about it). The “without reason” comment is an example of the warped thinking that I’m weary of addressing.
Lefty:
What about the young people of Iraq that have watched the “liberating” forces build their schools, and make their neigborhoods safer? That have been a driving force in giving them more freedom?
Just because most of what you see in the news revolves around Bagdhad, it does not mean that that reflects the status of the rest of the country.
Read a milblog some time, it may give you a more balanced view of the situation. That is, if you’re willing to accept first hand accounts over your own opinions.
Who is this collete khuri twat anyway? If she’s syrian then she better get ready for one helluva ride when the Israeli extermination machine arrives.
These folks have such open minds and are such beacons of hope for the world. The way they treat their women with such reverence honor is inspiring to the entire world…..
*washing mouth out with soap*