Blog for Civics, ’cause Civics is Awesome

Alright.  As some people may know, Danyel and I have been having a little blogging…spat.  It hasn’t been pretty.  And I was perfectly happy to leave it contained in his blog, until he came up with this little comment: 

Foreign terrorists dont count as the people, and dont have our constitutional rights.

First of all, unfortunately terrorists are people.  Not even I am happy to be classified in the same group, but genetically, we’ve all got a bit of terrorist in us (not literally.  I’m just making a point).  If we can give the American murderers, rapists, bombers, and whatever other criminals we have (and we do have them) trials, why not the terrorists?  Are they any better than Timothy McVeigh (stealing the example from Mike.  If you don’t know, he committed the Oklahoma City bombing)?  Yes, they may have different motives, but Timothy McVeigh is just as much a terrorist as any car bomber (or worse) from the Middle East.  There are only 3 major differences that I can see: race, religion…and Timothy McVeigh got a trial (However, I’m not getting into race or religion now).  Even with the horrible things that he did, he still had all his Constitutional rights.  True, the terrorists are not American citizens.  But is it fair that just because they don’t live here, they don’t get the rights we claim are deserved by All Men?  And it truly looks bad if we deny the rights we claim are deserved by everyone to someone just because they’re from another country.  This is a war, a war of the American way and all our views against the terrorists.  And I find it simply sad that we think we should fight for our dreams and beliefs by not following our beliefs.  We’re just becoming more like the terrorists by denying them the very things we’re fighting to make universally accepted. 

Dan goes on to say: 

And most people dont want to be terrorists, so the government is reall actually just doing its job, and its not their fault that some phsychos dislike us.

Yes, the government is doing its job by catching terrorists.  But giving them trials should be their job, not denying them trials.  And they aren’t necessarily psychos.  There is definitely something wrong with anyone who would happily take other lives, but if they had been raised in America, they probably wouldn’t be bombing us.  It’s just a difference of perspective…taken too far.  No, I’m not saying what they’re doing is right, but if one of us had been raised in their society, we might be a terrorist (probably not going by the number of people in the Middle East versus the number of terrorists).  Terrorists aren’t born terrorists, they grow into being them. 

All right.  I’m done. 

 For now.

This entry was posted on September 15, 2006 at 8:13 am and is filed under Things we Blew up Over, Blowing Things Up, Classmate Response, Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.