2001.09.14
2001.09.13
another day, more news. i won’t go into it here; you can check either the historical records or archives. what i am concerned about, as i was speculating yesterday, is how to go about achieving justice.
i cannot condone open attack on afghanistan. against its military targets, yes, but inevitably civilians will be hurt and/or killed and this will make us no better than those we seek to punish. in addition, it will serve as a rallying cry to those muslims who are undecided on the issue, and they may flock to the fundamentalist cry of "down with america."
justice and punishment must be sought, but in what manner? salon today has an interesting article hereby michael klare in which he says we should drop the rhetoric of war and instead push this as an international criminal investigation. bring those responsible under criminal charges of murder and destruction, and even islamic countries cannot complain. murder is murder. some of them may not see it as murder but as some sick form of freedom fighting or a blow against their version of evil, but some of the saner, intelligent countries will agree that murder is murder.
i think this is a smart approach to this problem. i still think that we should prepare special "new war" groups that will handle these situations on the terrorist’s own terms, i think in light of this international community event, criminal charges should be drawn up.
crimes against humanity. hate crimes. these people could even be considered war criminals. they *are* criminals, and should be treated thus.
in addition, we should also stop being so bullish in the rest of the world minus europe and small parts of asia. half of the reason we have so many problems with the middle east is our continued military presence there. part of that is to contain hussein (we should have destroyed him the first time around) and part of it is to protect our oil interests. well, instead of investing in a continued military presence, why not pump some of that money into research to end our dependency on oil? it’s going to run out eventually anyways. and why not end the embargo on iraq and show contempt for its leader but compassion for its people? we have slowly made him a hero in his people’s eyes as he continually stands up against america and the people know that we are a great part of their suffering.
another thing would be to step on israel’s foot. for that matter, step on palestines foot, too. tell them in no uncertain words that we won’t tolerate their killing each other anymore. it’s ridiculous. a great part of the arabic world’s gripe with america is what they see as us coddling israel and supporting them unnecessarily. we pump so much money into israel it is frightening. why? they have already proven they are militarily superior to their neighbors. is it to win the jewish vote in america? well, what about the arabic vote?
Categorized: thoughts
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