Are your politics hurting someone? Is your apathy killing someone? Did you cheer when the U.S. bombed Iraq? Did you even care? Are American soldiers at risk because of you? Will there be some terrorist attack in the future, here in the United States, because of how you voted?
Recently the United States attacked Iraq, a country that the United States has been oppressing through sanctions. In an attempt to get rid of Sadam Hussein, the U.S. and the UN are sanctioning Iraq. In the process the United States is causing twenty five percent of the children to be malnourished. Without proper food or medicine Iraq has a high child morality rate. The sanctions in addition to a drought are causing the people of Iraq to depend on the government for food. This is giving the government the ability to indoctrinate children. As one parent told U.S. News in an interview, �You should lift the embargo because you are creating a generation of people who hate America.�
According to ABC news, Osama bin Ladan has been involved in, �the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, and attacks on U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and Somalia�. In a separate article ABC news reported that the U.S. believes the plan for the USS Cole bombing may have been Osama bin Ladan. Why would one man hate the United States so much? In an interview with CNN bin Ladan says, �We declared jihad against the U.S. government, because the U.S. government is unjust, criminal, and tyrannical." How did he come to this conclusion? This hatred stems from the United States using Saudi Arabia as a base during the gulf war and then its subsequent �occupation� afterwards.
Surely the United States needs to have a strong presence in the Middle East to keep countries like Iraq and Iran in check. Not according to Muhammad al-Mousfir, a Qatari political science professor, �Iraq is no longer a threat ... and Iran is not the country that once sought to export the Islamic revolution." Yet the Americans, he says, have "turned from a protecting force into an occupying and permanent one." Iraq is no longer a viable threat. The only successful part of American policy towards Iraq was crushing Iraq�s ability to be a threat. With that job done, should we still be there making enemies? Should the Middle East feel like its being occupied? Is it worth endangering our soldiers? Are your friends and family members� lives worth dying over oil? Where is the major threat to American security? Are we causing a major threat to U.S. security?
Are your politics hurting someone? By supporting the status quo through voting and silence are the children of Iraq slowly starving to death? Is the next bin Ladan or Sadam Hussian currently a starving child in Iraq? When a weapon of mass destruction is used in the United States will we regret our apathy? The time is now to stop supporting the status quo. Write to the President urging him to change current U.S. policy. Write to your senators demanding that they pressure Bush to stop the cycle of violence. Remember your politics can have devastating and deadly consequences.
Andrew Harris President College Libertarians of Albright [email protected] http://campuslp.org/ac To learn more or see the sources for this article please visit the web page.