Whatever Wednesday
Posted by Michelle Moquin on May 4th, 2011
Good morning!
Sometimes I get so focused on the atrocities that men commit that I forget to question consider the obvious. I found it so interesting when watching the video of Logan’s interview that I didn’t realize until I read the transcript that I was being manipulated by the media.
So how is that?
Notice how we are pulled into the drama, and how the media directs us into seeing Logan as the victim, and plays up that part. Now, don’t get me wrong, Logan was the victim here, and what she went through was horrifically tragic and unspeakable. But the media plays into our heart strings – It certainly played into mine yesterday. So much that I had to step away and get clarity.
Then I read the transcript and I noticed something. When Logan spoke about how the women put there arms around her. We know that was true because it was disclosed in my blog when this atrocity happened. But her statement that she felt she was saved because now it was about “their women”, is just not true. Here she is giving the men deference because she feels that it was about “their women” that saved her.
“…it wasn’t just about me anymore. It was about their women and that was what saved me, I think. The women kind of closed ranks around me. And I remember one or two, maybe three men standing with them…”
Do you think these men care about “their women’? No. The treat “their women” like this all of the time. These women saved Logan. She would be dead if it were not for the women covering her from head to toe to protect her. These women put their lives on the line for her. It has nothing to do with the men, except to save her from “their men”.
Why didn’t Logan recognize this? Why didn’t she say that these women saved her and they are heroines? Why do we have no information about the women that saved her? They should be recognized for their bravery….for putting their lives on the line. At least by Logan.
They deserve recognition, and the badge of performing a heroic act. I truly beleive that if it were not for the women who surrounded her, and covered her body, Logan would be dead.
And lastly, notice how none of the men who were with Logan were harmed. If I had a body guard with me who was fighting to protect me, he better at least be as badly beaten up as I am trying to get to me to save my life. What does that tell you?
Remember, it was the Egyptian women who put their arms around her, and demanded that the soldiers come and stop the men. Why is no one focusing on that part of the story?
It’s so easy to get caught up in the drama of what happened, that we neglect to look at the fine details of what happened.
So…onto today’s write…
Obama Succeeded Where Bush Failed: Osama Bin Laden Rhetoric And Reality
WASHINGTON — As he announced the death of infamous terrorist Osama bin Laden on Sunday night, President Barack Obama struck an extraordinary contrast with his predecessor, George W. Bush.
That was to some degree unavoidable. Bush’s consistent failure to respond appropriately to bin Laden — as a potential threat, as a fugitive, or as a public enemy no. 1 — represents one of the greatest shortcomings of his presidency.
Obama has now succeeded where Bush failed. And it was impossible to hear Obama declare that “justice has been done” without thinking about how long it went undone.
But Obama also went out of his way to draw distinctions between how he approached the problem and how Bush did.
For instance, as the months and years went by after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — and Bush’s initial bluster about capturing the al Qaeda leader “dead or alive” became a source of embarrassment — Bush began to insist that bin Laden himself wasn’t so very important.
“I truly am not that concerned about him,” Bush said at a White House press conference on March 13, 2002. And of course the following March, he shifted America’s focus to Iraq, which proved to be a gigantic diversion.
Obama took a different tack.
Shortly after taking office,” the president explained Sunday night, “I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.”
Obama’s comments on Sunday night were clearly directed not just to the American public but to the world, evoking images of the horror of 9/11 in an effort to dampen any possible al Qaeda propaganda value from bin Laden’s death.
By contrast, the tactics and the rhetoric of Bush’s “war on terror” — most notably his decision to invade Iraq and the torture of Muslims in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere had served as al Qaeda’s most potent recruiting tools.
And to a nation of people who, nearly ten years after the terrorist attacks in America, are overwhelmingly despondent about both of the wars launched by Bush, Obama was at long last able to deliver something that, at least for a moment, seemed like victory: “The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda,” he said.
Ironically, Obama’s announcement came eight years to the day after Bush famously and prematurely declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq after landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier.
And if all that weren’t clear enough, Obama made an explicit appeal to set the clock back to those days of national and international unity right after Sept. 11 — before Bush took the nation to war in Iraq, subverted historical prohibitions against torture and domestic surveillance, and used fear of terror to achieve partisan goals.
“[T]onight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11,” Obama said. “I know that it has, at times, frayed.”
As Obama noted, the U.S. was virtually a different country then.
“On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together,” the president reminded the nation on Sunday night. “We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.”
