Tolerance
The USA is well known for its efforts to promote tolerance among
its own people and throughout the world. Yet, there are a fair
number of people in the world, and particularly the Fundamentalist Islamic
world, who actively promote INtolerance of those who do not believe
as they do. Now, intolerance in and of itself is not a bad
thing, but when terrorists takes on the cloak of killing all
those who are not of their religious persuasion or who do not do exactly
as they "should", I must draw the line. (See HERE
if you are not aware of where the Muslim Fundamentalist Militants are coming
from when they speak of "Kill the Infidel".) Such people perpetrated
the September 11 suicide attacks on the USA and are extremely dangerous
to civilization as we know it. While certainly NOT all Arabs are
Islamic Fundamentalist Militants, we must recognize that the ones
that ARE constitute a clear threat to our security.
Terrorism
There are those who suggest that "If only we stop to consider where
these people are coming from we could understand them better and negotiate
their cooperation". I have taken the time to read a great deal of
the writings (rantings?) of some of these people and frankly, they
are scary folks. We have just seen how far negotiation gets when
it comes to trying to reason for YEARS with Mullah Omar into giving
up bin Laden. Luckily these people are not highly technical (yet)
or the world would be sitting at the point of a missile (or worse).
According to bin Laden, the fact that the USA has not been able to
bring about a peace between Israli and Palistinians is enough to give terrorists
license to terrorize the USA.
The only avenue open to organized civilization (except converting to Islamic Fundamentalism) is to work aggressively to get these fanatical people under control and re-educate them. Yes.. Re-educate them. They have been schooled in their current beliefs by a relatively few militants and in a few generations this could be changed but we must keep the existing ones in check in the meanwhile.
Justice
Now.. What do we do with the ones we capture? How do we insure
they get JUSTICE while insuring that WE get justice as well? These
terrorists did not just hold up the corner grocery store. In just
one hour's time, they killed about 4000 people in one concerted attack
and would have done far more damage but for the excellent work of thousands
of FBI and police officers nationwide who countered who knows how many
others who were in the process of mounting other attacks.. Now we
have in custody about 1100 people who are "believed" to be connected to
the attacks. What now? Most of these people will not confess
and in many cases, the evidence against them is quite circumstantial.
Yet.. We KNOW we have lots of the right people in custody as the
terrorism (for now) has stopped in the USA despite repeated calls by the
Taliban and pals for more. The evidence is mounting that these (several)
terrorist organizations are active worldwide as well as in the USA.
Choices
1) Expel all these people out of the USA. Not a good idea.
These people are NOT "cured" and they are just as dangerous now as they
ever were. Likely many would return and try to do their evil works
again in due time. (Remember.. We caught most of the people who tried
to blow up the World Trade Center the first time and their associates came
back years later and finished the job.)
2) Run them through the US court system. Not a good idea for
most. Our court system is designed to "let a hundred guilty people
go to avoid punishing one innocent person". In the case of International
Terrorists, this philosophy will release a huge number of terrorists
and terrorist helpers back into society. Again, these people
are not in the business of robbing the corner grocery. They like
to blow up our tall buildings with airplanes full of passengers!
(Remember: Our court system is not so much interested in "Justice"
as they are that meticulous and tedious rules of evidence procedures be
followed to the letter. One attorney says that our current USA court
system has lost its old view of "Justice" and "Truth" as goals in
favor of "what can be proved under the twisted rules of evidence".
Terrorists would LOVE to give our court system a fit! They could
tie it up for years, cost us billions of dollars, and many
would end up free to "do their thing" again.
3) Just put the whole bunch in prison for life and forget them.
Not a good idea. Likely there ARE some pretty obviously innocent
folks among them and we should try and sort them out and release them.
4) Run the suspects through a Military Tribunal Court System.
This is the best idea so far. Contrary to the comments from "civil
libeterians", military tribunals do try and get the facts and do
the right thing. BUT.. They would realize that this war on
terrorism is NOT A GAME where if the guilty party did not get his "rights"
read to him at the proper time, he should "get off free". (Where
did this nonsense come from anyway? If your guilt is obvious,
I think you should be punished despite any error by a policeman.)
What if the military tribunal happens to incarcerate some innocent people? Well.. What if the tribunal releases some guilty people by accident and they come back and blow up the US Capitol Building? Or perhaps bomb New York City with an atom bomb?
In this particular case, I feel that we MUST err on the side of caution. These terrorists are DANGEROUS PEOPLE and have no regard for human life (including theirs). We simply cannot afford to release such outrageously dangerous people back into society simply because some innocent people cannot be separated from the group.
