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American
children shoulder the moral responsibility of saving seven million
innocent people from the impact of American military action.
In the final weeks before winter descends on Afghanistan -- as international
humanitarian aid organizations are desperately
trying to rush food and medical supplies into the vast remote regions
of the country -- the United States escalates what should have
been an asserted international effort to eliminate global terrorism
-- only rhetorically a "war on terrorism" -- into
an actual war.
The resulting "unavoidable" upheaval in Afghanistan is
... unfortunate. Seven
million people in Afghanistan are at risk of starvation. The US
imprecisely drops at most 38,000 single servings in any given day onto
one of the world's
largest minefields to somehow make up for the interruption of legitimate
international food relief efforts -- as the bombing continues.
Just as America's policy for addressing the causes of impending catastrophic
global climate change is limited to teaching elementary school children
how to separate out recyclable beverage containers, President Bush addresses
the seriousness of the threat of the starvation death of tens
or hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of Afghan children
this coming winter by compelling American children to raise
dollars for relief efforts by washing cars and doing yard work and
stuff like that. "And I hope the adults will help them, as
well." Yes, let's hope.
These transparent gestures of American humanitarianism can be understood
only in the context of regarding the lives of non-Americans as being
less valuable than the lives
of Americans.
It is criminal that the only leadership President Bush could offer
was to express the anguish of America as official policy. As should
be clear from what a small number of highly motivated terrorists tragically
demonstrated on September 11, no future security can possibly come
from military actions which "incidentally" subject already
desperate people to deeper hardship and violence. The militarization
of the American "war on terrorism" will prove to be a tragic
error.
From where will leadership come to de-escalate this new war?
- editor,
October 13, 2001 (with minor updates).
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