The Rice Thresher, Vol. 89, No. 13, Ed. 1 Friday, November 16, 2001 Page: 3 of 20
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THE RICE THRESHER OPINION
□
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16,2001
Guest column
America's reaction to Sept. 11 inexcusable
Everyone in the United States was
shocked and left indignant by the
vicious, cruel Sept. 11 attacks on
New York and the Pentagon.
The brutal, immediate
mass murder of thousands
of innocent American citi-
zens on American soil
called for an urgent re-
sponse from our govern-
ment to apprehend those
responsible for the unjus-
tifiable crimes.
Unfortunately, whathas
begun is not a rational re-
sponse to an attack on our
people; instead, what have
begun are appeals to our
natural fears, angers and
sense of justice in an attempt to justify
more irrational, unthinkable acts of
cruelty, violence and murder. Let us
not be mistaken: The war is killing
innocent children and civilians in Af-
ghanistan just as our innocent civil-
ians in New York were massacred.
It is not the fault of Afghan civil-
ians that Osama bin Laden's men
trained in their country or that their
brutal government is unwilling to
cooperate with the United States'
demands. The war is razing to the
ground a country and a people that
is in a sense already razed to the
ground by poverty: the vast majority
of Afghans, for example, have no
access to safe drinking water and
the country ranks low on any human
development scale.
Peace is not cliche, it is the only
possible start if a rational handling
of the issue is to take place or if
those responsible for the terror are
Miles
Rodriguez
to be brought to justice in an orderly
way.
War not only increases the moral
burden we must bear, but in contra-
diction to our official (and
impossible) purpose of
destroying all forms of
terrorism with air strikes
in one country, it makes
counter-terrorist attacks
and hatred from average
people, not to mention
fringe groups, of Middle
Eastern and South Asian
countries more likely.
The war similarly in-
creases chances of higher
levels of violence which
may not be confined to Af-
ghanistan if it causes instability in
neighboring countries like Pakistan
or Iraq. Our reassurance to the Af-
ghan people that we are not fighting
them, but really "terrorism," falls
upon deaf (if not dead) ears despite
the aid drops.
The Northern Alliance
and the war on
terrorism are not
defensible.
As the war drags on with no end
in sight and our leaders prepare us
for years of violent conflict in Af-
ghanistan, it will be more difficult to
claim that war is an effective solu-
tion to the problem of terrorism.
There is something strange about a
war against "terrorism."
The problem of terrorism is ad-
mittedly difficult, and it is misleading
to think that air strikes or ground
attacks on one country will solve the
problem once and for all. Air strikes
on a nation may destroy that nation
and terrorist training camps there,
but terrorism is an international prob-
lem our country cannot solve on its
own or by use of violence.
The Taliban government is inde-
fensible, terrorism is indefensible.
However, the Northern Alliance and
the war on terrorism are not defen-
sible either. Once our government
defeats the Taliban and paves the way
for a Northern Alliance rule, what
guarantees that world terrorism will
end or that we Americans will be safe
from future terrorist attacks, or even
that those responsible for 9/11 will be
captured? Terrorism will not be ended
by war. We can apprehend those re-
sponsible for the attacks without war.
The only real beginning of a ra-
tional solution to the problem of ter-
rorism and to what happened to us
on Sept. 11 demands an end to the
war and its accompanying hysteria
now. It is the only way to awake from
this nightmare that we are now tak-
ing part in and to begin working out
means of apprehending the crimi-
nals that have less dire conse-
quences for ourselves and for the
rest of the world.
Miles Rodriguez is a Wiess College
junior.
What's wrong with this picture?
Proposition 2 product of malicious bigotry
On Nov. 6, Houston voters passed
Proposition 2 by a narrow margin of
52 percent, amending the city char-
ter to deny "health care and other
employment benefits to
same sex domestic part-
ners of city employees."
Because of the passage of
Proposition 2, the city
charter supposedly pro-
tects the sanctity of "tra-
ditional marriage" from
the threat of homosexual-
ity.
It shouldn't surprise
me, but it does. We just
passed our own Jim Crow
law.
