OC Weekly: Rogue Statesman Dana Rohrabacher

Orange County Weekly - Rogue Statesman

From a September 5, 2002 article at OCWeekly.com linked to in an October 24, 2007 post at TheDayTheyTriedToKillMe.com:

"Listen! Hold on!" said Rohrabacher. "I am a bigger expert on Afghanistan than any member of Congress."

As a speechwriter and special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, Rohrabacher played a key role in the late 1980s getting money and arms, including U.S.-made Stinger missiles, to Afghan holy warriors, then at war with the Soviet Union. He once bragged of being "certainly a major player" in a coalition inside the White House that supported anyone "opposing Communist domination around the world." In November 1988, he even visited the Afghan front lines during a five-day hike with an armed mujahideen patrol in eastern Afghanistan. Among those fighters he encountered, he later recalled, were "Saudi Arabians under a crazy commander named bin Laden."

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A November/December 1996 article in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs reported, "The potential rise of power of the Taliban does not alarm Rohrabacher" because the congressman believes the "Taliban could provide stability in an area where chaos was creating a real threat to the U.S." Later in the article, Rohrabacher claimed that:

• Taliban leaders are "not terrorists or revolutionaries."
• Media reports documenting the Taliban's harsh, radical beliefs were "nonsense."
• The Taliban would develop a "disciplined, moral society" that did not harbor terrorists.
• The Taliban posed no threat to the U.S.

Although he continues to describe himself as an expert on Afghan history and politics, Rohrabacher was obviously dead wrong on all counts.

Evidence of Rohrabacher's attempts to conduct his own foreign policy became public on April 10, 2001, not in the U.S., but in the Middle East. On that day, ignoring his own lack of official authority, Rohrabacher opened negotiations with the Taliban at the Sheraton Hotel in Doha, Qatar, ostensibly for a "Free Markets and Democracy" conference. There, Rohrabacher secretly met with Taliban Foreign Minister Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, an advisor to Mullah Omar. Diplomatic sources claim Muttawakil sought the congressman's assistance in increasing U.S. aid—already more than $100 million annually—to Afghanistan and indicated that the Taliban would not hand over bin Laden, wanted by the Clinton administration for the fatal bombings of two American embassies in Africa and the USS Cole. For his part, Rohrabacher handed Muttawakil his unsolicited plans for war-torn Afghanistan. "We examined a peace plan," he laconically told reporters in Qatar.

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"{Rohrabacher} says the Taliban are devout traditionalists—not terrorists or revolutionaries. He believes a Taliban takeover {of Afghanistan} would be a positive development."

—Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November/December 1996 issue

This is a great example of how a politician tries to cover his own stupidity in supporting these fundamentalists in the interest of cash with rhetorical bull shit.

When are we going to put our foot down with these people? They sure don't seem too inclined to do it to themselves and it's this kind of stuff that America was founded to avoid in the first place. Leaders taking advantage for personal gain.

Government's job should be simply to protect and to serve the people. Not to protect and serve corporations or their own bank accounts. Capitalism has no built-in failsafes. It will eat itself alive if it is allowed to run free for too long with no moral control. Letting senators and congresspeople even speak with lobbyists is what causes this kind of thing.

These people in Washington who think it's OK to deal with any kind of "freedom fighters" in another country are seriously amoral schizophrenic sociopaths. These aren't politicians from other countries--they're warriors. Dana, you're out of your element with these guys. The ONLY reason you didn't end up dead was because they assumed you had some kind of power. If they knew who you really were they might not have posed for a photo with you. They might have shot you with something else.