Soul Raven
Member
Registered: Dec 1999
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Posts: 239 |
 Re: Re: Rant
quote:
Originally posted by K. Cannon
5,000 plus and counting
Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to trivialize what happened. The end of 5,000 lives is a terrible, ugly thing. The death of one person is one too many. My point is that I feel we are on the edge of compromising some of our freedom in our emotional response to what happened. How many died in World War I defending these freedoms? How many in World War II? How many policeman have died, killed by criminals who were protected by the same laws that protect my civil liberties? Should we now strip the meaning from their sacrifice?
Unfortunately, having freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, et. al. comes with certain risks. Trusting in human nature means sometimes you get walked on. How many of our nation's elderly have lost their life-savings to con artists? These attacks were obviously planned far in advance. If the press can be believed, the people behind this have been in the country for some time, living and working. I find it very unlikely that this situation could have been avoided without ignoring the laws we have in place. If they had done something wrong, if they were known terrorists, then we might have been able to get court-approved wiretaps or other survelliance equipment. In fact, if they were known terrorists, why weren't we doing that? If they were, then they really hadn't done anything wrong, and should have the same right as you and I. Heck, at that point, they were you and I. It's difficult to be pro-active towards this type of crime in a society with freedom of speech and individual rights. We have to be, unfortunately sometimes, re-active in nature. If I went out to Main Street, USA this afternoon, raised my fist in the air, and loudly yelled, "America sucks!" (which sometimes it does), am I now a terrorist? No, I am exercising my right of Free Speech as an American. After I was released from the hospital, would I now deserve to have the FBI tap my phone, film my activities, and run background checks on me and my family? Well, that's tricky. It is the FBI's job to insure domestic security, but I haven't done anything wrong. Did the Black Panthers deserve that kind of treatment in the 60's? Did Japanese-Americans deserve it the 40's? Do people of Arabic descent deserve it now?
We can probably pull together a society where no one would ever be subject to a terrorist attack, where you wouldn't have to lock your doors at night, and you can let your kids play at the park and not have to watch them every single second. We could:
A) have EVERYONE believe in and follow the teachings of Jesus/Allah/Buddah/Thor and realize that they are all just asking us to be nice and treat each other with respect.
B) put an armed guard outside of everyone's front door to shoot anyone who looks like that might hurt someone else.
I don't know. I certainly don't have the answer on how to stop terrorism. Luckily for the American people, I am not in a position to set policy. I can promise you this, though. If I am on a plane, and someone pulls a knife or gun, I will let them stab/shoot me as long as you promise to get behind them and hit them on the head. If I am at a baseball game and someone leaves a bomb under a seat, I'll stay behind and cut the red wire (or was it yellow?) if you tackle the bastard and sit on him until the police get there. I'll stop telling the funny one about the priest and the rabbi if you teach your kids not to hate and to not be violent. THAT'S the way to stop terrorism.
I just realized how right President Bush was when he said this was a new kind of war (although he may not realize it). This is not a war for real estate, money, or even religion. It's not even about freedom or American ideals. It is a war of the spirit. It is a war of hate. It is really irrelevant whether a person is a member of an extremist Islamic group, an extremist Christian group, or even an extremist Tupperware group. The fact is that there are people out there that hate other people, to the point that they feel they have to physically or otherwise hurt them. That is what we need to fight. That is our battlefield.
I know, I am an idealist. Take out the rose-colored contacts. I don't think for one moment that someone like Bin Laden (regardless of whether or not he was behind the attacks of Sep 11) is going to sit down with an anger-management counselor and work out all his aggression about how his mother never loved him and his dad was always pushing him to do better. I don't expect him to ever be invited to the White House for milk and cookies. But even if he becomes intimately familiar with the sound a cruise missle makes as it explodes, what then? What about people in Ireland that think Tony Blair would be better with a bomb in his car? What about someone who throws a Molotov cocktail through the window of a Southern Baptist church in Georgia? For those situations, yes, we need the police, we need the military to make sure that those people don't do things like that again, but it's not enough. It's going to take every one of us, working together, to win this war. It's going to take us in church, in schools, and at home to fight this enemy. I can't speak for the people in my town, my co-workers, even members of my own family, but I know for me, I will do what I can to stop violence around me, to stop hate.
Are you with me?
__________________
Soul Raven - "Sm� hjerne, stor gl�de"
Wherever you go, there you are.
Last edited by Soul Raven on 09-20-2001 at 10:42 PM
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09-20-2001 05:55 PM
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