The Bush record on bin Laden, of course, starts with him failing to prevent the attacks in the first place. As has been exhaustively documented by now, during the summer of 2001, his White House waved off repeated warnings of an imminent attack from former counterterrorism director Richard A. Clarke and then-CIA director George Tenet.
Bush and his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, were said to be more focused on their pet issue, missile defense, and the hunt for a reason to attack Iraq. Bush, according to Bob Woodward, said he wasn’t interested in “swatting flies.”
The unsuccessful attempts to engage Bush culminated in a briefing he got while vacationing on his Texas ranch. As investigative reporter Ron Suskind reported in his book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” an unnamed CIA operative flew to Crawford to call the president’s attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.“
“All right,” Suskind reported Bush saying after hearing out the operative. “You’ve covered your ass, now.”
Former President Bill Clinton in 2006 notably complained that he came close to killing bin Laden in a 1998 missile strike, while Bush and the “right wingers … had eight months to try [before 9/11]. They did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted.”
Bush’s post-9/11 swagger may go down as one of history’s worst examples of false bravado. Afterthe invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban government quickly fell and al Qaeda retreated into the hills. But in December 2001, when bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora, Bush didn’t pull the trigger.
Then for more than three years, Bush treated bin Laden a lot like the wizards in the Harry Potter books treat He Who Must Not Be Named.
In the summer of 2005, Bush started invoking bin Laden again — but this time, to win support for his Iraq policy, which was very much on the ropes.
“Hear the words of Osama bin Laden,” Bush said, “‘This Third World War is raging’ in Iraq.”
By 2006, on the stump for his fellow Republicans, Bush was citing bin Laden extensively. The president cast bin Laden as the oracular leader of a global movement, and warned of the possibility of an Islamic caliphate “stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia” — an unsubstantiated fantasy with only one thing going for it: It served the political agendas of both men.
Meanwhile, in an Oval Office session that same month, Bush told to a group of conservative columnists that focusing on bin Laden didn’t fit with his military plans. Putting “100,000 of our special forces stomping through Pakistan in order to find bin Laden is just simply not the strategy that will work,” he explained.
Yet, in his attempts to persuade the voting public of the dangers it faced, Bush gave bin Ladenexactly the attention he seemed to crave.
After the 2008 presidential election, during which politicians from both parties publicly renounced him, Bush finally admitted some regret in an ABC News interview.
“Do I wish we had brought Osama bin Laden to justice? Sure,” Bush said. “But he’s not leading a lot of parades these days.”
Bush stalwarts are now trying to make the case that their president deserves some, if not most, of the credit for dispatching bin Laden.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Sunday night called bin Laden’s death “a victory for the United States and a tremendous achievement for the military and intelligence professionals who carried out this important mission.” As for Obama’s role? “I commend President Obama who has followed the vigilance of President Bush in bringing Bin Laden to justice,” Cantor said in a statement.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney similarly credited “the military and intelligence professionals who carried out this important mission,” citing their “tireless work since 9/11.” It was those years of effort, the majority of which were during the Bush administration, that “made this achievement possible, and enabled us to capture or kill thousands of al Qaeda terrorists and many of their leaders,” Cheney said in a press release.
A small group of young fans gathered outside Bush’s house in Dallas Sunday night with a sign that read, “President Obama forgot to say… THANK YOU PRESIDENT BUSH.”
Bush himself issued a brief statement congratulating Obama and declaring, “[t]he fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.”
Readers: All I want it say is that I am tired of hearing the rhetoric surrounding Bush and his “vigilance” in trying to capture bin laden, that somehow helped Obama capture and kill him. We’re not in a race here where Bush somehow got to the mid point of a race and handed Obama the baton to bring it home.
No. Obama was not in a race with Bush. Obama was in his own game and had nothing to do with Bush and his game plan - Speaking of…what plan did Bush have? Reading the above article, he barely had a game plan, wasn’t “concerned”, and it certainly didn’t make it a priority.
Capturing bin laden was a “top priority” for Obama. And he and his team did it without any help from Bush, and his “vigilance”.
That’s it for me today. Your turn. Blog me your thoughts on whatever.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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May 4th, 2011 at 9:59 am
Hi Misch,
Hmmm, I took the ‘their women’ to mean that now those men had to go up against a group of ‘their women’ and they didn’t fight it for long, the women doused them with water and basically fought them off and grabbed troops to give LL cover and some recourse.
I did think she was still suffering pyschologically though, her delivery was above average but she is trained for that, there was something in her eyes that flickered, I cannot explain it.