We've heard this "threat to the
sanctity of marriage" rhetoric be-
fore. People shouldn't choose
their own spouses; it's a threat to
the sanctity of marriage. Blacks
shouldn't marry whites; it's a
threat to the sanctity of marriage.
Women shouldn't leave their hus-
bands; it's a threat to the sanctity
of marriage.
Let me ask you something: If any
two people of opposing sexes can
get married, and more than half of
the "traditional marriages" today end
in divorce, where does the sanctity
come in? An institution that has a
success rate of less than 50 percent
doesn't seem too sacred to me.
Garret
Merriam
This argument is what
we in philosophy call
44bullshit
Proponents of Proposition 2 claim
that the amendment is not about gay
rights, but about the rights of the
taxpayers of this city. These people
argue that there is no double stan-
dard; there may not be anything
wrong with homosexuality, but Hous-
ton taxpayers should not be required
to fund the homosexual lifestyle.
This argument is what we in phi-
losophy call "bullshit." Homosexual
taxpayers have been funding the het-
erosexual lifestyle for over a cen-
tury now, yet I've never heard a
single one of them complain. If a city
spends tax dollars to en-
dorse one lifestyle with-
out spending propor-
tional amounts on com-
peting lifestyles, their
laws are unjustly discrimi-
natory. Why not argue
that white taxpayers
should not be required
to fund the Mexican
lifestyle? Or that Catho-
lic taxpayers should not
be required to fund the
Protestant lifestyle?
I want to spell something out for
those of you who insist that this isn't
an inherently prejudiced and chau-
vinistic measure. If you are opposed
to homosexuals, or to homosexual
marriage, or to homosexuals being
afforded all of the rights and privi-
leges that heterosexuals have, then
you are, by definition, a bigot. It's a
simple syllogism. You are a hate-
filled, insecure and prejudiced bigot,
just as cowardly as anyone who ever
wore a white sheet on their head —
end of story.
People who aren't bigots realize
that the tax rewards for straight
married people are is the de facto
punishment of homosexuals who
iiave been given no such option. It's
bad enough that we refuse to le-
gally recognize homosexual mar-
riage. Now we've unilaterally de-
creed the substandard demarcation
of "partnerships" unworthy of our
economic consideration.
The cornerstone of any liberal
democracy is that the government
does not dictate how people ought to
live their lives or discriminate based
on people's conception of the good.
This central value has been recog-
nized repeatedly, from the Freedom
of Religion clause of the first amend-
ment to the first legally recognized
miscegenational marriage.
With this in mind, we should all
be aghast at the fact that we purport
to be free when a majority can still
dictate to a minority who they can
and cannot marry.
The passage of this bill is noth-
ing more than a poltroonish major-
ity infringing on the freedom of a
minority. Because most people are
heterosexuals—or maybe closeted,
self-loathing homosexuals — they
feel they can restrict the liberties of
non-heterosexuals. It's absolutely no
different than white people telling
black people they can't sit at the
front of the bus.
If you are opposed to
homosexuals ... being
afforded all of the
rights and privileges
that heterosexuals
have, then you are, by
definition, a bigot.
I look forward to a new genera-
tion of Rosa Parkses who refuse to
pay taxes as individuals, but instead
file as homosexual married couples;
gay couples who invoke spousal
privilege to refrain from testifying
against their partner in trial, ^ay city
employees who refuse to work until
their partners are given the same
consideration that the partners ot
heterosexual city employees re-
ceive. In 50 years, it is these people
whom we will herald as the champi-
ons of our civil rights struggle.
I do agree that we need to protect
marriage. We need to protect it from
laws that violate the civil rights of
individuals to marry based solely on
their sexual orientation. We need to
protect marriage from hypocritical
double standards that imply the su-
periority of one group of people over
all others. We need to protect mar-
riage from those people who would
use it as a weapon against other
human beings.
Garrett Merriam is a graduate stu-
dent in philosophy.
Screaming from a soapbox
Bush must wrangle more
than terrorism in new war
The Taliban have retreated to
the south. The Northern Alliance
controls Kabul. And our campaign
in Afghanistan may be drawing to
an end. Of course, this
is not the end of the
war against terrorism.
