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Rep. Virgil Goode will not comment on Muslim US Ambassador at UN
Michael Roston
Published: Friday January 5, 2007
President George W. Bush's nomination of a practicing Muslim as US Ambassador to the United Nations may or may not be an asset to American diplomatic efforts in the international organization. But it appears that Zalmay Khalilzad's faith is unlikely to result in much controversy in Washington....
RAW STORY has learned that Rep. Virgil Goode, the Virginia Republican who provoked outrage by objecting to Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison (D - MN) taking his oath of office on a Koran, would not object to Khalilzad's likely tenure at the UN.
RAW STORY contacted Linwood Duncan in Rep. Goode's Danwood, Virginia office shortly after the news of Khalilzad's nomination emerged. The press secretary responded tersely when asked whether or not Goode would make any statements about Khalilzad's faith or nomination to the UN.
"He has had no comment whatsoever," Duncan remarked. "Don't expect any."
Rep. Goode sparked controversy after a letter sent to his constituents surfaced in December that expressed hostility to Islam. Though subtly saluting Ellison's position on illegal immigration, Goode warned of his fear that "in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt...strict immigration policies." He also stated in the letter that "on Swearing In Day, I will have the Bible in my other hand. I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way."
Zalmay Khalilzad has served as President George W. Bush's Ambassador to both Iraq and Afghanistan. He is leaving Baghdad, where he served as America's top diplomat since June 2005, under the cloud of the controversial execution of Iraq's ex-dictator Saddam Hussein, and escalating violence in the country.
A naturalized US citizen, Khalilzad is a native of Afghanistan and a practicing Muslim, perhaps the highest-ranking believer in the Islamic faith in the Bush administration. A New Yorker profile in 2005 described his faith as "moderate." He argued to the magazine's Jon Lee Anderson that his faith should be evidence that America was not at war with Islam.
“We don’t do a good job, sometimes, of describing ourselves," Khalilzad said. "I am a Muslim, representing the United States, so it’s very hard for people to argue with me that America is against Islam. But we’re still at the beginning of developing a relationship of trust, that we will be advocates for reasonable and honorable things.”
He started his career in government in the Reagan State Department as an adviser on the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and split his time during the George H.W. Bush administration between the government and various energy interests. Later, he joined the Rand Corporation in 1993. He served on the Bush-Cheney Transition team after the 2000 presidential election, held a number of posts in the National Security Council including "Senior Director for Islamic Outreach," and was later confirmed by the Senate as Ambassador to Afghanistan in 2003.
A 2003 profile in the Washington Post described his style as that of "a marble rattling in a jar." He acknowledged of current Afghan political forces that "We have a history." Some unnamed Afghans quoted in the Pamela Constable articled claimed that "in the 1980s he was an official hand-holder of anti-Soviet Islamic militias that later destroyed Kabul in a vicious civil war, and that in the 1990s, he endorsed U.S. accommodation of leaders of the extremist Islamic Taliban."
While Khalilzad did call for engagement of the Taliban in the mid-1990s, he later renounced this position after the terrorist attacks on the US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. In a 2000 article in the journal Washington Quarterly, Khalilzad wrote "Protecting U.S. interests and stopping the spread of "Talibanism" require confronting the Taliban and preventing it from consolidating power. Alternatives to confrontation have little promise....Washington must weaken the Taliban, support moderate Afghans, and press Afghanistan's neighbors, particularly Pakistan, to work against extremism in the region."
While Keith Ellison can be seen as someone who parrots the Zionist line for safety, he is not an active Neo-Con like the seedy Khalilzad. Khalilzad is as much a Muslim as Dick Cheney is for turning his other cheek.
This Afghan agent of American Imperialism, working with the other Afghan agent and later puppet 'ruler', Hamid Karzai, were both consultants for Unocal trying to get the Taliban to allow them to build pipelines across Afghanistan. When that fell through and the Taliban refused to do business with American corporations (and approached Argentine companies instead), these two Afghan neo-cons got involved in the invasion of Afghanistan by working for Bush's administration. Karzai became 'president' of Afghanistan, and Khalilzad became US ambassador to occupied puppet-run Afghanistan.
Time and again, the Zionists and Imperialists claim that they are not against all Muslims. "Look!" they screech, "we tolerate these 'moderate' Muslims!" But in their eyes, being a moderate is being a traitor to peace and justice, or being against Muslims resisting foreign armies on their land. Moderation seems heavily tilted to the anti-Muslim side. I say let the Muslims themselves define what 'moderate Islam' is, instead of calling every Muslim who's against American foreign policy an 'extremist'.