And yes, she could’ve (and should) seek out her saviors and thank them personally, though you don’t know what occurs behind the scenes and often people and particularly women who’ve been gang raped don’t want to revisit horror for awhile until they can process what they’ve been through.
I’m not clear on what shape her bodyguard was in after the ruckus though it sounds like he’d followed her on through until he couldn’t and there were many animals (men) and those animals were out for female blood. Even a buff bodyguard can only fight off a crowd for so long. My question ran more along the line of – wait, what? only 2 bodyguards? And only one Western bg and the an Egyptian bg who conveniently disappeared, that’s the best you can do to protect your tv reporters? That wouldn’t even seem to be a gender specific issue, that’s in general. They require more protection than that in foreign or Arab territory, no?
Re: Obama, I loved the CNN correspondent who wrote the article ‘Obama gets Osama’ but that won’t win 2012. He’s right, it is a victory for President Obama and others can say whatever they want about it, but that won’t get him re-elected until the economy starts providing more jobs and people see a light at the end of the tunnel, gas at 5 bucks isn’t helping the O cause either. If that is not fixed it won’t happen no matter what other great things he’s done or has in mind to do. I saw on faceBook my young niece commented on Obamacare made her lifelong RX drug go up 300% so she’s unimpressed and she was an Obama supporter.
You see, if things start costing the average jane/Joe and they don’t see a way out they’ll even start believing the foxhead (my adopted nickname for trump : ) would be or could be a better option, now that’s scary. I hope he can improve things though it’s a hard thing to do with what took years to blow up…I wish him the best of luck and he still has my support.
Luv, Zen Lill
May 4th, 2011 at 10:25 am
Thank you Michelle for your recognition of the sacrifice the arab women made to save Mrs. Logan.
May 4th, 2011 at 10:33 am
Zen Lill It is interesting that you say it doesn’t matter what else Obama does it won’t change the fact that gas is $5.00 a gallon.
That fact didn’t stop Bush from being reelected. The economy was already in the toilet when bush ran for his second term. Clinton had given him a balanced budget and a surplus when he took office.
Bush prompted spent us into the toilet. What mattered then was the he was perceived as the best man to protect this country. That was a lark too.
So are you suggesting that Obama will be held to a different standard? Now that he has shown that he is quite capable of protecting this country, we must now say to the man what about the economy?
Interesting how that question didn’t arise when bush ran for his second term. Double standard is a natural for the black man. I am not black and I don’t pretend to understand their racial issues. But this is an obvious one.
Clark
May 4th, 2011 at 10:43 am
Michelle:
Thank you for mentioning the bravery of my Egyptian sisters. Egyptian men often sexually harass us. We are told that we venture out of our homes at our own risk. We are forced to cover ourselves from our toes to the top of our heads.
We are told that it will be our fault if a man gets excited by seeing even our naked toes. Ms Logan may have been in shock still, but she could still have thanked those women for putting their lives at risk for hers.
What courage it took for them to decide to risk rape and physical abuse from the hands of her attackers to throw their bodies between her and her attackers.
If they could overcome the shock of the moment to act to save Ms Logan during the time of mortal danger, how much was it to as Ms. Logan to act for her shock now that she is no longer in danger to say thank you to the women who saved her life.
It was not the white man she remember to tell us was in tears that saved her. Yet, through her shocked state she remembered to recognize him.
Samangan
May 4th, 2011 at 10:49 am
Clark, you answered your own question. You’ve been reading here, clearly racism is alive and well in the US. No, you cannot pretend to understand their racial issues, nor can I – I’m a white American woman, I cannot truly understand either (so I’m running commentary at you).
So yes, Bush got away with that, Obama may not, not just the gas at 5, not just the slow recovery…all that and he’s black, yes, and there are plenty of repugs that just don’t like being black part no matter what he does. And that’s a shame.
Misch, my disclaimer is: I did not READ her transcript in its entirety, was that on that site?
- ZL
May 4th, 2011 at 10:51 am
just had a thought after reading Orguns comment, maybe LL could not or should not seek out the particular women to thank them, it may put them at risk of the wrath of the animal/men they live amongst? Just a thought… – ZL
May 4th, 2011 at 10:53 am
I must say I agree with you on this one Clark. The question lies to the GOP about jobs, pricing, budget, etc. That is the job of the Congress and Senate to put something sane and that can work across the desk of the President for him to sign. It will become the belabored argument among the GOP to try to blame Obama on all of that, although, it is the Congressional Branch that must come to the table with solutions, and Boner is incapable of this as he and his flock are lost in their racism and classism.
May 4th, 2011 at 11:11 am
Zen Lill, Once again the republicans have managed to get out a deceptive message.