A1 Qaeda is alive and
well, Osama bin Laden
is nowhere to be found,
and I sure as hell don't
feel secure about my
flight home this
Thanksgiving.
One of the biggest
reasons the war
against terrorism will
not end any time soon
is because the war is
not really about terrorism—that's
a misnomer.
America's new war is con-
cerned as much with religion,
politics and globalization as with
terrorists. President Bush of
course will refute this to the end,
but he's never been known as an
expert on global affairs.
The truth is that terrorists are
not always the groups on the edge
of society we like to think of them
as being. To conceptualize A1
Qaeda as a fringe sect on par with
the Branch Davidians or Aum
Shirinkyo is to give it a five-step
head start in our new war by
grossly underestimating its
breadth of support. A1 Qaeda is a
network spanning more than 60
countries, with millions of dollars
in funding and countless follow-
ers willing to sacrifice life and
limb in pursuit of its "holy" goals.
Nor is A1 Qaeda's influence
limited solely to its membership.
While pan-Arabism might ap-
pear to be a limited platform, A1
Qaeda's underlying anti-West-
ern sentiment resonates loud
and clear with many followers
of Islam throughout the Middle
East.
A good number of people in
Pakistan. Saudi Arabia, Iran,
even the newly liberated Afghani-
stan, would be a lot happier if the
United States had nothing at all
to do with the Middle East. It is
often these same people who
Catherine
Adcock
clamor for an Islamic fundamen-
talist state, threatening the sta-
bility of the many U.S.-backed
governments in the Middle East.
These U.S.-backed
governments gener-
ally offer little outlet for
diverse political opin-
ions, fundamentalist or
secular. For a young
man or woman who
grows up as a specta-
tor of his or her politi-
cal system, in a world
of abject poverty, con-
stantly confronted with
imported images of a
rich America, a turn to
Islamic fundamental-
ism and even terrorism may not
seem extreme.
The success of the war against
terrorism won't be determined by
the elimination of the A1 Qaeda
network alone. Our security will
only be made certain by stability
in the Middle East and the cool-
ing of the embers of anti-Western
sentiment scattered throughout
Islamic fundamentalism.
Lessons learned in our recent
interaction with the Middle East
are key to a complete resolution
of the new war. The first lesson is
to never leave a country floun-
dering on its own, as we did Af-
ghanistan after the Soviet inva-
sion. A modest amount of sup-
port to rebuild its post-war infra-
structure and strengthen its gov-
ernment could have led to a very
different Afghanistan today. The
second is to respect anti-West-
ern sentiment as represented, for
example, by the fundamentalists
who overthrew the U.S.-sup-
ported shah of Iran. The third is
that governments unresponsive
to the demands of the people
plant seeds of future instability.
In light of this, the White House
should choose wisely the types
of governments to support in the
Middle East.
The emphasis President Bush
has placed on the formation of a
coalition government in Afghani-
stan to represent its diverse po-
See BATTLING, Page 4
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Football program
deficit a 'red herring
NCAA 'venal, corrupt9
To the editor:
Hie Rice faculty and your edito-
rial on football are once again on the
wrong track. The financial deficit of
football is a red herring.
The notion that Rice, an even
more perfect "Miss Perfect," will
induce other schools to mend their
manners is laughable.
The fundamental question which
nobody asks publicly is: Why does
Rice want to be a member of an
organization (NCAA) whose past
history tells us that it will always be
venal, corrupt and possibly amoral?
Beats me.
Dieter Heymann
Professor Emeritus
Department of Geology and
Geophysics
Overlooking issues in
favor of back-patting
To the editor:
In the Nov. 2 issue, the staff took
the time to editorialize on why "apa-
thetic" Rice students should vote
("Get out the vote ...")
Now that the results are in and
Proposition 2 passed, it seems
there's no reason to comment on the
election results or world outside of
the Rice campus in the weekly staff
editorials.
See ISSUES. Page 4
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Liu, Leslie & Reichle, Robert. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 89, No. 13, Ed. 1 Friday, November 16, 2001, newspaper, November 16, 2001; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth443125/m1/3/?q=Lamar+University: accessed June 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.