Attack on UN in Afghanistan
Press Statement
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of StateWashington, DCApril 1, 2011
I am shocked and saddened by the attack today on the compound of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Mazar-e-Sharif. There is no justification for this atrocity and I join President Obama in condemning this violence in the strongest possible terms.
On behalf of the United States, I offer my deepest condolences to the families of the victims, Special Representative Staffan de Mistura, and his UNAMA colleagues. The United Nations staff killed were in Afghanistan to help the Afghan people build a better future.
The United Nations has stood by the Afghan people for more than fifty years. They have saved countless lives and delivered essential food and supplies. They are a force for peace, progress and stability in Afghanistan and throughout the world.
The United States strongly supports UNAMA and its mission and we will continue to stand together for a more peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, radical fundamentalist cleric, Terry Jones, whose burning of the Qu’uran prompted the attack, stands by his barbeque lighter saying Afghan U.N. Violence ‘Proves My Point’. There are Arabic people in my neighborhood and mosques in my city. We are a diverse and tolerant place, and I respect my neighbors as they respect me. I would not want “Pastor” Jones to open his “church” in my neighborhood. NIMBY! There is no place for the preaching of hatred in Christianity.
Jones hijacks Christianity when he puts forth his toxic message as surely as the 9-11 hijackers took over more than the planes they crashed. They usurped the message and religion of Islam. That Terry Jones believes Islam to be evil is his own poor judgment. To spread that idea in the name of religion is unethical. To perform the act of burning a book of scripture is reprehensible, That it had the potential to prompt violence was predictable. The blood of today’s attack is on his hands every bit as much as it is on those who killed innocent people who were there to help the people of Afghanistan.
Honestly I am torn on this. Terry Jones certianly does not display christian beleifs and I don’t condone the burning of anyone’s holy book, but I think its hard for many americans to understand killings in the name of the burning of korans when we can esaily see images of jesus the bible and other religons disparged whether its for satire or for some political point. I think what terry jones did was wrong but he was in his own country and he didnt break U.S laws it would be different had he burnedthe books in afganastan but he was a world away and he doesnt even have a huge following and not a representative of the U.S. I wouldn’t think that people here in the U.S would get together and kill muslims in the United States because some people in Afghanastan burned the bible. It would be undertandable if they said this was in retaliation against the innocent afganhastan kids that were killed recently, but I just comprehend killing for burning of a book no matter how holy it is to one. Terry jones should feel guilty he was warned that this was possible, but the truth of the matter is that he could have been any average nut in the U.S in this day and age and well if the people in afghanastan plan on killing civilians who are there to help them(not even troops)every time some crazy disrespects the koran we are in trouble. Karzi shouldn’t have even mentioned it and they probably wouldnt have even known.
Okay done don’t yell at me.
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Not going to yell. Both Hillary and Gates told him last fall (summer?) that this could result in deaths. It is not a legal matter. Of course he had the legal right to do this. It is a moral and ethical matter. Eleven people are dead because what he did was correctly predicted to be incendiary.
It just goes to show you that people who brandish scripture in a bellicose way do not necessarily represent the people who follow that scripture, a lesson lost on the radical fundamentalist cleric Terry Jones.
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You are right what he did was incendiary! I don’t agree with every world religon out there, but I couldnt possible picture my self or anyone I respect burning someone else’s scripture. I guess what gets me is that this guy is bascially a noone doesn’t represent US or our values and to have people killed because he decided to burn some korans sickens my stomach, I mean if someone next door to me maybe a muslim decided to burn a bible, tora i wouldnt go out or understand killing muslims based on his burning of the bible or tora. The U.S are no angels and we have have horrible things in muslim countries buring of the koran in the U.S should be the least of their concerns. I would understand it more if it was done on their soil(which admititly it might have)
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One can only understand this if another group starts burning bible — not that I suggest that… at all.
Frankly, all religious beliefs are baseless. The only “value” of religion is the conviction each of us has in our own heads about it. All the reverence we have for religion and religious books and artifacts are suddenly OFFENDED when someone (of any religion) steps on it. Burning is perceived as the worst kind of such transgression.
Why burn what is meaningful and revered by someone else? You would only do that to rake with fingernails on their face. And, if it causes reaction, you should not be surprised.
I say, get over religious fanaticism and fantasies.. and get to moral ground. Morals are true and universal and treating each other with respect is pretty basic.
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Good luck getting people to do that!
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I agree burning someone’s scripture is almost like torching everything that those who practice hold dear – their marriage rites, blessing said over children. Many of life’s milestones are marked by religious rituals. Attacking that really cuts to the core of a community’s identity. I think there would have been more of an international backlash if the world weren’t focused on other things.
Unfortunately too many people don’t recognized that faith and ethnic, moral behavior aren’t one and the same. It’s why we’ll never have a religiously unaffiliated president. There will always be some fool running around screaming about blasphemy.
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I’m not going to yell at you, but I’ll offer an opposing view, sort of. I seem to be in a very contrarian mood today.
