Last week The Hatchet received a slew of letters regarding retaliation for the terrorist attacks at The World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But not one outlined reasons why America should strike back with force.
Arguments for diplomacy are not realistic for what we face. We should use force against governments that brutally repress women and dissident voices, harbor and support terrorists, openly export heroin, rule illegitimately and are hated as much by their own people as the rest of the world. We should use force against Afghanistan and its ruling Taliban militia.
With the Taliban’s horrendous human rights record and its failure to destroy terrorist networks, it is time to end the Taliban regime, which has already declared war on any voice not in line with theirs. Unfortunately for GW, there is a brand of blind pacifism that seems to infect the minds of the naive.
According to CNN, 88 percent of Americans support military action against Afghanistan, and 65 percent of Hatchet readers, according to a Web poll, support military action. It seems a vocal group of GW pacifists are out of touch with the nation and many of their peers.
When the necessary moves are taken, GW ROTC graduates could be called up. Some students will enlist. Idealism has blinded those who wish to dishonor our fellow GW students and the American military by claiming our soldiers will fight for nothing.
Were the events of Sept. 11 a figment of our imagination? Terrorism will not disappear if we do nothing. No matter what action we take, terrorism will continue until the roots are destroyed.
Students say America’s policies caused the attacks. While it is one thing to hear leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad say this, it is even more troubling to hear students take this defeatist attitude.
Although Taliban officials wish to make this out to be a war of the West versus Islam and a jihad for all Afghans, they will have trouble rallying the people they oppress. According to a poll conducted last June, only 11 percent of men and 6 percent of Afghan women said Taliban leader Mullah Omar is the best leader for Afghanistan. We can fix this. Overthrowing the Taliban is not just our duty to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, it is our duty to the Afghan people.
This is good-versus-evil, democracy-versus-authoritarianism, sanity-versus-insanity and tolerance-versus-rejection. We cannot waste our time on diplomacy with an irrational and illegitimate regime opposed by virtually every country in the world. The longer we take, the more time we allow Osama bin Laden to flee and rebuild his network.
It is ironic that members of the GW Action Coalition and other organizations can extend a lifeline to a regime that stands for everything they oppose. I challenge them and every other idealist to put on their glasses and see that isolationism is a prescription for disaster that invites these crimes to happen again.
-The writer, a senior majoring in international affairs, is Hatchet managing editor.
