Wednesday, January 9, 2002
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Wednesday, January 9, 2002 |
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How do we justify killing children? By DAVE HAMRICK Having never pulled any punches when it comes to criticizing the mostly liberal national press and the bias in much of its reporting, I now find myself feeling the need to defend many of those in the hydra known as "the media." I know it makes us uncomfortable when a newspaper or a TV station shows us pictures of dead children in Afghanistan, but making us comfortable is not the job of the news media. Telling us the facts is the job of the media, and I think they've been doing it fairly well since 9/11. Not perfectly, to be sure. That really would be a shocker. But by and large the reporters trying so hard to make names for themselves are bringing us a huge amount of information without regard to whether we will like it or not. Some stories are encouraging and upbeat, and others are discouraging and downbeat. We shouldn't be afraid of the truth. Knowing that our bombs and bullets are killing hundreds or thousands of innocent Afghan men, women and children is not something we like, is it? What do you do with that sort of information? It's not as easy as it was when we rained death and destruction on the likes of Nazi Germany and used our new-found nuclear power on Japan. Then, it was all-out war in which failure meant enslavement or worse. Then, the Nazi regime was killing millions of innocents, and stubborn Japan probably would have held out for years, bringing about many more deaths than those two bombs caused. Thousands versus millions. The equation adds up. In Afghanistan, some reports suggest, we've killed far more innocents than died here, in addition to the not-so-innocents. We've attacked and destroyed a government that has not attacked us. Looks like Afghanistan will be better off without it, true enough, but we don't go around attacking nations and replacing their governments just because those governments are sorry, worthless sacks of fertilizer. That would be a pretty messy can of worms to open up, wouldn't it? For instance, China would have to be high on the list. Are you ready for that? I didn't think so. If the thought process I'm going through in this column makes you squeamish, it should. Me too. But this is, after all, the United States of America, a place where we claim to be well-educated and sophisticated enough to govern ourselves by electing our leaders and then keeping an eye on them to make sure they don't go off and do things in our name that we don't want done. So we have to look squarely at the consequences of our government's actions and decide whether we support or oppose them, decide whether we, the people, believe we are justified in going across an ocean and killing other people's children. If we prevent future terrorist attacks in the U.S., will it have been worth it? Are our lives worth more than theirs? If not, why didn't we declare war on terrorism when it was people in Israel, the Phillipines or Sudan who were being targeted? I'm raising questions here without giving answers. I'd be interested in yours. And while you're thinking about those answers, think a little further into the future. We've started something with this war that won't stop anytime soon not if we want to be successful. All we've done so far is kill a few terrorists and stir up a hornet's nest of hatred and resolve among thousands more. Will we be able to stay the course to the end? Will we be willing the pay the costs? Can we do it without becoming basically an imperial power, forcing the world into a mold of our creation? What, in the final analysis, will victory look like?
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