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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (18150)	11/30/2003 7:55:19 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793640

Pacifism won't work agains't Osama and his ilk. Memo to the left: Get real Chicago Trib Editorial November 29, 2003 Thousands of antiwar marchers recently filled London streets to protest President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. At about the same time, bodies were being pulled from the rubble of two British facilities that had been ripped apart hours earlier by terrorist bombs in Istanbul. Yes, thousands turned out to protest the war in Iraq led by the U.S. and Britain. And yet, one has to wonder: Where were the crowds to protest the murder of at least 57 people in the attack on British interests and the earlier bombings of two synagogues in Istanbul? After all, terrorism targeted against democratic nations may be the biggest threat to the human rights of innocent civilians in today's world. To the point: What does the antiwar movement have to say about the very real danger to human rights that is posed by the sponsors of terrorism? No, that question doesn't come today from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or someone else from the Bush administration trying to make the left squirm a bit. It comes from William Schulz, the director of Amnesty International USA. Schulz is no fan of the Bush administration. He believes that it has undermined civil liberties in the name of protecting national security. His leftist bona fides are intact. But in his new book "Tainted Legacy: 9/11 and the Ruin of Human Rights," he asks a sobering question: How will the left respond to the very real, very dangerous threat of terrorism? The rise of global Al Qaeda-style terrorism, he writes, calls upon the antiwar left and the human rights movement to rethink its most cherished assumptions and tactics. In its criticism of the Bush administration, "there has been a tendency for the American political left and the greater human rights community to downplay the genuine, serious threat of terrorism around the globe," Schulz said in a recent interview with Salon.com. "The traditional tools we use are generally not going to be effective with terrorists. I doubt Osama bin Laden is going to be moved by 50,000 members of Amnesty International writing him a letter asking him to refrain from terrorist acts. In the face of a new kind of force in the world that is detrimental to human rights, the human rights community has been slow to adapt to that new reality, in both its understanding and its tactics," he said. "There's a cultural lag at work here. It's a serious problem. It means that human rights advocates are seen solely as harping critics. We certainly need to be that; it's a very important role. But if we fail to engage with the very real, hard decisions that governments have to make about protecting the safety of their citizens, then we'll be dismissed as charlatans, or ideologues who are out of step with reality." Amen. The world has changed, but many of the critics of Bush, including most of the Democratic presidential candidates, have said far more about what they think the administration is doing wrong than about how they would protect the nation and the world from the terrorist threat to people and free societies. Schulz makes a valuable addition to a debate that too often has focused on half the equation. chicagotribune.com

To: Sam who wrote (18150)	12/1/2003 11:04:59 PM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 793640

Voltaire said something about religion that may apply here: when you have one religion that is dominant, you get tyranny, when you have two that are about equal, you get civil war, when you have many religions, you get tolerance. That’s rather good, though I would add that the degree of conviction with which these religions are followed has a great deal to do with the consequences. Two equal religions need not cause civil war, as long as the adherents of both retain a healthy degree of doubt, and acknowledge the possibility that the other guy may have legitimate points. What I see missing from American politics today is that healthy degree of doubt. Polaraziation is producing two sets of competing ideologues, both of which are displaying absolutist tendencies. That really does raise the prospect of civil war or ascendancy of one ideology, neither of which is a comfortable prospect.