More Respect for Life and Fewer Cluster Bombs :: September 11 Terrorism Essays

More Respect for Life and Fewer Cluster Bombs many another(prenominal) peoples reactions to the atrocities of September 11 have gone from disbelief, to sadness, to anger, quiet or otherwise. We normally hear that we have received a declaration of war, and should respond accordingly. This experiment outlines my arguments for restraint. The moral case. Morality should be universal. If attacking hostile governments by sidesplitting civilians is evil and the very worst of human nature, then it is no burst for the U.S. to do so than for Afghanistan to. The terrorists who attacked the U.S. last week havent spoken up, but in all likelihood would describe U.S. foreign policy with evil, cowardly, despicable, and other words that Bush used. They regard that political ends and avenging wrongs from a foreign military justifies killing enemy civilians, flush if their support for the government was sole(prenominal) indirect. Analogously, Bushs speech stated that We go away involve n o distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them. Calls for a spectacularly bloody retaliatory strike aimed loosely towards the billion Muslims in the creative activity are increasing, while dissent has been muted. Mountains of historical evidence document Americas security deposit for heavy collateral damage when attacking the infrastructure of a demonized enemy, much(prenominal) as Saddam or Milosevic. Tuesdays tragedy demonstrated Americas surprising corporeal vulnerability, but, perhaps more disturbing, our response threatens to show a moral helplessness that will be much harder to justify in hindsight. The practical case. In Israel, extremists on both sides use terrorism and random violence for ends which are neither desperate nor irrational -- they aim to derail peace efforts and displace a violent response on the other side that will cause moderates to reject compromise and side with extremists. Jew or Arab loses meaning in th e face of the deeper struggle between hatred and tolerance, though typically only events such as Yitzhak Rabins assassination by an extremist Israeli blow people into remembering. These oft-forgotten and crucial lessons from terror sound like Sunday condition truisms the aim of violence is to beget further violence and blood cannot be washed away with blood. These principles must sound a little other-worldly after Tuesdays atrocities, but there is no other time when it is more authoritative that we remember them. Pausing to note that we can prove very little about(predicate) the motivations of