4A - The Michigan Daily - Friday, September 21, 2001
OP/ED
olbIE lwtrbiogatrn ailg
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ANN ARBOR, MI 48109
daily.letters@umich.edu
EDITED AND MANAGED BY
STUDENTS AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
SINCE 1890
GEOFFREY GAGNON
Editor in Chief
MICHAEL GRASS
NICHOLAS WOOMER
Editorial Page Editors
Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's
editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not
necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily.
NOTABLE
QUOTABLE n ,
~ If I see someone
come in and he's got a >
diaper on his head and a
fan belt around the diaperxu
on his head, that guy. *
needs to be pulled over
and checked."
- U.S. Rep. James Cooksey (R-La.) in a
radio interview on the Louisiana Network. He
apologized for the comment yesterday.
What are we afraid of?
REBECCA ISENBERG ONE TURNTBLE AND A MICROPHONE
've always had a fear
of flying. I hate the
feeling of being out of
control, so high up in the
air with no way out. I've
always been a little scared
of going to the top of tall
buildings - nervous that
on my way to the top
something terrible may happen. There was no
particular cause for these fears - I had con-
vinced myself that they were rational. But
today, more than a week after the terrorist
attacks on the United States, these fears have
been validated and along with them come a new
sense of dread. One that has overcome my
peers, my family, the entire nation surrounding
all of us as we sit glued to CNN, scrambling for
newspapers, waiting for answers. Are we wait-
ing for a signal that is going to tell us not be
afraid of going to work, flying home to our fam-
ilies, getting on with our lives? I keep asking
myself over and over "what's next?" and when
can I resume having little fears instead of the
greatest fear of all -- the unknown?
The attacks on Sept. 11 have affected us all
because.not only did they bring down our
nation's symbols of strength and power, they
brought down with them the sense of security
that we all had before that fateful day.
Being from New York, I never thought that I
would look at images on the television of my
bustling city looking like a battle zone I. would
only see in images of countries far from the U.S.
I never thought that I would have to worry about
my father going to work each day, passing
through landmarks like Grand Central Station,
working at Madison Square Garden. But now,
like so many of us I find myself trying to deter-
mine what the next target will be.
This sense of insecurity about what is to
come and where it will come from leaves us all
afraid. When I see the images of the hijackers
on television, calmly walking onto their flight
under the watchful eye of security cameras,
photos of them at their local health clubs -
where they supposedly learned how to fight
hand to hand combat - I keep thinking how
"normal" these people looked. I can see how
they could have slipped through the cracks of
loose security at an airport, or how they could
have infiltrated themselves into our society with
ease: We've been told by all the experts that
there are more people like this living among us.
But this new unknown enemy will not be easy
to find. We can't commit ourselves to a new
kind of racial profiling and we can't second
guess everyone we come in contact with. Is our
new lifestyle going to be one where we con-
stantly have to be looking over our shoulders?
Americans everywhere are waiting for our
nation to strike back. But as we wait for the next
step we have to come to terms with the fact that
this will be a new war. It won't be like the wars
we've learned about in our history class, or.
heard our parents discuss. We aren't fighting
against an enemy who will be playing by the
rules, as we have already seen by the first acts of
evil. This plunge into a new era that will
undoubtedly change our sense of freedom as a
nation is scary because to me it is incomprehen-
sible.
I can sense the fear in everyone's voice
when they talk about what has happened or
what is to come. I can hear it in the students
who sit around me as I study at Starbucks, or the
girls in back of me in my lecture hall, I can
sense it when I talk to my family, as they try to
explain the unexplainable to their "little girl" far
away from home. I saw it when I watched
David Letterman's first television broadcast
since after the attacks - his voice cracking as
he commended the brave rescue workers and
citizens helping in New York and around the
country. And I saw that every human's emotion
has been touched by this incident as I watched
Dan Rather, on that very same broadcast break
down in tears - twice. It's almost impossible
not to show signs of sadness, fear, anger -
emotions that have hit us all because those who
we lost in the attacks are people just like us.
