[Peace-discuss] Garbage in DI

[Wendy Edwards]

Doesn't that particular  author generate a lot of crap?

On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 09:24:57AM -0800, David Green wrote:
> 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 na?ve 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 na?ve 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. 
>  
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.cu.groogroo.com/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss