Yesterday I started a discussion about a heinous Chicago Tribune editorial that bore close resemblance to a Friedman column,
http://carl-nyberg.dailykos.com/story/2003/12/2/223810/428
Today, I think I have a response that gets to the heart of the misleading nature of the editorial, mocks it and stays under 300 words.
Any feedback in making it stronger will be appreciated.
Memo to the left: Get real
November 29, 2003
Thousands of antiwar marchers recently filled London streets to protest President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. At about the same time, bodies were being pulled from the rubble of two British facilities that had been ripped apart hours earlier by terrorist bombs in Istanbul.
Yes, thousands turned out to protest the war in Iraq led by the U.S. and Britain. And yet, one has to wonder: Where were the crowds to protest the murder of at least 57 people in the attack on British interests and the earlier bombings of two synagogues in Istanbul? After all, terrorism targeted against democratic nations may be the biggest threat to the human rights of innocent civilians in today's world.
To the point: What does the antiwar movement have to say about the very real danger to human rights that is posed by the sponsors of terrorism?
No, that question doesn't come today from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or someone else from the Bush administration trying to make the left squirm a bit.
It comes from William Schulz, the director of Amnesty International USA.
Schulz is no fan of the Bush administration. He believes that it has undermined civil liberties in the name of protecting national security. His leftist bona fides are intact. But in his new book "Tainted Legacy: 9/11 and the Ruin of Human Rights," he asks a sobering question: How will the left respond to the very real, very dangerous threat of terrorism?
The rise of global Al Qaeda-style terrorism, he writes, calls upon the antiwar left and the human rights movement to rethink its most cherished assumptions and tactics.
In its criticism of the Bush administration, "there has been a tendency for the American political left and the greater human rights community to downplay the genuine, serious threat of terrorism around the globe," Schulz said in a recent interview with Salon.com.
"The traditional tools we use are generally not going to be effective with terrorists. I doubt Osama bin Laden is going to be moved by 50,000 members of Amnesty International writing him a letter asking him to refrain from terrorist acts. In the face of a new kind of force in the world that is detrimental to human rights, the human rights community has been slow to adapt to that new reality, in both its understanding and its tactics," he said.
"There's a cultural lag at work here. It's a serious problem. It means that human rights advocates are seen solely as harping critics. We certainly need to be that; it's a very important role. But if we fail to engage with the very real, hard decisions that governments have to make about protecting the safety of their citizens, then we'll be dismissed as charlatans, or ideologues who are out of step with reality."
Amen.
The world has changed, but many of the critics of Bush, including most of the Democratic presidential candidates, have said far more about what they think the administration is doing wrong than about how they would protect the nation and the world from the terrorist threat to people and free societies. Schulz makes a valuable addition to a debate that too often has focused on half the equation.
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune