News: January 2005 Archives
University of Colorado professor Ward L. Churchill is arguing that the 9/11 victims were legitimate targets for our enemies to strike at, and he calls the hijackers "combat teams" rather than terrorists. Sure, Churchill is a repulsive fool, but even aside from that I think his comments are pointless. It doesn't really matter to me what you call our enemies; why quibble over vocabulary?
The real crux of the issue is that by changing the vocabulary, Churchill and others of his ilk are attempting to advance a more subtle arguement: if the people killed on 9/11 were "legitimate targets" rather than innocent victims, then we're not justified in avenging their deaths. But is that true? If our military forces are attacked by honorable enemies, it's still a declaration of war and we're still entitled to fight back.
So what's the point Churchill is trying to make? Even if his position is accurate, we're still justified in crushing our enemies; if their attack on 9/11 was justified as retaliation for our earlier attacks, then our subsequent attacks must likewise be justified. His essay is pointless as an argument for unilaterally stopping the conflict; all it can hope to achieve is to make Americans and terrorists into moral equivalents, thereby scoring some sort of abstract philisophical point.
I, however, am not particularly interested in the philosophy behind the War on Terror. I don't really care "why they hate us" -- or even that they hate us -- I just want them to stop killing my countrymen. The root causes are irrelevant to me, because I'm not after "justice"; we'll never reach agreement on that, so let's leave it to God. I just want to win.
Update:
Clayton Cramer agrees that the essay was pointless and trite. Sometimes I think the American left has no purpose other than to make the rest of us feel as bad about ourselves as they do about theirselves.
I love President Bush, and his speechwriters.
In a speech delivered before a vast throng of fellow Americans spilling away from the steps of the Capitol, Bush said he would place the nation on the side of the world's oppressed people. "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppress, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you." ...In the first words of his new term, Bush said that advancing freedom and liberty were the oldest ideals of America. "Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time," he said in a reference to the war against terrorism.
Bush offered an implied rebuttal to critics of his foreign policy and the war in Iraq. "Some, I know, have questioned the global appeal of liberty," he said, "though this time in history, four decades defined by the swiftest advance of freedom ever seen, is an odd time for doubt."
Here's the full transcript of President Bush's inaugural address. The parts that made the cry:
We have seen our vulnerability - and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny - prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder - violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.
America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time. ...
We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now" - they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty.
When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, "It rang as if it meant something." In our time it means something still. America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength - tested, but not weary - we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom.
May God bless you, and may He watch over the United States of America.
If that doesn't give you hope for the future and bring tears to your eyes then you have a hardened, tiny soul.
Righties take note: the liberal left is preparing to redouble their efforts yet again, after previously redoubling their efforts at least 37 times! That's 274877906944 times the effort! Writes Kos crony Armando:
We have just completed a year where most of us, I imagine, have given more of ourselves to effect political change than we ever have before. I know that was true for me, financially and intellectually. And we did not meet our goals. But as the editorial aptly states -- our World, our Nation, our Citizens, our Families, simply require that we redouble our efforts.And to start the New Year in particularly cliched, but for me sincere, fashion - remember the refrain from the spiritual - "A change is gonna come."
Thankfully the left didn't meet it's goals, and that is the change that was long in coming. My hope for the new year is that the tsunami windshield-wiper of liberty continues to sweep away the crusty remnants of 20th-century tyranny, and that the so-called "liberals" don't muster up enough fear and fantasy to prevent it.
