Via Newsvine
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America's Choice - Freedom or Fear? News Type: Opinion — Sat May 13, 2006 1:11 AM JST
Brad Farris The United States is at a point where an important choice must be made. It's not an easy choice, and it is not simply a choice between right and wrong, or between good and evil. The choice that we really need to make can be put in simple terms, however, which should appeal to those who prefer to live in a binary world of black and white options.
We may choose to live in a world in which the United States is looked on as a model for democracy around the world, and in which we continue, as we have for all of our history, to protect and hold our freedoms dear, or we can live in a world in which one by one, little by little, our freedoms are chipped away at until finally we find ourselves disallowed from expressing our opinions so as not to 'encourage the enemy,' prevented from choosing our own religion in order to assure uniform 'moral values,' barred from owning a weapon so that it may not fall into the hands of 'evildoers,' compelled to submit to random searches in public and in our homes because some of us may be plotting against the government, and subjected to secret abduction and incarceration without due process if someone in the government so much as believes that we pose a threat to the nation.
For over 200 years, we have sent our young men and women to fight and die in order to preserve our freedoms. When we give up any of those freedoms to obtain some dubious measure of security, it is as though we are sending a message to those brave Americans and to their descendants that their sacrifice was wasted, that indeed it was unnecessary. Further, it is as if we are, at the same time, sending a message to those who would see our society harmed, indicating to them that their tactics are working, that we are so afraid of them that we will go to any lengths to keep them from hurting us.
For nearly 50 years, we stood toe-to-toe with a country that was intent on our destruction, and which posessed the means to destroy dozens of entire cities at a moment's notice. Although it can be argued exactly what resulted in the eventual downfall of the Soviet Union, what cannot be argued is that, even when faced with a truly formidable opponent, the United States was strong enough to stand up for liberty and freedom. Even though, by giving up some of our freedoms we may have hastened or brought about victory in the Cold War, as a nation we demonstrated to the world that it was possible to project strength and to overcome tremendous aggression without resorting to the tactics of totalinarianism.
During all of those Cold War years, we held up the lack of civil liberties in the Soviet Union as the very reason that we opposed their aggressive attempts to subvert the populations of their neighbors and of other countries which they wished to dominate, such as Afghanistan. We taught our children of the horrors of living in a society where every move one makes is monitored by the government, and where citizens who happen to oppose the government could be arrested without warrants, held incommunicado without the benefit of legal counsel and without being allowed to plead their case to a judge. We assured them what distinguished the United States from the Soviet Union, and from other totalitarian regimes, was our government's ironclad determination not to treat its citizens with such disdain as to presume guilt over innocence.
We are now faced with an opponent unlike the Soviet Union. Indeed, it is difficut to tell where this opponent starts and stops. Rather than a monolithic government, we have declared "war" on an idea. Rather than attempting to keep a nation confined within its borders and limited in influence, we have chosen to start a "war" to deny various groups the ability to use a tactic which has never proven, ultimately, to be effective. Although the Soviet Union had weaponry and ability to absolutely and totally destroy our country, our current "enemy" has no such ability. At best, given a scenario which is most favorable to an organized group of terroritsts, using weapons which they may or may not have access to, this opponent might possibly be able to cripple a city, or maybe more than one city. Maybe. In order to do so, many circumstances would have to be aligned in their favor, and they would have to flawlessly evade our country's excellent law enforcement agencies at every level.
But let's don't misunderstnd - it could happen. Thousands of Americans could be killed in a single attack, maybe tens of thousands. Such an attack would be an event of unparalled horror in our nation's history.
Should we be concerned? Of course.
Should we do everything within our power to prevent such an attack, no matter what the cost? Absolutely not.
We should do everything in our power to prevent such an attack, but absolutely not at the expense of our freedoms and civil liberties. Those freedoms were bought and paid for by men and women over the past 200 years in many ways, including making the ultimate sacrifice for you and I. We owe them in equal measure to that which they have paid for our freedom. We owe our children the ability to live in the most free and open society on the planet, not simply some country that used to be free. We must understand that the most important battle we can fight is the battle for our freedoms, and that we must choose to fight that fight over all others.
-- John McCreery The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
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