Classes may be starting soon at UCLA, but the student body has
some much larger questions to answer than the ones they’ll
find on their finals.
Like can we trust our own government?
As more and more Republican objectives are packaged into the war
on terror, students will have more and more government propoganda
to sift through.
Legislation to greatly expand police powers, for example, was
intentionally named the USA PATRIOT Act to make it impossible for
members of congress to vote it down ““ anyone who did risked
ending their political career. And the government conveniently
lumped the war on drugs with the war on terror in a Super Bowl ad.
The Daily Bruin does not condone or condemn drug use, but the local
pot head isn’t exactly bin Laden’s right-hand man
““ and odds are he isn’t funding his attrocious plots
either.
When students do finally find some solid facts about terrorism
and its perpetrators, they ought to start formulating an opinion on
them. President Bush is talking about marching us straight into a
war with Iraq, and possibly the entire Middle East, but our
generation remains silent.
Institutions of higher learning should be the premier venues to
host debates on issues of such great magnitude. Berkeley led the
Free Speech Movement in the 1960’s and Kent State became a
generation’s martyr for its protests against the war in
Vietnam.
But one generation later such institutions lie relatively
dormant ““ with more debate over who is right or wrong in the
millenia old Israeli-Palestinian debate than whether to risk our
own lives to fight a phantom-like terrorist threat.
Which is all well and good if we are really ready to go fight
Bush’s war.
But are we? Males between the ages of 20 and 28 will be the
first drafted to hunt alleged terrorists. Many of our brothers,
sisters, and beaus will be sent overseas and never come back. The
second we receive our degrees we will be subject to be sent
overseas ourselves.
That’s supposed to be when we begin our slow inheritence
of this country ““ not go off to die without a second thought.
If the government could show any smoking gun linking Saddam Hussein
to the September 11 attacks or even possession of nuclear weapons,
maybe it would be worth the lives it will take to dethrone him. It
is in our best interests, after all, to preserve that which we are
set to inherit.
But without any evidence, this generation should think long and
hard before throwing their lives and future plans away to lead this
new Crusade. The events of last September 11 were the greatest
tragedy in the last hundred years, but no military action is going
bring those victims back.
Is a military campaign with ambiguous goals and uncertain
motives worth sacrificing our peers and loved ones? Unless
generation Y can anser with a resounding yes, the war on terror
should go no further.