Common Sense
In our attempts to improve security, our airports and transport
centers have many changed and improved security procedures. But these
are proving very costly and labor intensive. Further, they
are causing "the average non terrorist" traveler gross delays. This
burden coupled with the fear the September 11 terrorist attacks caused
are severely disrupting our airline industry. Much of this disruption
is totally unnecessary.
As far as we know, 100% of the terrorists who mounted the attacks and 100% of the suspects in custody are of Arab or Middle Eastern descent. Yet, in an effort to avoid "ethnic profiling", ALL passengers are being subjected to, and delayed by, these added security procedures. Common Sense would tell us: a) All the terrorist were of Middle Eastern origin. So: b) A maximum benefit could be achieved by giving a very through search of Middle Eastern ethnic passengers and then: c) Give other passengers a less intrusive and less through inspection since these "other" ethnic groups have not shown a propensity to blow up buildings with airplanes. (If you knew your coat was in the closet, you would not search the entire house before you thoroughly checked the closet!)
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WHO we are and WHO we are fighting.
A CULTURE OF DEATH
By Robert Tracinski
October 15, 2001
Sometimes the bad guys make my job easy.
Normally, as a columnist, part of my job is to analyze the hidden meaning or unnamed consequences of bad ideas. In these cases, it is usually necessary to pierce through a veil of seemingly benevolent rhetoric and complex practical justifications, in order to show why a given policy is destructive.
In the war against Islamic fundamentalism, I can retire early. Here is the truth directly from the source.
Mohammed Hussein Mostassed,
a Taliban official, sums up the essence of the current conflict: "The Americans
are fighting so they can live and enjoy the
material things in life. But we are fighting so we can die in the
cause of God."
Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a spokesman for Osama bin Laden, echoes the
same theme:
"There are thousands of the Islamic nation's youths who are eager
to die just as
the Americans are eager to live."
There you have it: Islamic fundamentalists worship death. But death, for them, is not just about killing and dying. They embrace a comprehensive morality of death, a culture which hates every sign of pleasure and worships everything associated with death: poverty, ignorance, dictatorship.
Here, for example, is bin Laden's view of money: "money is like a passing shadow. We urge Muslims to spend their money on jihad and especially on the movements that have devoted themselves to the killing of Jews and the Crusaders." Wealth, for the fundamentalists, is not a means to the enjoyment of life; it is only valuable as a means of causing death.
How about knowledge, education and the use of the mind? At the madrasahs, fundamentalist Islamic schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, "There is no instruction in math, science, geography, current events or history beyond the Muslim world. Visitors describe youngsters who . . . cannot do elementary arithmetic and who have no idea man has walked on the moon," according to U.S. News and World Report. Instead, these students spend years devoted to the rote memorization of the Koran in Arabic - a language they do not understand. Thinking may be necessary for success in life, but not for death.
These death worshippers also know who pioneered their morality of death. Sheik Sami ul Haq, head of the Haqqania madrasah, the Pakistani school that produced most of the Taliban leadership, praises his political hero: "Adolf Hitler knew a lot about controlling the Jews." He goes on to declare that "we need a rebirth of Nazi Germany" and names present-day Taliban Afghanistan as the fulfillment of that goal.
Now that we know who the enemy is and what he stands for, it is just as important to know what we stand for.
It is clear that Americans stand for life. We are not merely wealthy; we dedicate our lives to the production of wealth, to advancing our careers and building cities and skyscrapers. We are not merely free; our government was founded on the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." And we do not merely enjoy ourselves; we implicitly view enjoyment as the goal of life. In the phrase, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the last item is clearly the purpose of the other two.
This is why I wince every time I hear someone praise the "self-sacrifice" of our firefighters, policemen and soldiers. Self-sacrifice, the deliberate destruction of one's own life, is the essence of the enemy's morality, not ours. Our heroes risk their lives only in cases of temporary emergency, and because they know that risking their lives is the only way to protect themselves and their loved ones from disaster, from predatory criminals, or from blood-lusting barbarians. The goal of our heroes is not death, but life and the freedom to live it.
Americans do not merely embrace life. Our culture is based on what the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand called a "morality of life," a morality that holds, as its primary value, the survival and enjoyment of human life.
It used to be said, after the fall of Communism, that we had reached
the "end of history," that there were to be no more grand struggles between
systems or ideals. The events of the past month - and the searing image
of the enemy's suicidal killers crashing our airplanes into our skyscrapers
- are a reminder that the grandest struggle of all, the alternative that
has faced us all along, is still here. It is a battle between the
morality of death and the morality of life.