Terry's Travel and Thoughts: Free Speech

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Free Speech

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Ter
I think perhaps you should have been a journalist but then your articles would have been editted
= shorter and a bit more concise
there is time in your life for a career change !!!!; 7:11 pm
Anonymous said...: Yes this is a long one but full of thought provoking ideas…Let me first say that terrorism is wrong. It is murder. And the author’s main point—that to end terrorism we need to go after those who fund it (the head of the “family” as he suggests)—is well taken. But a number of things bothered me about the speech that may be hard for me to articulate but I’ll give it a shot.

First, there is something about the argument that the Muslim world is somehow uniquely dysfunctional that bothers me. It allows us as non-Muslims, as Westerners, to distance ourselves from the darker side of human nature that history tells us can manifest in any society. Good people stood by and did nothing when slavery existed for 100 years in the United States and good people stood by for another 100 years of mob lynchings and segregation. Good people stood by as the Nazi regime emerged in Germany and carted off Jews, Poles, homosexuals, and political challengers to death camps. Good people stood by as Hutus picked up machetes and scoured Rwanda for Tutsis to chop up. There are millions of Muslims that are good people and are “silent” at least to Western ears. Is this a problem—absolutely. But is it a unique problem? I don’t think so.

As for use of the disenfranchised to carry out murder? How no Arab politician has sent his own child off to become a martyr? This is true. But, again, I don’t find this to be something unique. Who makes up the US military for the most part? Not the George W. Bushs of this country, that’s for sure. No, American leaders don’t promise 72 virgins in the next life. They promise in this life a salary, discipline, adventure and the glory of protecting American values to the high school educated 18 year olds that join up. And the children (as young as 8) that are recruited in various African countries are promised nothing.

I don’t want this to be read as some liberal apology. It is not meant to be one. I am simply suggesting that the circumstances of this “war” are not as unique as the author would suggest. And I am just wondering whether we might understand the situation better if we were able to see the similarities rather than the differences.; 10:12 am

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