Osama bin Laden as Robin Hood

It's difficult to believe that a member of the U.S. Senate could be as fuzzy-headed as Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat.
Not unlike Mississippi Republican Trent Lott, Murray took what should have been an innocuous occasion and turned it into a matter of controversy by saying something stupid. In Lott's case, of course, what got him into trouble was his wistful reference to Sen. Strom Thurmond's run for president on a segregationist ticket a half century ago. The gaff cost Lott his leadership position in the Senate.
Democrats can take some solace in knowing that Murray has no leadership position to lose, and if she suffered any had illusions about having one in the future, she would do well to start talking herself out of it.
It is a nice thing, indeed, when a U.S. senator takes time to visit a high school and discuss issues of national and international importance with students.
It's not such a nice thing when the senator chooses to talk about the alleged warm and fuzzy side of Osama bin Laden.
About a week before Christmas, Murray told a group of honor students in Vancouver, Wash., that bin Laden and his supporters have spent years building good will by helping pay for schools, roads and even day care facilities.
& quot;We haven't done that, & quot; Murray said. & quot;How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan? & quot;
More good old days
She sounds almost wistful for the good old days, when the Taliban -- Osama bin Laden's protectors in Afghanistan --had free run.
And let's see if we have this right. Osama bin Laden helped build day care facilities? Why would a man who believes that women belong in the home and nowhere else build day care centers? Bin Laden's form of fundamentalist Islam requires women to be covered from head to toe, to go nowhere without the permission of a man, to remain unschooled and unemployed and unallowed to drive an automobile (on the roads bin Laden is said to have built).
Her primary point, that foreign aid can be cheaper in the long run if it keeps the United States from having to go to war was sound, and her suggestion that bright students should be thinking about such things was valid.
But using the image of a benevolent terrorist to make her point was no brighter than Lott suggesting that the United States would have been better off under President Thurmond.