Tamimi is a Doctor? Of What?
Reader comment on item: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia: On Whose Side?

Submitted by GWK (United States), Jul 29, 2005 at 10:09

When I taught high school social studies, I always asked my students to be rigorous in applying logic to their analyses. AZZAM AL-TAMIMI doesn't deserve to be a PhD as he is all over the map as far as logic goes.

His is post hoc logic, and every atrocity commited by an islamic extremist is justified post-hoc by some perceived and unrelated Western atrocity. He correctly says that the West bombed Sudan and Afghanistan, but neglects to inform the public that these were barely lethal responses to very lethal attacks on the West, most notably Al Qaida's attacks on sovereign embasies in Africa and threathened attacks elsewhere. The Afghan missile attacks landed exactly where bin Laden and Al Qaida were training jihadis and where master fiends bin Laden and Zawahiri were reasonably expected to be presiding. The pharmaceutical's plant was suspected with good intelligence to be involved on the side in terrorist activities. Both were justifiable responses under international law. Tamimi's rhetoric fails to show that these legitimate demonstrations of will against bin Laden and al Qaida were the cause of 9/11's mass murders.

In addition, his claim that half a million children died as a result of sanctions on Iraq is specious. Between 1990 and 2000, Iraq's population had grown almost by 20% to 24,001,816.

3 million of that population were born between 1990 and 1995, 3.8 million were born between 1995 and 2000. Declaring that infant mortality was 500 thousand implies a very high infant mortality rate, which could be pure lies. How do we know that Iraq actually suffered a 10% child mortality rate? If it is a fact, why wasn't Saddam declared negligent for not strengthening the aid that went to care for his people. Could it be, that Saddam, who controlled nearly all of the wealth of Iraq during htat period had better uses for his wealth than caring to see that medical aid went where it was needed. Certainly sanctions did not preclude him from doing that.

But before I go down that path, I sincerely doubt Tamimi's propaganda laced claims.

By the way, a former student of mine from Pakistan claimed that nearly 85% of Pakistanis are Salafists (or as he proudly referred to his relatives -- Wahabi). Convincing Wahabi believers of the flaws in their thinking will be a very tough matter, and one I'm sure drives General Musharraf batty!

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