Peaceful means not an option in Afghanistan By David Ziegler I want to preface this piece with a quick little analogy (yeah, I know that my spicy fries analogy was a little too complicated last week) of the American response to this terrorist act. You all remember the fourth plane that went down in Pennsylvania on September 11th? The people in that plane decided to fight the terrorists to prevent an imminent catastrophe. Unfortunately, something happened that crashed the plane and dozens of people were killed. Thus, I ask those who want peace now, “should the people on that plane have allowed it to careen towards Washington D.C any further or was their action, which unfortunately killed dozens of innocent people, appropriate?” All the American Government is doing is fighting the terrorists now to prevent any new danger and further death. Given that I have war propaganda on my door, I get the occasional response to it on my white board. The most recent came in the form of a poem as well as a short statement that labeled me a rich preppy white boy who couldn’t possibly understand the plight of the Afghanis. Here is my response: I am a rich preppy white boy who would continue doing normal rich preppy white boyish stuff had a terrorist group not decided to slam three planes into three American buildings and kill thousands of American people. Before September 11th I didn’t give a shit about Afghanistan and neither did my government. With the fall of the Soviet Union the only people who cared about Afghanistan were the aid agencies who wanted to help them out. But then, suddenly, a terrorist actively harbored in Afghanistan killed thousands of Americans. And now, on this campus, those who favor peace belittle my agreement with the government action by calling it blind patriotism, blind zeal, or just plain blindness. I say go to hell. I know just as much as you, I watch CNN, I read the newspaper, I do Internet searches, I read books. I’ve studied this just as much as you. With this knowledge in hand I agree with you that the bombing is accomplishing nothing and that it is only inflaming the Arab world needlessly. That’s why our only option is to send in a large ground force as well as expand the war to Iraq. I know all the reasons why that would be considered stupid, but I also know all the reasons why it’s our only chance to protect ourselves. Have you noticed that even as the Taliban are losing ground to the Northern Alliance and as the American government bombs them into submission, they have still refused to give up Osama Bin Laden? The Taliban and Osama are entwined completely. Neither could exist and function as they do without the other. Any chance of getting Osama while using peaceful means doesn’t exist. The main problem with the Wesleyan peace movement is that their one defining characteristic is the meaningless “what do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!” chant. You can have fun chanting that, but it means nothing. You should yell something like, “what do we want? Economic sanctions! When do we want them? Now!” Even though economic sanctions would be an even worse policy, at least you would be proposing an option other than war. The fact is that there is no viable alternative to war that any intelligent mind on this campus can come up with. Thus, you resort to a useless yell. One last thing, to those that claim it was U.S foreign policy that caused this, you’ve got to sit down and think about that for a second. Yes, the American Government has done some stupid things in the world, which have made many different people angry. But, there are also many intelligent and necessary things we have done that have also angered many different people. The United States cannot tip toe around the world; sometimes we have to make contentious decisions. It’s the rest of the world’s job to not inflate the anger our policies create by feeding their citizens anti-American propaganda. I will start respecting your views as soon as you stop assuming that all of the people, myself included, who make up the 86% polled who favor a military response to the attacks, are just going along with the flow. There’s a reason why the dissenting opinion holding peace as an option is held by so few people in this country, because it isn’t an option at all. You say blind patriotism, I say stop being naïve.

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