Sitting in Political Science lecture this morning I was reading my DFP as usual and I came across this article by "The Campus Conservative" Tara Stroll. Here's the URL: http://www.dailyfreepress.com/media/paper87/news/2005/10/17/Opinion/The-Campus.Conservative-1023121.shtml

This Op-Ed column has been pretty pathetic all year but today's piece was particularly terrible. First of all, all her of her columns give off the feeling that she's trying way too hard to be controversial; she forces the column instead of writing about something that's meaningful. Although BU does have a liberal majority, there is certainly a strong conservative presence and there is certainly a place for conservative views to be spread throughout our campus but this article, among her others, is a completely absurd account of the vote in Iraq and current terrorist positions.

She makes the claim that it is a great advancement in Iraqi democracy that a great number of Sunni's voted in the election. This display, however, was not due to the democratic process; Sunnis came out to vote because they had essentially been bribed into voting. The Kurdish-Shiite coalition reached an agreement with the Sunnis that the constitution being voted on would be only temporary and at a later date a committee of National Assembly members would re-evaluate the constitution and rewrite the constitution before a new referendum will take place. It's ironic that Ms. Stroll mentions this agreement in the next paragraph but fails to grasp the concept that if the Kurdish-Shiites not agreed to this, then the Sunnis would not have participated in the election. Her quote "This probably explains why Sunni voter turnout was higher than in the January elections. Even if some Sunnis were mobilized to vote against the constitution, it's still progress." That's absolutely ridiculous; if they were mobilized to vote than how is it any progress toward a democratic system. She is totally contradictory and hypocritical.

Her point that "One of the reasons for this is that the terrorists are realizing they're losing," is unjustified makes no sense whatsoever. I think you'd be hard pressed to find an al-Qaeda member who thinks he is "losing," although I'm not even sure in what context that word is being used. In the letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi I would hardly say that the tone is that of "whining and complaining about how badly al-Qaeda is being defeated." Maybe thing have not gone completely as planned, but it's nonsensical to imply that al-Qaeda is weak and suffering.

Her last paragraph as a whole makes absolutely no sense. "Al-Zawahiri is basically saying that the majority of Iraqi citizens are not going to take kindly to their country being taken over by a bunch of non-Iraqi Muslim extremists;" I'm not sure I could make a more obvious statement if I tried. Does she think there's some kind of chance that Iraqi citizens will just let al-Qaeda come in and have their way? The next statement is just as obvious as the first; terrorists using violence and deception, I've never heard anything that preposterous. Finally, the fact that Al-Zawahiri admits that Iraqis want democracy and freedom is no indication that "terrorists can't win." The terrorist motive is not to "win" or "lose;" al-Qaeda will not stop until totally satisfied and with the current administration we're not doing a great job to stop them.

I'm sorry to have made you all read such trash because if you're like me you just lost intelligence in the few minutes it took to read the column.


Extra note: a close relative of mine, Richard Perez-Pena, has been working on an article for the NY Times for the past 16 months that finally came out today on the front page and then inside on a full two-page layout. Everyone should check it out: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/17/nyregion/nyregionspecial4/17clinic.html