Tear
down Taliban ... not the Bill of Rights
by Vin Suprynowicz
9/23/01
from http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Sep-23-Sun-2001/opinion/17049742.html
George Bush the Younger was particularly successful in his
Thursday night speech in generating confidence that he
understands the complexity of the challenge at hand.
The British attempted to subdue
forbidding, mountainous Afghanistan three times in the 19th
century ... without marked success. The Russians spent a
decade there not along ago, committing 100,000 troops -- and
still failed, as they will finally fail in Chechnya.
The prospect of spending the next decade
attempting to subdue the Afghans with land forces, as we
attempted to subdue the Vietnamese in the 1960s, thus warms no
one's heart.
(It's tempting to note that the handicap
of the suicidal Johnson-McNamara policy of "gradual
escalation" would at least be absent. But let's recall
that New York's Senate delegation now consists of two
socialists -- a senior member who helped facilitate the
massacres of Sept. 11 by guaranteeing every law-abiding
American on the planes in question had been thoroughly
stripped of his or her Second Amendment right to keep and bear
arms, and a junior member who actually gave Mrs. Yasser Arafat
a big hug and a smooch not long ago, right after that lady
finished making a speech in which she called for shoving the
Israelis into the sea.)
On the other hand, if invasion and
occupation are a daunting prospect -- not least because the
assailants of Sept. 11 would love to polarize the rest of the
Islamic world against us -- what's the alternative? Lobbing a
few dozen cruise missiles at some Afghan "training
camp," killing three terrorists and a goat? Dispatching
Janet Reno with 98 black-clad BATF agents to pull up in front
of Taliban headquarters in a cattle trailer, pump the place
full of nerve gas, burn it to the ground, beat up a couple TV
cameramen on the way home, and declare victory?
No, this is the kind of "war"
in which Americans are going to have to be willing to settle
for nodding their heads and saying "God works in
mysterious ways" if Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi
and Yasser Arafat all die eating bad dates while watching
reruns of "Baywatch."
On the other hand -- it can't be said too
many times -- if we are fighting a battle to the death for our
values, our freedoms, and our culture, we can't afford to
sacrifice the very freedoms and values that make us what we
are on the pyre of a Pyrrhic victory.
The president named Gov. Tom Ridge to the
new post of secretary of homeland security Thursday night. Is
Gov. Ridge to become our new Wiretapping Czar?
Attorney General John Ashcroft was a
miserable choice for that job -- a man who will whitewash any
federal atrocity, and who believes along with the nation's
largest gun control organization, the NRA, that the Second
Amendment allows "some reasonable regulation of
firearms." (Who but a lawyer could read that into
"shall not be infringed"?)
Sen. Ashcroft last week called for
expanded FBI powers to read all our e-mail (make no mistake,
the recently renamed "Carnivore" device can read all
the e-mail flowing through an ISP) and even our voicemail
messages.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., responded to
Mr. Ashcroft's proposals by warning: "We are not going to
let our Constitution get shredded. If we let the Constitution
get shredded the terrorists win."
"A police state can do a much better
job of protecting us, but unfortunately it would protect us
from the very liberties that have made this country
special," added Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.
Stick to your guns, guys. We've had
enough of police-state wish lists and just-for-show
"security." Time to:
1) Restore the right of all law-abiding
Americans to carry firearms whenever and wherever they travel
-- I'll personally book a cross-country fare the first day a
carrier advertises I can carry my firearm aboard, even if I do
have to show my "concealed carry permit" and reload
with frangible ammo.
2) Encourage U.S. and British oil
companies to file suits to force compliance with the original
contracts under which they explored and developed the oil
fields of the Middle East -- contracts in many cases
unilaterally abrogated 50 years ago. Enforce the resulting
TROs. Cut off bin Laden's cash flow.
3) Make war in Southwest Asia by
following the rules of the last fellow to successfully conquer
the place. Genghis Khan graciously accepted the peaceful
surrender of any city that would send him tribute ... even
allowing them to keep their religion and customs. Those who
demurred were left with no stone standing atop another. Their
surviving male inhabitants had their hamstrings cut so they'd
be crippled for life, while their women and children were
herded back to China to serve as slaves and concubines.
The question now arises whether we have
the strength of resolve to visit exotic lands, meet
interesting people, kill them, get children on their wives and
daughters, teach the resulting brats to play baseball, and
barbecue their goats ... leaving strangers who may happen upon
the resulting piles of rubble a thousand years hence to
scratch their heads and wonder if the people who once lived
here had a name.
The nostalgic Taliban pray for a return
to the conditions of the 13th century. Time to oblige them.
Vin Suprynowicz, the Review-Journal's
assistant editorial page editor, is author of "Send in
the Waco Killers." His column appears Sunday. |