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Guest Opinion: Whose human rights are in question?
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My first question posed to you Comrade Nick Weeks (Guest opinion, Oct. 4, 2001), is do you even have a point to your article? (“Attacking Impoverished Nations is Senseless”) Think real hard about it before reading on.
You open your letter by making a feeble attempt to discredit those who recognize you for who you are, by labeling yourself. In an attack on the faceless, you in turn have given yourself a face. You arouse no suspicion throughout the article of being a “tree hugger” or a “hippie.” The only suspicion of you is that you would like to be included in these groups or other forms of liberal groups, but they don’t want you.
One example of a liberal stepping up to the plate is Tony Blair, Britain’s Prime Minister. He is one of the most recognizable liberals in the world today and was also one of the first to stand by our nation’s side in denouncing terrorism. He was also very willing to offer military support in the inevitable retaliation against the murder of thousands of innocent people. This man has a track record of championing human rights. Whose human rights do you think are in question here? Is it the people who have been desecrated by the Taliban, or the global community represented in the World Trade Center, or is it poor Osama bin Laden and his terrorists who have ravaged their own country in the name of what?
You say that we will act out in the name of vengeance. You have confused vengeance with freedom. Freedom to board an airplane with full confidence that you will be alive at the end of the trip. Freedom to know that children can get on a school bus without the fear that it will be hijacked.
But you justify the killings in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC on the fact that we have the means to continue on, and at the same time show resentment for what our military has yet to do. Are you a hypocrite or do you just play one in the article? We must defend our rights and our freedoms.
Our nation is not the heroes that you claim we strive to be. What we have become is a global police, and that’s too bad. However, we must continue to be the global police as long as there are people who think as backward as bin Laden and remain having the childlike mentality of him and his followers, i.e. I want what you’ve got so I’ll just take it.
The U.S. cannot save everyone, but we must try, even at the risk of being wrong. You will get no argument from me that we have stuck our noses in places where we don’t belong. We have jumped into situations too early (Bay of Pigs), too late (Bosnia), and too often (Vietnam). We have made our share of mistakes. But to simply sit by and let all those who died die in vain is out of the question.
Do you really believe that if we do nothing that we will not hear from the Taliban again? How can you propose that we can go on as normal, as you did in your article? Nothing normal has happened in the last month. Six thousand people were killed on American soil, airlines were grounded, the stock market suffered huge losses, and we have been introduced to life as a police state where the National Guard must be at the airports to ensure our safety. I refuse to live in fear of the next attack, so we must fight back, and somehow in your mind that makes us the bully.
It is true that innocent people will die in the war on terrorism. We’ve already lost 6,000. The hope is that many more thousands will be spared with the demise of the Taliban and the rise of a freer, more democratic Afghanistan.
Clearly you were ill-prepared to write your article and chose to base it on emotion rather than fact. You skate away from the most logical questions, such as, what do you propose as a solution to terrorism? How many people are worth the sacrifice before we fight back? You try to make those that argue your point to be a lesser thinking human being, but you have not considered these things.
Feel free to e-mail me if you can come up with a point to your rant. Jejoose47@yahoo.com, I’m guessing I won’t be hearing from you.
Justin Jantz