Tuesday, November 3, 2009
“If someone would just give Osama bin Laden a hug, all terrorism would end” is apparently the conservatives’ view on liberal international philosophy.
Modern terrorism didn’t start in 2001, 1993 or 1972. It started when America decided to protect the world from itself by constructing and maintaining more than 700 military bases in more than 50 countries (including in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Bahrain, Israel and Qatar). Blaming individual presidents since WWII is ludicrous, as they have all directly or indirectly contributed to a continuing struggle with terrorism.
If Sept. 11 should have taught our country anything, it’s that morality is subjective. The Sept. 11 attacks were based on al-Qaida’s moral beliefs, not a struggle for national resources or independence. A word such as “evil” is not objective, rational or helpful in understanding the basic global problems.
At what point did people twist survival to equal revenge? Is revenge a conservative notion now and anything less is appeasement — or surrender? We Americans were never completely safe and never will be. We live in an incredibly free society and for that I’m grateful. But the inherent risk to living in a free society is increased danger. If America was a police state, foreign terrorism would not be an issue. But America’s not, so terrorism is.
And finally, if Fox News doesn’t want to be criticized for one-sided tendencies, it shouldn’t have covered the story of its criticism so one-sidedly.
These and other cultural issues aren’t even cases of liberalism versus conservatism; they’re reason versus xenophobia.
— — Nick Adams is a junior from Manhattan.
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