[Peace-discuss] Garbage in DI

[David Green]

This is the crap that has been published just in the
last week. It certainly deserves a clear response,
even if not intended for publication.

The Daily Illini - Opinions 
Issue: 12/6/04 
 

Opinion: Criminalizing a hero
By Elie Dvorin 

Despite the fact that U.S and Iraqi forces regained
control of the terrorist stronghold of Fallujah in
less than one week, the successful military operation
has not gone without heavy criticism from human-rights
groups and the international community. Video footage
filmed during a raid on a mosque shows a U.S. Marine
apparently shooting a wounded and unarmed terrorist.
As a result of the outcry against this "brutality,"
the marine has been removed from his unit and now
faces a court-martial.

Anyone with half a brain can read between the lines of
this unfortunate situation. Instead of defending this
man for acting courageously in a vicious war, the U.S.
government is willing to appease the international
community by offering this man up as a sacrificial
lamb. After facing worldwide criticism due to the Abu
Ghraib prison scandal, the administration was
unwilling to give any more political ammunition to
Europe and the rest of the anti-war community.
Consequently, the life of one of ours is at stake.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW),
two of the most extreme leftist human-rights watchdog
groups, came out with statements calling for a full
investigation. This doesn't come as a major surprise,
as these groups look for any opportunity to criticize
the United States and Israel while giving a free pass
to the Islamic world. Amnesty International used this
incident to deride the moral character of U.S. troops,
while an HRW spokesman claimed that this event was
likely a "war crime" and a "grave breach of the Geneva
Conventions."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't disemboweling
Iraqi women, beheading U.S. civilians on videotape and
shooting humanitarian-aid workers be considered war
crimes? I guess those aren't nearly as bad as killing
a terrorist who might be playing dead with a bomb
strapped to his body. Nonetheless, the Geneva
Conventions do not apply in this situation. They
address the treatment of uniformed soldiers, and the
terrorists in Fallujah are neither members of a
military or uniformed. By forcing our troops to play
by the rules when the enemy does not, we are putting
the lives of these brave men and women at unnecessary
risk. People justify applying the Geneva Conventions
to the war on terrorism by arguing that humane
treatment of terrorists will lead to the humane
treatment of our soldiers if they're captured. Anyone
who believes this is true is too naïve to understand
the reality of Islamic terrorism and will hopefully
never be in a position to influence public policy.

I might view this incident differently if the Marine
had walked into a Fallujah elementary school and
started indiscriminately shooting Iraqi children. That
being the case, let's not allow political correctness
to interfere with the facts. The Marine at the center
of this controversy shot and killed a terrorist. Not a
civilian, not a child - a terrorist. The day before
this event occurred, this same Marine was shot and
wounded and immediately returned to combat with his
unit. In addition, earlier that day, a member of his
unit was killed when he walked up to the dead body of
a booby-trapped terrorist. By the way, I'm still
waiting for Amnesty and HRW to condemn the practice of
strapping bombs to dead bodies. I have a feeling I'll
be waiting a long time. 

The U.S. government is putting the lives of more brave
men and women at risk. By investigating this matter
and pulling this Marine from his unit, the government
is essentially condemning an action that could save
lives. Instead of wasting the time and resources to
look into this matter, the Marines should be told to
use all necessary force to ensure their safety. If
this means killing a potentially unarmed terrorist to
guarantee the safety of their unit, then by all means
do so. Instead, our current policy has criminalized a
hero, and in the process, put the lives of other
heroes at risk. 

Elie Dvorin is a junior in LAS. His column runs
alternate Mondays. He can be reached at
opinions at dailyillini.com. 
 
The Daily Illini - Opinions 
Issue: 12/2/04 
 

Opinion: Get it right
By David Johnson 

One of my biggest pet peeves is people misusing
emotionally charged words. This reprehensible crime is
worsened when this fumbling is deliberately
manipulative, and worse still when taking the form of
a slur. A piece that appeared a few weeks ago on these
very pages bearing superfluous use of the word
"genocide" really got under my fingernails. 

A common utterance is that Israel is guilty of
genocide against Palestinians. As a Jew, the term
genocide is something I take seriously, and I don't
much care for it being thrown around carelessly. If
someone uses the words "Israel" and "genocide" in the
same sentence, the alarm bells in your head should
ring. Similarly, if someone tries to explain that
Yasser Arafat was anything less than the red-handed
father of modern terrorism - responsible for endless
suffering on the part of Muslims, Jews and Christians
alike - you should raise your most suspicious eyebrow.

In order to accept such claims, you would need to
ignore that the charter of Arafat's group, the
Palestine Liberation Organization, openly calls for
the removal of all Jews from Israel. Never mind that
in its 56-year existence, Israel has not only allowed
the Palestinian population to grow fivefold, but also
granted full citizenship to all Palestinians who lived
within its borders at the nation's inception (these
Israeli-Arabs being some of the only Arabs in the
Middle East with full democratic rights). It would
seem that the supposedly strongest army in the Middle
East (an army composed of Jews, Christians, Muslims
and Druze) is doing a pretty lousy job of genocide.

Genocide is the systematic elimination of a specific
ethnic group. When the Muslim-Arab-Sudanese government
ethnically cleanses black Christians and Animists, and
when Christian Serbs rape and slaughter Muslim
Bosnians, we are dealing with genocide. If you can't
use the word properly, don't use it. If you throw the
term around loosely, you are either 1) diminishing its
meaning or 2) dishonestly hoping to appeal to people's
emotional sense in order to persuade them.

But "genocide" isn't the only dubious platitude being
carelessly tossed about. These past four years brought
about much discussion of the Orwellian nightmare this
nation is slipping into: the birth of a new fascist
state. Never mind that President Bush set out to
remove one of the last remaining actual fascists in
the world: Saddam Hussein (history lesson: Saddam's
Ba'ath party was created by Hitler's Nazis in Syria
during World War II). Never mind that fascism - like
its close cousin National Socialism (Nazism) - calls
for centralization of power, a steeply progressive
income tax and government control of industry. The
Bush administration clearly advocates the opposite of
these. 

Condemn the Bush administration to your heart's
content, but please do so accurately! Is his foreign
policy naïve or destructive? Is his economic policy
leading our markets toward ruin? Maybe so. But Bush is
no fascist, even considering the unfortunately named
USA PATRIOT Act (which was passed by a bipartisan
Congress, of course).

I've only dissected a few buzzwords used loosely on
college campuses. To be fair of course, there are
hundreds more. After all, there's no better way of
ending an argument than by calling someone a "racist."


Why do people use these words so loosely? Is it mere
intellectual laziness or something more sinister? What
these words all share are strong emotional
connotations in one way or another. By injecting them
into a debate, dissidents hope to trigger an emotional
reaction to lead people to irrational conclusions. The
end result is a dishonest argument, wherein facts and
reality can be trumped by emotional prejudice. 

As a result, two of the nations who have done the most
to combat genocide and fascism over the past half
century somehow wind up defending themselves from
accusations of these very things. It's not the mere
misuse of language that frosts my cookie - it's the
complete perversion of reality and morality.

David Johnson is a senior in business. His column runs
Thursdays. He can be reached at
opinions at dailyillini.com.