[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 147 (Tuesday, October 30, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1941]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           BUSH TO BIN LADEN

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                           HON. STEVE ISRAEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, October 30, 2001

  Mr. ISRAEL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to add the following article to 
the Congressional Record. It appeared in the New York Times on Friday, 
October 12, 2001, on page A23.

                           Bush to bin Laden

                        (By Thomas L. Friedman)

       The White House has asked U.S. networks to limit broadcasts 
     of statements by Osama bin Laden. I wish that instead of 
     censorship, the president would respond to him. Here's what 
     Mr. Bush could say:
       Dear bin Laden: I've listened to the statement you released 
     through Al Jazeera TV. Since I know that no Arab or Muslim 
     leader will dare answer you, I thought I would do it. Let met 
     be blunt: Your statement was pathetic. It's obvious from what 
     you said that you don't have a clue why we're so strong or 
     why the Arab regimes you despise are so weak.
       You spoke about the suicide attacks on us as being just 
     revenge for the ``80 years of humiliation and disgrace'' the 
     Islamic nation has gone through. You referred to the 
     hijackers as a Muslim vanguard sent ``to destroy America,'' 
     the leader of the ``international infidels,'' and you 
     denounced the Arab regimes as ``hypocrites'' and ``hereditary 
     rulers.''
       What was most revealing, though, was what you didn't say: 
     You offered no vision of the future. This was probably your 
     last will and testament--I sure hope so--and you could have 
     said anything you wanted to future generations. After all, it 
     was your mike. Yet you had nothing to say. Your only message 
     to the Muslim world was whom to hate, not what to build--let 
     alone how.
       In part it's because you really don't know much about 
     Islamic history. The Muslim world reached the zenith of its 
     influence in the Middle Ages--when it preserved the best of 
     classical Greek and Roman teachings, and inspired 
     breakthroughs in mathematics, science, medicine and 
     philosophy. That is also when Islam was at its most open to 
     the world, when it enriched, and was enriched by, the 
     Christian, Greek and Jewish communities in its midst--whom 
     you now disparage as infidels--and when it was actively 
     trading with all corners of the world. Your closed, inward, 
     hate-filled version of Islam--which treats women as cattle 
     and all non-Muslims as enemies--corresponds with no period of 
     greatness for Islam, and will bring none.
       It was also revealing that the only Arab state you 
     mentioned was Iraq. Interesting--Iraq is led by a fascist 
     dictator, Saddam Hussein, who used poison gas against his own 
     people, who squandered Iraq's oil wealth to build himself 
     palaces and who raped Kuwait. But you are silent about all 
     that. What bothers you is our targeted sanctions to end such 
     a regime--not the regime itself.
       In other words, you not only don't understand the Muslim 
     past, you don't understand its present. The reason these past 
     80 years have been so stagnant for the Arab-Muslim world is 
     not because we in America have been trying to keep you down. 
     Actually, we haven't been thinking about you much at all. No, 
     the difference between American power, Chinese power, Latin 
     American power and Arab-Muslim power today is what we've each 
     been doing for these past 80 years. We and others have been 
     trying to answer many questions: How do we best educate our 
     kids? How do we increase our trade? How do we build an 
     industrial base? How do we increase political participation? 
     And we judged our leaders on how well they answered all those 
     questions.
       But people like you want Arabs and Muslims to ask only one 
     question of their leaders: How well did you fight the 
     infidels and Israelis? I know that who rules Jerusalem is a 
     deeply important part of your heritage, and every Arab-Muslim 
     leader must address it. But it can't be the only question. 
     Yet, because people like you have reduced it to the only 
     question, and tried to intimidate ever Arab who wanted to ask 
     other questions, you have allowed your region to be led by 
     scoundrels, like Saddam.
       Yes, you've wreaked some havoc, bin Laden, but don't 
     flatter yourself into thinking you can destroy us. You have 
     to build something strong to destroy something strong. But 
     you can't. Because all the intellectual and creative energies 
     in the Arab-Muslim world--which are as bountiful as in any 
     other region--can never reach their full potential under 
     repressive regimes like Iraq or leaders like yourself.
       Stalin and Mao killed a lot of their own people, but even 
     these thugs had a plan for their societies. You, bin Laden, 
     are nothing but a hijacker--a hijacker of Islam, a hijacker 
     of other people's technology, a hijacker of a vast Arab 
     nation's anger at its own regimes. But you have no vision and 
     no plan for your people. Which is why your epitaph will be 
     easy to write:
       Osama bin Laden--he destroyed much, he built nothing. His 
     lasting impact was like a footprint in the desert.

     

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