Bootsy Whoosh
10-08-2001, 11:12 PM
Okay, first off I did not write these. These articles appeared in my University's newspaper on the opinion page, I pulled them off the web to post here. I just thought this was interesting food for thought. (the authors names appear below each column.)
I am sorry this is a long post, but I urge you to read it all anyway.
~Bootsy (who thinks that patriotism and nationalism are wonderful things, as long as we are not totally blinded by them)
____________________________________________
U.S. fickle in fight against terror
There is no doubt what happened, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, were a great tragedy. In fact, my uncle was sitting on the 72nd floor of the first World Trade Center building when it was hit at the 82nd floor. The suffering of innocent people cannot be justified anytime anywhere.
The taking of a soul unjustifiably, in Islam, is not permitted. In fact, Islam stresses valuing and saving life. Undue suffering is totally prohibited in Islam.
In fact, the holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said that even if a chicken is to be lawfully slaughtered for food it should be done with a very sharp knife in order to minimize the suffering of the chicken. Imagine then Islam’s attitude toward human life.
Allah is just, and has prescribed the rule of justice for all of his creation. To Allah, all human beings are equal. He feeds and clothes those that are atheists, pagans, agnostics, and all others. In other words, an American soul is equal to the soul of the black Sudanese and to the Japanese and to the Afghan.
Iranian souls were lost when an American destroyer in the Persian Gulf shot an Iranian Jumbo 747 with one cruise missile and dumped 300 people into a watery grave. The captain of the destroyer was decorated by the Navy. Twenty cruise missiles destroyed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and killed several innocent people. In the United States, we heard the lies that it was a chemical weapons factory. Several F-16s bombed the tent dwelling of Muammar Gadhaafi in Tripoli, Libya and killed his innocent infant daughter.
These incidents took place in the last five years. In 1998, America fired 70 some cruise missiles into Afghanistan and slaughtered 74 innocent people and maimed many others. President Clinton appeared elated the next morning — I assume because he had just committed a crime against humanity. Ten of these missiles landed in neighboring Pakistan and killed 12 people. The same Pakistan is now asked to become an ally. Did any American care enough to send a letter to his representative then? Did these people in Afghanistan not have mothers to cry over them, or sisters and brothers to grieve? Do children in Afghanistan not have nightmares after witnessing such barbaric acts? Do they not need psychological counseling after such horrendous crimes? Did anyone in America hear even a single anguished cry from that far off land?
Does the distance make it less of a crime, less of a tragedy, or make humanity less human? Is it because they are brown and not white, Muslims and not Jews? Or is it because Americans are rich and Afghans are poor? Is the suffering of an American somehow greater than an Afghan’s? America has always put up seemingly plausible excuses to justify its atrocities of bombing here and bombing there. These excuses may work for people here, but these incidents galvanize the local reaction “over there” against the United States. America stands alone as the only country in the world that used a nuclear bomb on humanity, but we are told that was done for peace. Has anyone asked the Japanese? Americans who choose to go on accepting silly excuses, no doubt, will be awakened by World Trade Center type incidents. They should rather begin to look at both sides of the coin and arm themselves with the truth.
Americans need to wake up to what their tax dollars are doing to their neighbors in this world that is now a global village. If Americans are truly for peace, freedom and justice, they should ask about the people of occupied Palestine. They have suffered untold misery and oppression at the hands of Zionists over the last 53 years with the help of over $500 billion American tax dollars. How many more hundreds of thousands of people must die with American money and weapons before we will take notice? Until we do, no amount of security measures will bring peace and tranquility to America. American embassies already look like fortified bunkers.
To phrase a common American idiom in a positive light, I will only say that if we do good to others, nothing but good will come back to us.
Farah Salim first year law student and has Afghan roots.
________________________________________
Bush in pursuit of bin Laden, U.S. should guard own soil
Now that President George W. Bush has declared “a war on terrorism,” I know of some terrorists he won’t be pursuing, and who are a lot easier to catch than Osama bin Laden.
What about Emannuel Constant, the leader of the Haitian death squad known as FRAPH, who is now lives in New York City, and would be easy to apprehend? Then there are right-wing Cuban exiles, Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, who bombed a Cubana plane in 1976, killing all 73 people, including all of the Cuban fencing team. How about Felix Rodriguez, a Cuban exile and CIA agent, who operated the Ilopango airbase in El Salvador, where arms were to the Contras and drugs back to the United States? If the United States didn’t have a double standard on terrorists, then why couldn’t the Chilean intelligence agents and Cuban exiles who assassinated Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington, D.C. be captured with little trouble?