Obamacare DID NOT cause your niece’s life long RX drug to go up 300%. The republican veto of prescription drug reform bill did. It gave the Pharmaceutical industry the right to reclassify their drugs under a more expensive category. Thereby enabling them to raise their prices upwards 500%.
Misinformation given and passed along by deluded people is what the republicans count on. Your niece is lucky that Obamacare passed or she may have found herself unable to get health insurance.
It is Obamacare that prevents her insurance company from denying her coverage whenever they wish to. She doesn’t have to worry about one day being denied coverage because of the passage of OBAMACARE.
Remind your uninformed niece that before Obamacare she ran the risk of being denied coverage at the whim of her insurance carrier like the rest of Americans. How quickly is forgotten the hard fight to give her that security.
Now she complains about her drugs. Remind her that without coverage she wouldn’t qualify for ANY medication. Ask her if she is willing to give up Obamacare and go back to wondering when her insurance company will find a pre conditional excuse to refuse her coverage all together?
She should be kissing Obama’s ass that he put his political future in jeopardy to help ungrateful idiots like her. But like those uninformed thankless other complainers she bites the hand that feeds her.
It would serve her right if the republicans repealed Obamacare and her insurance company prompted found a reason to cancel her coverage.
What part of under Obamacare your coverage CAN NOT be canceled doesn’t the ingrate get? What part of you can stay a part of your parents insurance policy until you reach 26 years of age don’t they get?
There are so many benefits of Obamacare that it boggles the mind that some idiot would not want it and would not be willing to fight to improve it.
But hey, the world is full of idiots and from your post, America’s has its ample share.
Davis
May 4th, 2011 at 11:16 am
Zen Lill, I agree with you. If the names of those women surface they will most certainly be harassed. If the males of their families think they were molested they run the risk of be “mercy” murdered.
Egyptian men kill their women all the time to “save face.” It is supposed to be against the law in Egypt, no law will arrest a man who kills a female of his family to save the family the disgrace of her having been raped.
Mazar-e Sharif
May 4th, 2011 at 11:34 am
Davis, Doug and Clark, I get all that…but really, lately, I just don’t have the time to spend with people who want to be entrenched with other (can you say ‘repug’) thinking, she’s just justifying jumping on her man’s bandwagon bc he railed on about it, she’ll learn – I hope. I just breezed by her FB post as if it weren’t there, no one else commented either so maybe she needs to do her own homework.
Everybody wants Obama to do amazing feats, how can he with GOP not proposing anything viable to sign? They’ll sign something reasonable once they ‘take their country back’ in 2012 just to make the point. I’m not judging this re-election/2012 presidential race until late in the game bc there’s definitely going to be some (or many) eleventh hour crisis.
- ZL
May 4th, 2011 at 11:45 am
This was another case of a white woman returning to the arms of a white man once she had benefited from the services of a FOTW.
White women in America have a history of abandoning their sisters who are FOTW after they have used their political savvy to gain entry into the white male dominated political and economic bailiwicks.
Once she was safe, she fell into pattern and looked for a white male to thank. Ray was available.
Her quote: Logan: And I almost fell into the lap of this woman on the ground who was head to toe in black, just her eyes, I remember just her eyes, I could see.
Pelley: Wearing a chador.
Logan: Yes. And she put her arms around me. And oh my God, I can’t tell you what that moment was like for me. I wasn’t safe yet, because the mob was still trying to get at me.
But now it wasn’t just about me anymore. It was about their women and that was what saved me, I think. The women kind of closed ranks around me.
And I remember one or two, maybe three men standing with them and throwing, the women were throwing water in the crowd. And they were pouring water over me, ’cause I couldn’t breathe. You know I was I was rasping.”
—————————————-
It was the WOMEN who saved her, Egyptian women, who were willing to risk their lives to intervene. She was not too shocked then to appreciate the Egyptian woman’s arms around her. But I guess once she was safe and discussing it in the studio, Ray’s tears were more important.
It’s a simple question Zen Lill who would you remember most the person who took you to the scene of the rape or the person who rescued you from the rape?
Tarin Kowt
May 4th, 2011 at 11:52 am
None but you, Michelle, have asked what happened to the egyptian women who risked their safety to save her?
I thought of Anonz and his reaction to Nia’s courage. This is one more example of the nobility of that man. He remembered to remember appropriately her sacrifice.
Most of us see things though the emotional veils of culture and prejudices. Some like Anonz rise to the level of the Special.
