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Zach
Exley Online
The following is obtained from an online
newsgroup in which Zach Exley participates. In the post below,
titled, G. Bush: U.S. in Holy War Against Iraq, Exley lays out his
opinions on the conflict in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, and America.
RE:
G. Bush: US in Holy War Against Iraq?
Subject: RE: G. Bush: US in Holy War Against Iraq?
From: Zack Exley (zee@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Thu Jan 20 2000 - 23:03:31 EST
What was the point of this
"aren't they barbaric!" story?
At least the Afghani people in
Marc Manson's story have the guts to be honest with themselves about their
justice system.
What's worse: cutting off
someone's hand for a petty theft, or locking someone up for decades for a
crime they did not commit, or for something that no rational person would
consider a crime? In our enlightened country we have tens of thousands of
people in jail with sentences of 10 years or more for drug crimes they
didn't commit, or for things like possession of pot, which clearly does
not deserve jail time whether it's a crime or not.
For details on this one great
source is Frontline's web site 'Snitch': http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/
They do a great job of explaining how our drug laws put people in jail for
the drug crimes of others, while letting off the people who actually
committed the crime.
Our own barbaric human
rights abuses
Our justice system is just as
public and inhumane as the one described in Carl's post. If we are more
enlightened than those Afghanis, what good does it do if it doesn't cause
us to even try to stop our own barbaric human rights abuses?
Another angle on this would be
to look at the Gulf War as a form of justice. We punished the Iraqi people
for the invasion of Kuwait. We bombed the land where "an eye for an
eye" was invented, but we took that principal much further. For
invading a country of 250,000 people (extremely rich people, most of whom
were on vacation) we killed 500,000 Iraqis--mostly soldiers during the
war.
Then, we continued to punish
the people, and by established estimates a million or so people, mostly
children, have died as a result of the sanctions which for a while didn't
even let medicine, like penicillin, into the devastated country.
The Worst Human Rights
Abuse
Isn't that justice more
barbaric than anything the Taliban have done? A million and a half lives
for the crime of invading a country of 50,000. --Especially considering
that we committed the same crime by invading Panama only a couple years
earlier.
Well, this may seem all a bit
out of line. But perhaps people will think it is something worthy of
discussing. The left these days is very obsessed with the crimes of
other countries like China, and Afghanistan. And it just seems a shame
that there is so little energy in comparison, these days,
going into stopping the worst human rights abuser: ourselves (i.e.
America).
-Zack
Source
Link: http://squawk.ca/lbo-talk/0001/1447.html
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