The title pretty much sums it all up. I had to read a two-page essay on how "endorsing terrorism is a national offense" and "is a violation of the forum terms of service" all because of a comment about how being anti-Bush means you must be a supporter of terrorism. Apparently it's "disrespectful to the victims of the World Trade Center attack and their families" as well as being "an insult to the soldiers who are currently supporting your freedoms in Iraq and Afghanistan." Someone tell me how, please? Especially since I don't see how they're supporting my freedom, all I see them doing is dying for a cause that shouldn't have been taken up in the first place. At least, certainly not for the reasons we were given for that cause.
It is neither disrespectful nor an insult to point out that Bush has continually used rhetoric such as "If you are not with us, you are against us," to espouse his cause. I am not with Bush; therefore, I am against him. And based on that, I must be a supporter of terrorism. I am completely and diametrically opposed to the Patriot Act, both in its current form and in the new form proposed by Tom Ridge. I believe it is a complete and utter violation of civil liberties which this country is founded upon, and that only by maintaining those liberties can we truly hope to be victorious.
The "war on terrorism" is not a war that can be fought with traditional weapons. It is not a war which bombs, guns, and tanks can win. It is a war of ideals, of ideology, and of pride. The moment we allow someone or something to take away our pride, to restrict our liberties, and to damage our ideals, we have already lost. Whether or not we kill every terrorist in the world is irrelevant. We have already lost, because we have sacrificed morality for expediency. In such cases, the true America is lost, because we are no longer America -- we are just another nation at war.
I will not argue over whether the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were justified. They have taken place. Whether they were justified or not is a moot point. I will say only this: the true insult to the families of those who died in the World Trade Center, and to those soldiers who have given their lives for this war, is to imagine that at the end of all this, we can return to the way things were; and to believe that after we have lost our liberties they will simply be returned to us, none the worse for wear, and that we can go home and pretend that we are as right and as righteous as we were on the 10th of September, 2001.
-David
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