America's means aren't justified
By Brandon Walters
Student Columnist

In Jordan Wagner’s column in the Nov. 15 edition of the Old Gold and Black (“The fallacy of the anti-war movement”) he assailed sophomore Kathryn Spangler for her stance on the U.S. bombings in Afghanistan. It’s clear to Wagner that the anti-war movement has been misinformed by propaganda and suffers from an ignorance of history and logic. He distills his analysis to a cliché: “the ends justify the means.” I wonder what Wagner really knows of history and logic, of our transgressions in the Middle East in the past 50 years. If such a thing can be judged by the content of his opinion, it is obvious that he doesn’t know much.

The source of the quagmire dubbed “9-11” is that we, as a nation, have decided that “the ends justify the means” too often. This was the CIA’s logic when they interdicted in the Soviet-Afghan war. Religious extremists received the lion’s share of CIA training, weapons, and money. In fact, this is where Osama bin Laden first gained combat experience. Why did the CIA fund, arm and embolden the most religiously extreme factions in the Middle East? Wagner has insightfully provided us with the answer: “the ends justify the means.”

Of course, the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan did not stop after the Soviets withdrew.
Just last May our government cut the Taliban a check for $64 million. Amazingly enough, it’s probably never occurred to many (especially those who ardently believe the United States is the most moral and ethical nation on the planet) that those who carried out the attacks on Sept. 11 may have been trained and funded with our tax dollars. But those ironies don’t bother Wagner and his ilk; to them, the ends justify the means.

Unfortunately, the ends justified the means when President George W. Bush issued an executive order giving Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, the power to put any non-citizen on trial in a secret military tribunal without the protections of the Bill of Rights. According to Rumsfeld, terrorists “don’t deserve the rights and liberties Americans enjoy.” Despite the fact that the order is unconstitutional (the Constitution is very explicit about the Congress being the only body with the power to create new laws), it also gives the president power beyond that even inscribed in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It also violates the U.N. charter on Human Rights.

There are now 1,100 people being detained by the federal government at this point, and since their detainment the president has granted Attorney General John Ashcroft the power to hold them indefinitely on secret evidence and spy on communications with their lawyers (forget the notion of attorney-client privilege). While students studied for midterms, the most flagrant violations of civil liberties we have seen in our lifetimes transpired.

It is unethical to decide who deserves civil liberties and human rights. The true tests of American democracy have always been played out in times of crisis. All it really means is that when the rubber hits the road, we don’t stick by our “beliefs” either. I imagine a hypothetical Egyptian immigrant who owns a chain of motels. One night an old friend comes to visit, they have a drink, and he stays the night in a room. Two years later, military officers arrest our Egyptian friend for aiding a known or suspected terrorist. He is denied a defense attorney, and his jury is comprised of U.S. Army officers (who already regard him as an enemy). The evidence against him is secret – that is, even he is not allowed to know what it is. His sentence his carried out, and no one, not even his family, is entitled to know what has happened to him or where he is. It’s easy to say the ends justify the means when those who pass judgment are also in charge of defining “ends” and “means.” Perhaps that’s why Thomas Jefferson wrote “Those who sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither.”

It’s possible Wagner and those who read too much Tom Clancy would point to the capture of major cities in Afghanistan and say, “Men are shaving their beards, people are dancing to music, and children are flying kites.” But why are Americans so happy to have “freed” the people of Afghanistan when so few cared about their desperation in the month of August? What about the millions of refugees that are at danger of starving this winter (assuming they survive the landmines and unexploded cluster bombs)? Why are atrocities committed by the Northern Alliance better than the ones committed by the Taliban? Could it be the myopia of national interest? Women in Kuwait can’t vote and women in Saudi Arabia are forbidden from driving cars. Where is our self-righteous indignation? Could it be these nations supply us with oil, so national interest gives them an ethical reprieve?

The federal government has spent nearly $300 billion on aid and enhanced security since the attacks. This total does not consider the accounting losses to the airline and insurance industries, nor does it consider capital market and macroeconomic effects.
The true economic cost of the attacks, which includes forgone profits and opportunities not accounted for in explicit terms, could only be measured in the trillions. The great irony is that for about $15 billion a year, the 125 million children worldwide who have never seen the inside of a classroom could be educated, according to Oxfarm International.

Wagner demands an alternative course of action from the anti-warriors among us. Here’s a humble suggestion: instead of spending countless billions on arming whatever tyrant or terrorists happens to be in our “national interest,” we could instead spend the money on educating and helping the real victims of our foreign policy. With $50 billion (a pittance compared to the money raised overnight after Sept. 11), we could halve world poverty by the year 2015, according to the U.N. Development Program.

The damning question is, as always, “why?” Why did middle-aged men with wives and children kill themselves to commit such heinous acts of violence on Sept. 11? This is the question that no Western media outlet has had the fortitude to ask. Because in asking, we imply that the attack, while horrifying, was not unprovoked. I pose to Wagner the task of searching his superior knowledge of history (and logic!) to find answers, though I warn him that he, like all of us, will find only a portrait of Dorian Grey. We as a nation profess to care about much. But, if we care for others only when there is something in it for ourselves, if friends, foes and freedoms are created and destroyed as matters of interest, then Wagner and the rest of us are in trouble in a war of “good against evil,” especially if we believe the fairy-tale notion that good always wins.