"How can we simultaneously be restrained and defend our sovereignty?..."

Brendan Loy

Peaceful Ideals will not end terrorism

Tonight, anti-war demonstrators will gather at Tommy Trojan to argue for a peaceful U.S. response to last Tuesday's terrorist
attacks. If their previous statements are any indication, they will most likely offer an overly simplistic and entirely unsatisfying
argument for "peace." Peace, that ideal of all ideals, vaguely suggested as a solution to all our problems.

They will tell us that war is not justice, that more violence will only make things worse, and that the only real solution to
international terrorism is for the United States to modify its foreign policy in ways that will make terrorists and potential terrorists
less angry at us.

Some of their views have merit. And yet, in the big picture, they fail completely to address this truly vexing issue.

USC's liberal activist community, which forms the backbone of this anti-war coalition, has been agitating against a military
response almost from the moment that the World Trade Center's Twin Towers fell to the earth last Tuesday. But I have yet to
hear any anti-war activist give an adequate answer to one key question: how can we exercise the proper degree of restraint while
still sticking up for our rights as a sovereign nation?

For some of the more radical activists, this question may seem unimportant; they would contend that we sacrificed our right to
defend our nation when we "murdered" thousands of Iraqi babies or "oppressed" the people of various Arab states. But the scope
and the horror of what happened last Tuesday went far beyond any past policy blunders. As General Norman Schwarzkopf so
aptly put it, "We went to extraordinary (lengths) in the Gulf War to avoid killing innocent civilians, and yet what these bastards
have done is deliberately attack innocent civilians, and that's the difference between them and us."

America does have the right to defend itself. We may not be a perfect nation, but we are a very good nation with, on balance, a
good international record. It would be wrong for us to shrug off this terrorist evil as an inevitable response to our own purportedly
iniquitous policies. It would be dangerous for us to immediately make a series of foreign-policy concessions that will give the
terrorists exactly what they wanted in the first place?

We must send a strong message that America will not tolerate terrorism, nor appease terrorists. If we do not make this stand now,
when will we? Will it take 20,000 deaths? 50,000? 100,000?

Not since World War II have we have this much of a moral imperative to fight back against an aggressor. What's more, if we do
not respond severely, we will be extending an open invitation to terrorists to strike again, and again, and again, without fear of
retribution.

But anti-war activists are right to ask one very important question: how can we strike back without killing more innocents or
making the geopolitical situation worse?

Personally, I am very torn. Shaken by Tuesday's horrors and unswayed, for once, by the rhetoric of my fellow liberal tree-huggers,
I have been making nationalistic, pro-military arguments for days. I have been so beside myself with frustration at the anti-war
faction that I very nearly attended a College Republicans meeting earlier this week.

But after hearing Professor Richard Dekmejian, an expert in Middle East politics and terrorism, argue eloquently against military
action, I am deeply confused about what the right course of action is.

Under the present circumstances, no high-minded ideal of peace and love should deter us from defending our wounded nation, any
more than it should have stopped us from fighting Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan.

Not should a sense of guilt of America's supposed past sins make us reticent; whatever we may have done that inadvertently
harmed other nations, we did not deserve this attack.

And the activists' oft-repeated arguments against international "carpet-bombing" of civilians are somewhat disingenious, since no
one is seriously proposing such an awful response.

But we must ask whether a military strike will do more harm than good. Whether our military can successfully avoid unintentional
civilians deaths is, at best, an open question. And when I asked Professor Dekmejian point-blank the same question I posed above
- how can we simultaneously be restrained and defend our sovereignty? - he said he did not know the answer.

Neither do I. But I do know the answer is not as simple as "peace". Sept. 11, 2001 was America's second day of infamy;
therefore our response must be a furious one if we are a self-respecting nation. But it must not be so furious that we make things
worse for ourselves and for others.

The discussion of how to strike that balance is a debate well worth having on college campuses as well as in Washington. We can
and shouldhave it here at USC, but we will not be able to do so until we acknowledge that there are two sides to this issue.

Unfortunately, those students who feel that war is necessary have not organized themselves in the same way that the anti-war
faction has. What's more, it has become politically incorrect on this campus to suggest that a military response is the right answer,
because there is a prevailing belief that anyone who favors a military strike must therefore favor killing Afghani babies and
scapegoating Muslim Americans. This is completely untrue.

The vast majority of those who favor a military response believe that the United States should be extremely careful to avoid killing
civilians as much as humanly possible. They also absolutely abhor prejudice against Muslims and Arabs. But they feel that a war
against the terrorists and their allies, as unpalatable as it may be, is the only proper response to Tuesday's cowardly attacks.

The anti-war students on campus have done an excellent job of making themselves impervious to criticism and painting their
opponents as a racist fringe. Indeed, tonight's rally is billed as a "rally for peace and anti-racism", which seems to suggest that one
cannot favor a military strike without being a racist.

It is crucial that we dispel such false notions and begin a serious debate over how to strike the proper balance between the dual
necessities of national retribution and global justice.