And we all may be thinking - could I be next?
It's hard to even know what to say at this
point, only a short while after this upheaval of
our lives has begun. We all have to wait and see
what happens next. But there is no doubt that
things that may have seemed important in our
personal lives, our political culture, and the soci-
ety we are so used to may not deem as signifi-
cant today as we wait for the next step in what is
sure to be a long series of answering the ques-
tion: "What's next?"
Rebecca Isenberg can be reached
via e-mail at risenber@umich.edu.
Y LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
V VIEWPOINT
It's time to put partisan politics
aside, stand behind United States
Adrian and Conrad Stoll rest on the steps of the Grad during yesterday's Diag protest.
'60s peace activist: Stop protesting
By ERIC FELDMAN
AND JULIE MARCAL
Normally we can't stand each other. We
don't agree on taxes, on abortion, on the envi-
ronment, on anything. But today, more than a
week since the terrorist bombings on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon we need each
other more than ever. Democrats and Republi-
cans in Washington and around the country
stand unified in our opposition to international
terrorism and the regimes that aid them.
For decades the standard was that politics
ceased at the water's edge. The common atti-
tude was that no matter how divided we were
on domestic issues, America would stand uni-
fied in foreign policy. That stance has decayed
in the decades since the Vietnam War, but now
it has a new meaning our newest war has begun
on our own soil. Combating terrorism is now
not only our top foreign policy priority, it is also
our number one domestic priority as well.
Some have expressed the view that America
deserved the devastation we witnessed on live
TV on Tuesday last week. Some have criticized
the administration for vowing justice through
retaliation. Even our own newspaper has
warned against hysteria and stating that we are
not at war.
The United States Congress respectfully dis-
agrees, granting authority for the use of military
action and appropriation of the necessary funds
by a nearly unanimous margin. Authorization of
the use of force in the Gulf War passed by very
slim margins. This threat is more complex, far
more pressing to American interests, and more
difficult to combat. More Americans died in
Sept. 11 's travesty than on any single day since
the Civil War.
To be certain, there are still stark differences
between Democrats and Republicans. They had
disagreements on the resolution authorizing the
use of force; we still disagree on a broad range
of domestic issues. But governing is about pri-
oritizing, and the security of our citizens, the
preservation of our democracy and our way of
life, comes before anything.
We are a proud nation, who did not deserve
and did not provoke the terrorism, which has
devastated our nation. We are proud Americans,
deep patriots, who stand against those who
would question the merits of our nation and the
strength of our democracy.
These dissenters are certainly entitled to
their opinion, but so are we. We feel that their
attacks on the democratically elected govern-
ment of our nation are naive and misguided. At
times in our past, our nation has needed to defi-
antly take arms to defend our way of life.
At times we have had to support our politi-
cal opponents to destroy our common enemies.
At times our patriotism is the deepest, strongest,
clearest ideal. This is one of those times, one of
those moments that define us as a nation, as
individuals, as Americans.
We invite all patriots to join our common
crusade in defending America by any means
necessary, in a time when that fearful phrase
must unfortunately finally be used. May God
bless and protect the United States of America
in our most trying hour.
Feldman is chair of the College Democrats.
Marcal is president of the College Republicans.
TO THE DAILY:
I am outraged that University students
have their heads so far up their ivory tower
that they had an anti-war demonstration yes-
terday.
I was part of the Peace Movement in the
'60s. I put my life where my ideology was. I
served with the Red Cross in Vietnam.
I listened to "Gooooood morning Viet-
nam!" every day on the radio. I saw the casu-
alties we took. I also saw Vietnamese military
hiding in the villages while our troops were
fighting. The "innocent" civilians harbored
the Viet Cong, threw hand grenades into our
vehicles, and blew up anything they could. I
lived in a tent surrounded by barbed wire. I
dove under the desk when I heard explosions
in the street. I sat in a bunker at 2:00 a.m. and
listened to artillery shells flying overhead. I
dropped to the ground behind a sand bag wall
at noon on Christmas Day when a sniper fired
two rounds at me.