It’s obvious there are two kinds of terrorists — “ours” and “theirs.” Those evil people called leftists, who want things like unions, better wages, universal health care and land reform can be killed in extremely large numbers with no retribution from the United States — the people who murder them will not even be called terrorists. However, anyone who attacks U.S. military or economic interests will be pursued to the ends of the earth.
Guy Sudborough
Bellflower, Calif.
____________________________________________
Proceed with Care
U.S. strikes back, media’s role vital
America’s retaliation has begun.
This is a time of war and we as a nation need to come together behind our government. However, it is just as important to be certain that the leaders of our country are doing the right thing.
At least 90 percent of American citizens agree that strong action needs to be taken against the Taliban, but have all those people been thoroughly convinced of the evidence against bin Laden?
If the answer rests solely on the information given by Bush and his cabinet, then the answer has to be no.
It is completely understandable for our leaders to keep certain information confidential — information that if it becomes public could hinder military attacks. But the evidence against the Taliban is not one of the things that deserves to be held out of the public eye.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been the most willing to give up information that needs to be seen by the American people. That shouldn’t be the case. Our own government, a democracy that is built around the needs of society, is responsible for presenting all the facts before acting in any war-time conflict.
While the airstrikes ordered by Bush yesterday may have been the right thing to do — it is necessary to push the Taliban military deep into their hideouts so our ground troops can have better access to enter Afghanistan — it is vital that we as a country know for sure that it is the right thing to do.
That job falls on the media, who need to be serving the people just as the government is. In the past few weeks, several columnists across the country have been fired for questioning the acts of President Bush including a columnist for a newspaper in Texas who was fired for questioning the president’s leadership skills. It is the duty of responsible citizens to question the actions of our leader and no one should be punished for doing so.
It is our job to question the steps our government take, and until we as a society are presented with the necessary evidence, that is just what we should do.
____________________________________________
(sorry I had to put that one part in bold, because I think it so totally absurb that someone got fired over that. I totally agree that this is not the time to poke fun of our president, as in on "Saturday Night Live!" or "That's My Bush", but the last time I checked we weren't living in communist China and still have the freedom to question our leaders without fear of repercussions.)
[This message has been edited by Bootsy Whoosh (edited 10-08-2001).]
I am sorry this is a long post, but I urge you to read it all anyway.
~Bootsy (who thinks that patriotism and nationalism are wonderful things, as long as we are not totally blinded by them)
____________________________________________
U.S. fickle in fight against terror
There is no doubt what happened, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, were a great tragedy. In fact, my uncle was sitting on the 72nd floor of the first World Trade Center building when it was hit at the 82nd floor. The suffering of innocent people cannot be justified anytime anywhere.
The taking of a soul unjustifiably, in Islam, is not permitted. In fact, Islam stresses valuing and saving life. Undue suffering is totally prohibited in Islam.
In fact, the holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said that even if a chicken is to be lawfully slaughtered for food it should be done with a very sharp knife in order to minimize the suffering of the chicken. Imagine then Islam’s attitude toward human life.
Allah is just, and has prescribed the rule of justice for all of his creation. To Allah, all human beings are equal. He feeds and clothes those that are atheists, pagans, agnostics, and all others. In other words, an American soul is equal to the soul of the black Sudanese and to the Japanese and to the Afghan.
Iranian souls were lost when an American destroyer in the Persian Gulf shot an Iranian Jumbo 747 with one cruise missile and dumped 300 people into a watery grave. The captain of the destroyer was decorated by the Navy. Twenty cruise missiles destroyed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and killed several innocent people. In the United States, we heard the lies that it was a chemical weapons factory. Several F-16s bombed the tent dwelling of Muammar Gadhaafi in Tripoli, Libya and killed his innocent infant daughter.
These incidents took place in the last five years. In 1998, America fired 70 some cruise missiles into Afghanistan and slaughtered 74 innocent people and maimed many others. President Clinton appeared elated the next morning — I assume because he had just committed a crime against humanity. Ten of these missiles landed in neighboring Pakistan and killed 12 people. The same Pakistan is now asked to become an ally. Did any American care enough to send a letter to his representative then? Did these people in Afghanistan not have mothers to cry over them, or sisters and brothers to grieve? Do children in Afghanistan not have nightmares after witnessing such barbaric acts? Do they not need psychological counseling after such horrendous crimes? Did anyone in America hear even a single anguished cry from that far off land?