I’m going to completely agree with you that Karzi shouldn’t have mentioned this wingnut jackass in Florida. I believe the literacy rate in Afghanistan is something like 10%. In a country like that, what a leader says is a far bigger deal than it is here were information is so plentiful in so many forms that our politicians have the luxury of being able to indulge in rhetorical theatrics without giving the country heart palpitations. I also doubt Karzi mentioned what a fringe element this “pastor” is. One could assume that there is a significant portion of the population that thinks Western Christians are ending all their Sunday services with a good ol’ fashioned Koran burnin’.
I understand why people would say “Well, Americans would never kill people over a bible burning in someplace far, far away” and you’re right, but not because Americans would be any less offended by the actions. Afghanistan is a long way from being like 2010 America. It’s a lot more like colonial America. There’s a less organized law enforcement and people take a lot of that into their own hands. If you broke the blasphemy laws in, say, colonial Connecticut, the punishment for doing so was death. In modern day Afghanistan, if you offend the social/cultural/religious sensibilities, there is a chance some offended party is going to try to do away with you. Pakistan has blasphemy laws much like the ones we had in our colonies in the days of yore. America is safer and more far more stable now, and as a result we are now a population that is by and large far less interested in vigilantism.
We may not follow through, but Americans do love to threaten to kill people. It’s on the news all the time. For example, I wouldn’t be alive in colonial times because my lack of religion. As you can see, I’m quite alive. If I decided to piss off the local christian population by setting fire to a bible while singing Imagine outside Easter mass, I probably wouldn’t get blown up, but I’m sure I’d get a ton of threats on my life and the lives of my family members once the story hit the news. I would have to contact the police and they would keep watch to make sure I was safe. It why our top congress people have capitol security details and it’s why the President has the power to appoint a Secret Service detail on any government (possibly just federal, not sure) official that he and various law enforcement entities believe are in significant danger. We still get that righteous outrage, but it’s tempered by our nation’s stability.
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If you sang Imagine outside Easter mass in CT in the 1600s, my Puritan ancestors would have put you in stocks (at least), and then they would have rounded up the Catholics having mass and burned them as witches.
Fortunately, in America, those two groups managed to intermarry, resulting in me. who was SHOCKED to realize, on a visit to Hartford, that my ancestors were Puritans. I was raised RC. Imagine!
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I’ve got Puritans and Irish Catholics in my blood, too. Who knows? We could be related!
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Could well be!
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You make a lot of sense discourse. I guess I just take for granted the stablitly here in the U.S where it’s just not okay to act violently for non violent offenses. I guess I am just simple, in the fact that I dont get why just because I dont agree with means I have to hate you, or that because I don’t beleive you beleive means I degrade what you beleive in or harm you because you don’t beleive in what I beleive.
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The very fact that Americans can take for granted the level of safety and security we’ve attained and that this kind of senseless violence seems so alien to us speaks volumns about how lucky we are in the West.
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Speak for yourself. I take nothing for granted, and this does not seem so alien to me. I saw the towers burning with my own eyes.
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I was refering to domestic issues. Taking the law, biblical or otherwise, into one’s own hands in not all that common. That’s sort of become viewed as the realm of the unhinged. 9/11 was perpetrated by foreign terrorists.
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Well that, too, is common enough here. Maybe is doesn’t happen everyday, but I am sure those people in Tucson thought they were pretty safe and secure. I don’t know how much it matters to the victims and their families that Loughner is unhinged.
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This has to be another incident of my foolishness, but yes, I do take a lot of things for granted. For example, I don’t worry that some warlord is going to set up a roadblock to rob and terrorize those in my town. I can go to my local grocery store and not risk a thorough beating for the crime of being an unescorted female. No one’s going to shut my father’s business down because he thinks a certain way or has friends someone else doesn’t like. I take for granted the fact that if something does go wrong, I can call the police or fire dept. or EMTs and they’re there in no time whether or not the person who needs help is someone of influence in the community or a nobody like me. This is probably me being a self obsessed, uninformed, spoiled millennial who knows nothing of true patriotism, leadership or gratitude. I seriously thought I wasn’t alone in being so damn comfortable. Who ever thought I would ever be called an optimist?!
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Well, maybe not those specific things, but in urban areas there are dangers, and the police do not always come or arrive on time. Gangs operate in neighborhoods and children can be shot sitting in their own living rooms. Maybe the suburbs are relatively safe, but the cities can be dangerous.
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Yes, the brutalize before being brutalized mentality is similar, but I’m just not going to equate any part of the US, even the South Bronx or Compton with the Afghan war-zone. We have big issues here, they have infinitely more.
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Well, I was just addressing taking safety and security for granted. I do not.
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Wow! Ok, I thought we were talking about chaos vs. stability and how the latter makes people less inclined to victimize others. I didn’t say anything regarding Obama, the impending Barnum and Bailey Primary Season, or Boomer-age ladies and any blanket statements involving them. I’m confused.
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I’m sitting here watching Robin Hood: Men in Tights and all of a sudden there are battles and Baby Boomer women and Obama. I was a little lost. Last I knew we were talking about cats on another thread. 🙂
We shouldn’t be too hard on the
President, Still. Sure he’s far less visibly involved now that his job entails more than inter party bickering, but at least he solved the problem of what to call the military action in Libya.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/30/jon-stewart-obama-libya-speech_n_842367.html
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[…] Hillary Clinton Issues Statement Condemning Attack On U.N. Mission In Afghanistan […]
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