Letter to the Editor (9/14/06)

Dear Editor:

Your editorial entitled “Can we blame it on the man?” was the most… Dear Editor:

Your editorial entitled “Can we blame it on the man?” was the most incomprehensible and dimwitted tripe that I read on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on America. Despite your assertion, the “War on Terror” is not ambiguous. The Sept. 11 attack made very, very clear that we are at war and the future of western civilization is at stake. Radical Muslims want to kill us — yes, they want to kill you, preferably by cutting your head off and putting a videotape of it on the Internet — because they do not like freedom that we have.

Not withstanding the remarkable clarity of vision provided by the Sept. 11 attacks, you make the insane assertion that “we” are not as afraid of terrorism as we are of our government’s response to it. You make America the enemy! You try to argue that America is the bad guy because the government has not done enough to address the health problems of the brave workers at Ground Zero, but you illogically fail to consider that the real culprits are the terrorists who caused the Towers to fall in the first place, not the U.S. government. Please do not include me or most Americans in your insane assertions.

And why are “we” afraid of the government? According to you, it’s because “they’ve” — presumably, you mean the U.S. government — “wasted enough time.” No response is necessary or even possible to such a vacuous statement. It’s because “they’ve…alienated many.” When you’re at war, not everyone will be your ally (especially your enemy), but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight for our survival and the cause of freedom. And it’s because “they’ve…violated civil liberties.” Presumably you are referring to wiretapping calls of terrorists outside of the United States, tracing wire transactions, data mining telephone records and imprisoning enemy combatants, all of which are essential and constitutional tools in fighting this war. This war is different from any war that we have ever fought before, because the enemy is not a nation-state and its primary strategy is to kill civilians. Although it is different, this war is very real, and we must win it for the sake of our children.

You ask, “What do we have to show for it?” We have taken the fight to the enemy — in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have captured or killed many terrorist leaders, thereby disrupting their command structure. The battle is being fought by our heroic, all-volunteer military on foreign soil. By all accounts, we have disrupted numerous terrorist plots against Americans. And most significantly, as a result of all this, since Sept. 11, there have not been any terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Have you not been paying attention?

This will be a long and difficult war. We will undoubtedly suffer more attacks and more civilian causalities. But we will win the war, if we have the resolve to do so. You and others who influence public opinion have to recognize what’s at stake and stop making America the enemy.

Stephen W. Johnson

School of Law ’84

swjohnson98@yahoo.com