Does the distance make it less of a crime, less of a tragedy, or make humanity less human? Is it because they are brown and not white, Muslims and not Jews? Or is it because Americans are rich and Afghans are poor? Is the suffering of an American somehow greater than an Afghan’s? America has always put up seemingly plausible excuses to justify its atrocities of bombing here and bombing there. These excuses may work for people here, but these incidents galvanize the local reaction “over there” against the United States. America stands alone as the only country in the world that used a nuclear bomb on humanity, but we are told that was done for peace. Has anyone asked the Japanese? Americans who choose to go on accepting silly excuses, no doubt, will be awakened by World Trade Center type incidents. They should rather begin to look at both sides of the coin and arm themselves with the truth.
Americans need to wake up to what their tax dollars are doing to their neighbors in this world that is now a global village. If Americans are truly for peace, freedom and justice, they should ask about the people of occupied Palestine. They have suffered untold misery and oppression at the hands of Zionists over the last 53 years with the help of over $500 billion American tax dollars. How many more hundreds of thousands of people must die with American money and weapons before we will take notice? Until we do, no amount of security measures will bring peace and tranquility to America. American embassies already look like fortified bunkers.
To phrase a common American idiom in a positive light, I will only say that if we do good to others, nothing but good will come back to us.
Farah Salim first year law student and has Afghan roots.
________________________________________
Bush in pursuit of bin Laden, U.S. should guard own soil
Now that President George W. Bush has declared “a war on terrorism,” I know of some terrorists he won’t be pursuing, and who are a lot easier to catch than Osama bin Laden.
What about Emannuel Constant, the leader of the Haitian death squad known as FRAPH, who is now lives in New York City, and would be easy to apprehend? Then there are right-wing Cuban exiles, Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, who bombed a Cubana plane in 1976, killing all 73 people, including all of the Cuban fencing team. How about Felix Rodriguez, a Cuban exile and CIA agent, who operated the Ilopango airbase in El Salvador, where arms were to the Contras and drugs back to the United States? If the United States didn’t have a double standard on terrorists, then why couldn’t the Chilean intelligence agents and Cuban exiles who assassinated Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington, D.C. be captured with little trouble?
It’s obvious there are two kinds of terrorists — “ours” and “theirs.” Those evil people called leftists, who want things like unions, better wages, universal health care and land reform can be killed in extremely large numbers with no retribution from the United States — the people who murder them will not even be called terrorists. However, anyone who attacks U.S. military or economic interests will be pursued to the ends of the earth.
Guy Sudborough
Bellflower, Calif.
____________________________________________
Proceed with Care
U.S. strikes back, media’s role vital
America’s retaliation has begun.
This is a time of war and we as a nation need to come together behind our government. However, it is just as important to be certain that the leaders of our country are doing the right thing.
At least 90 percent of American citizens agree that strong action needs to be taken against the Taliban, but have all those people been thoroughly convinced of the evidence against bin Laden?
If the answer rests solely on the information given by Bush and his cabinet, then the answer has to be no.
It is completely understandable for our leaders to keep certain information confidential — information that if it becomes public could hinder military attacks. But the evidence against the Taliban is not one of the things that deserves to be held out of the public eye.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been the most willing to give up information that needs to be seen by the American people. That shouldn’t be the case. Our own government, a democracy that is built around the needs of society, is responsible for presenting all the facts before acting in any war-time conflict.
While the airstrikes ordered by Bush yesterday may have been the right thing to do — it is necessary to push the Taliban military deep into their hideouts so our ground troops can have better access to enter Afghanistan — it is vital that we as a country know for sure that it is the right thing to do.
That job falls on the media, who need to be serving the people just as the government is. In the past few weeks, several columnists across the country have been fired for questioning the acts of President Bush including a columnist for a newspaper in Texas who was fired for questioning the president’s leadership skills. It is the duty of responsible citizens to question the actions of our leader and no one should be punished for doing so.
It is our job to question the steps our government take, and until we as a society are presented with the necessary evidence, that is just what we should do.
____________________________________________
(sorry I had to put that one part in bold, because I think it so totally absurb that someone got fired over that. I totally agree that this is not the time to poke fun of our president, as in on "Saturday Night Live!" or "That's My Bush", but the last time I checked we weren't living in communist China and still have the freedom to question our leaders without fear of repercussions.)
[This message has been edited by Bootsy Whoosh (edited 10-08-2001).]