A letter to the editor

A letter to the editor,

For Christopher and for those of like minds,

A little advice for you…before you decide to comment on an article such as mine, I would highly recommend that you read it first. Read it and read the read the one it was intended to be a resonse to. As I stated in my response to “Bush’s Wayward War”, I appreciate healthy political debate on any President’s policies, even President Bush’s. In the future, however, it would behoove you, especially as a political science major, to be a bit more careful when responding back to issues such as the ones that I brought to the table in my letter two weeks ago.
Do your homework, Christopher…and try to resist the tempation to put the typical “spin” on letters such as mine in order to make your point, simply because of that fact that I am Bush supporter and you are not. First of all, I agree with you. Bringing up the 2000 election is, as you so eloquently put it, “outlandish” and utterly “irrelevant.” This is precisely the point that I was responding to in the Temple News’ original blithering, bitter article on what was supposed to be a piece on the anticipated conflict with Iraq. The 2000 election has nothing to do with it.
They brought it up. I didn’t. Perhaps it would have been more effective for me to have responded to the original author’s partisan whining with something like- “Bush won. Gore lost. Build a bridge and get over it.” Irrelevant? Yes, Christopher. This is precisely my point.

Another “spin” I would encourage you to re-think. Do you honestly think that one would be in support of removing Saddam Hussein, a man who has consistently demonstrated that he would use weapons of mass destruction or give them to people who would use them against us if one thought there was any other way?
And in response to the plethora of “options”, other than war, that you seem to think we have, let me ask you this. What would you do? I do hope that you would not look to the former adminstration as an example on how to handle terrorist attacks. The bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993? Nothing. The bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998? Nothing. The attack on the USS Kohl in 2000? Nothing. To ensure the national security of our fine country which we both so obviously love and adore, what would you suggest we do?

Nobody wants to go to war, Christopher. I have already made this point in agreement with Secretary of State Colin Powell. But for our nation to sit back and take these horrific acts of terrorism from radical fundamentalists time and again without action, is to dawdle all over the world like a bullied kid with a sign on our back that says, “KICK ME!”
To reflect another Temple News staff writer’s article, “We are the strongest kid in the park. And it’s about time we acted like it.”

And in the words of John Stuart Mills, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decaying state of moral patriotic feelings which thinks nothing is worth fighting for is far worse. Such a person is a miserable creature who will never be free, unless made and kept so by men better than himself.”

Meditate on that, Christopher.

Dawn Dneaster
Music Therapy Grad Student