Faizabad
May 4th, 2011 at 11:54 am
Zen Lill’s back with her sharp, intelligent insights. That’s my girl. You were missed.
May 4th, 2011 at 11:56 am
Zen Lill, I hope you don’t think I was calling you an idiot. I most certainly was not.
May 4th, 2011 at 12:03 pm
Zen Lill
You say ” I just breezed by her FB post as if it weren’t there, no one else commented either so maybe she needs to do her own homework.’
Where was this FB post?
Pepper
May 4th, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Davis, no I didn’t, you were calling my young niece one though…and I love her but, hey, it’s all about that shoe fitting, now isn’t it? : )
Pepper, it was on faceBook but I would never disclose someone else’s contact info here.
Tarin Kowt, you may be correct, perhaps she completely overlooked the importance of the fact that she wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for other women. Though I think she did, as I said, she’s not quite ‘back’ and I don’t know, perhaps I’m wrong but it seemed to me she was quite thankful during her description of how they enveloped her and threw water, etc…perhaps she took it for granted (always a mistake to take for granted anything) that women would assist another woman. She understood that women assisted her and not Ray, he got lost in the foray and was of no help when she needed it, though she knows him and a swarm of protective women while she was just majorly traumatized didn’t register the same.
It was annoying that she embraced the idea that Western women reporters thanked her for speaking out in the subject and yet, she didn’t say…’I appreciate the kudos but the thank you should go to the Egyptian women who saved my life’ – that would’ve covered it more to the point. Maybe I’m cutting her slack unnecessarily…? We know I tend to do that slack cutting thing, perhaps I should toughen up on people?
Thank you, Larry, I’m glad someone appreciates my commentary : )
Luv, Zen Lill – I have to work now : ) what a slacker I am.
May 4th, 2011 at 1:49 pm
Robert this really jumped out at me after your post on Reagan ratting out Carter to win the presidency. I’m still not sure I believe it.
—–President Jimmy Carter’s failed re-election bid was blamed in part on the disastrous attempt to rescue American hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1980. Eight American troops were killed when a special operations aircraft collided with a Navy helicopter at a rendezvous point in the desert on their way to the embassy.——–
It is difficult to believe what a group will to achieve success. I guess that’s another reason for the word “collateral damage.” Just another person’s word for essential.
Jorge
May 4th, 2011 at 3:48 pm
ZL, I missed something, who is the she you are referring to in the post you referred me therein…?
May 4th, 2011 at 5:01 pm
I am the luckiest girl in the world
for I have a boy who love has unfurled
He holds me tight and kisses me sweet
The love he gives me is such a treat
Whether in the bed or on the floor
He always leaves me asking for more
May 4th, 2011 at 6:30 pm
Doug, da boggzy, sorry probably shouldn’t have included you in that, she was my niece who posted about Obama on FB.
How ironic is this…and I am just back form the mall where I was harrassed by guess who – a Middle Eastern guy. He didn’t touch me – he just was staring, talking and generally moving in close to annoy my girl and I as I was snacking on my stir fry. I didn’t want to scare my kid more than seh already was, so when a woman walked by and asked me if he was bothering me and should she get security, I said yes. He only walked away when security came and they handled it with him 50 feet away. I’ll tell you, if he had made the mistake of touching either one of us, he’d have had the right hook of a seated and ready to lunge Amazon woman upside his head. No joke, I had it playing out in my head. I was fine, I knew I could handle just one creepy dude if push came to shove, but my kids heart was beating out of her chest. Poor thing…a good lesson in weirdos are everywhere and can look normal and sane even when tehy’re not. It taught me a lesson also, I was OK with one creepy dude, but what if there were more and no woman at the ready to help, what then? I’ll have to think on that just in case it ever occurs…
- ZL
May 4th, 2011 at 9:44 pm
The most successful counterterrorism operation in U.S. history, – Once again a black man enters a field previously held only by white men and pulls a Tiger woods. Simply obliterates what before under their best efforts was considered the best possible for a human.
Yeah, for a white boy. Get over your selves. The Presidency like golf before Tiger Woods, the NBA before BLACKS, etc, etc.. things played by boys, it too now is a thing being played by a MAN.
Hence, manly things can be done. Like Obama care, Osama EKIA, a President for ALL Americans and a leader for the WORLD.
Get over yourself white boy. Join white men and the rest of the men and women who are Americans and work to take this country back from the corporations that have a strangle hold on the purse strings and Supreme Court of this country.
Wayne
May 4th, 2011 at 9:46 pm
Zen lill;
Tell anonz to sit this one out and come to me sweet thing. You write so sexy I want to eat your words.