By Brian Carnell

Tuesday, May 22, 2001

For the past couple years, David Horowitz has devoted considerable space at FrontPageMag.Com railing at his former Leftist friend Robert Scheer, who now works for the Los Angeles Times. I never paid much attention, but if Scheer's latest article about the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan is any indication, Scheer is in that class of "journalists" who is inane not because he is of the Left or Right but rather because he is simply a liar.

The article, Bush's Faustian Deal With the Taliban, is an attack on George W. Bush for changing U.S. foreign policy toward the extremist Islamic government of Afghanistan. Scheer writes,

Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.

That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.

...

Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden.

The only problem is that almost every sentence in these three paragraphs is incorrect.

First, the United States is not rewarding the Taliban for any change in its drug policies. As Colin Powell and others made clear when announcing the $43 million in humanitarian aid, the money is being sent to prevent a famine that the World Food Programme estimates threatens hundreds of thousands of Afghanis who have been flooding into refugee camps in Pakistan.

Second, the humanitarian aid money is not going anywhere near the Taliban. Like other humanitarian aid from other countries being directed at minimizing the risk of famine in Afghanistan, the United Nations will handle disbursement of the funds -- much of which will consist of surplus food -- directly and through NGOs operating in Afghanistan.

Third, this is doesn't represent any change at all in U.S. foreign policy toward Afghanistan. Probably because he is an avowed Clintonista, Scheer conveniently forgets to mention the tens of millions of dollars of humanitarian aid that the Clinton administration sent to Afghanistan in 2000 to help avert famine. I don't remember anyone on either the Right or Left suggesting that Clinton's efforts to prevent young children from dying of diarrhea in Pakistan refugee camps represented "cozying up" to a terrorist state.

Source:

Bush's Faustian Deal With the Taliban. Robert Scheer, The Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2001.

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