As anti-war protests grew stronger, Ameri-
ca lost it's will to fight. Eventually we decided
it wasn't worth it. We tucked our tail between
our legs and ran. The enemy took over. Now,
35 years later, we are not facing an enemy on
the other side of the world. Now we have had,
not a few bombs in night clubs, but a massive
assault on the United States itself.
Didn't we learn anything in Vietnam? We
used to say, "It takes two to make a war. If
one side refuses to fight, wars will stop."
The opposite is true. It takes one to fight.
If someone attacks you and you refuse to
fight, you die. I dare say plenty of students
will rise up and attack me for my opinion.
You will fight my opinion, but you won't
fight a real, flesh and blood enemy.
If we don't fight, we will be reduced to the
life I lived in Vietnam, if we live. We will live
behind barbed wire, dive under the desk peri-
odically, and sleep in bunkers at night. Ban-
ning over-flights of Michigan Stadium is the
beginning.
After that, if we don't win, we will live
under the rule of our conquerors. They shoot
protesters.
Stop the protests, while you still have the
choice. Give blood to the Red Cross instead.
JOAN PUFFER KOTCHER
Alumnus
Attacks on Arabs,
Muslims overblown
To THE DAILY:
The U.S. response to the terrorist attacks has
been beautifully restrained and just thus far. The
anti-Arab backlash has been almost non-existent
and the few reported cases have just been a result
of the media-microscope on the case. I bet if you
compared the number of cases that have occurred
since the attack it is probably pretty close to the
normal number of crimes against a given group in
a given week.
USA Today backs me up on this, "In the days
since the Bush administration labeled Osama bin
Laden the prime suspect in the attacks and ordered
Afghanistan's ruling Taliban government to turn
him over, Afghans here say that remarkably few
incidents of hate and harassment have tamished
their relations with other Americans." Related to
this is the "stop the racist scapegoating rhetoric."
The United States thus far has been a pillar of jus-
tice and has gone to the ends of the earth to
demonstrate that this is not a matter of race or reli-
gion. As far as scapegoating, it's not scapegoating
when you have direct evidence of who is respon-
sible. The Daily gives liberals a bad name and
hurt our reputation when it immediately bashes
America without evidence. America has been a
pillar of justice and love since these attacks and
most likely it will continue with a response that
targets only the guilty parties. As for innocents
dying, many people forget that these terrorist cells
hide out in deserts and mountains. What are inno-
cent people doing in the desert training for jihad?
NICK OcCHIPINTI
LSA senior
Woomer not a traitor,
but misses point
TO THE DAILY:
Nick Woomer's column ("Building an inclu-
sive peace movement," 9/19/01) omits to consider
that the student protest movements against the
Vietnam War was a result of the draft - the anti-
war movement all but evaporated when Nixon
suspended it. While many objected to fighting and
dying in a morally ambiguous campaign in South-
east Asia a generation ago, a sustained effort to rid
the world of Osama bin Laden and company is a
justified response to actions that fall outside the
boundaries of civilization. Viewing all military
action through the lens of Holden Caufield will
not bring back Abbie Hoffman and the New Left,
and it will not ultimately benefit this country.
Woomer's David and Goliath take on class
oft..nial is in nnnrnnrin.tol~y tron crriri i ato liast
a
0
Warning: U.S. forces
threatened in Pakistan
TO THE EDITOR:
Here is a sample of collection of para-
phrased sentences made by Pakistanis after
the terrible kamikaze air strikes in the United
States:
- This is a punishment from Allah.
-- I will kill Presidlent Bush with my own
States.
- I will become the second Osama for
America.
It looks like the chicken have come home
to roost. After the 1980s, the Pakistani intel-
ligence and military conceived the idea of
using Islamic fundamentalism to create Tal-
iban. This was done to control Afghanistan
in order to obtain strategic depth for Pak-
istan. It resulted in the Islamization of the
professional military, and caused the crimi-
nalization of Pakistani society which became
6