I was extremely angry the other day when I opened my copy of The Eagle to read Seth Johnson's most recent column. I felt that his characterizations of Nathalie Marechal's pieces were inaccurate and unfair.
After reading Mr. Johnson's column, I carefully reviewed Ms. Marechal's, just in case I was missing something. But after reading them both several times, I still feel that he was very unfair in his assertions that she is unpatriotic and not duly concerned with terrorist threats.
For one, Mr. Johnson asserts that Ms. Marechal made several arguments that, quite frankly, were not in her columns. He seems to believe that she is arguing that 9/11 never happened and that there is no terrorist threat to this country. Let us look at these arguments carefully:
9/11 did happen. Everyone acknowledges that it was indeed a terrible, catastrophic event. But Ms. Marechal is correct in stating that it did not change the world.
I remember that day very well. It changed my worldview, and I'm not the only one. Before the terrorist attacks, I was unaware that a small group of people halfway around the world hated the United States enough to infiltrate our country and spend years planning such attacks.
But other countries knew about terrorism. When I was in Ireland this summer, I spoke with a group of teenagers about the Troubles, a 30-year period of violence. I told them how I had felt while watching the Twin Towers collapse, and they told me how they felt during the Omagh bombing of 1998 when terrorists nearly destroyed the peace agreement. In the middle of this discussion, one of the guys looked at me and exclaimed, "This was going on in our country for years, and the United States didn't care. So what makes you think that the world would change just because of what happened to you?"
I had never thought about it from this perspective. Just because we had not experienced terrorism in the United States does not mean that it was not a serious problem throughout the world before 9/11. This is the point Ms. Marechal makes in her column: the rest of the world did not change because of 9/11. The United States changed because of 9/11. We awoke to a threat that had been around for years - one that had shown itself eight years earlier with the first World Trade Center bombing.
And to be honest, it would not have mattered who was our president in 2001. Al-Qaeda would have planned the attacks no matter who was living in the White House at the time. It does not matter what Bush did in the first nine months of his presidency. Al-Qaeda hates the United States no matter who our president is, and Osama bin Laden will work to attack this country for as long as he is free, no matter what.
Now to Mr. Johnson's other assertions. For one, Ms. Marechal never uses the word "insurgent" in her column. I re-read it several times to be sure. The only person who has ever used this term is President Bush, and then he is referring to Iraqi rebels.
Next, Mr. Johnson criticizes Ms. Marechal's 24th "reason to vote for Kerry." She states, "You don't get rid of problems by declaring war on them." This is true. After all, declaring war is an empty gesture unless there is some action behind it. And even then, declaring and fighting a war does not solve problems. Look at Iraq - Saddam may be gone, but our problems remain and are compounded by our own actions. Our troops are threatened, and people's daily lives are affected in even the most peaceful regions. And that's not even taking into account the "hot zones" of Basra and Fallujah. We will have to extend our military presence in Iraq by several years, and we may never win the peace.
As to Mr. Johnson's argument against abortions abroad, it is rather a moot point. The United States does not fund abortions in our own country, much less those in Africa. And as to teaching abstinence, it is an admirable, but na?ve and unrealistic, goal. Several organizations in Africa are working to change cultural norms that discourage the discussion of sexual health and encourage sexual promiscuity, but this is not something that can be achieved overnight. Meanwhile, we need to promote the use of condoms and other birth control methods to those women who have no other way of making their own decisions relating to their reproductive health. And when we refuse to fund HIV/AIDS programs in Africa that even mention the word abortion - not just those that perform them - it is a shameful mistreatment of the 34.3 million people around the world who suffer from the disease.
Mr. Johnson mentions several other issues in his column, including our relations with France and Russia. It is unfortunate that we do not work with Chirac (whose democratic legitimacy has been contested only by his opponent, National Front leader Le Pen) while having such friendly relations with Putin (who our own State Department and CIA agree is not a democratic leader). That being said, we should not forgo our relations with any country solely because of their stance on Iraq. After all, there are several other important issues we need to deal with in this world.
Mr. Johnson also complains about Ms. Marechal's praise of the Kerry tax plan, while stating inaccurate numbers regarding Kerry and his wife's personal tax returns. According to their returns, available through the Tax History Project, a non-partisan group of tax analysts, the Kerrys paid 30.6% of their taxable income in federal taxes, the same as Bush. And Ms. Marechal's assertion about Kerry's plan is correct - Teresa paid $440,000 less under Bush's tax program than she would have under her husband's.
I agree with Mr. Johnson and Ms. Marechal that the opposition of people around the world should make us think. No one wants the United States to be victim to another terrorist attack, and now that we are aware, we are better able to react to threats. But I must agree with Ms. Marechal that the post-9/11 world is a myth, while the post-9/11 United States continues to change. Bush's "us vs. them" worldview antagonizes the entire planet as well as large segments of our own population, and no matter what we do, we will never remake the world according to our own image. Besides, would we really want to?
Lauren Richards is a junior in the School of Public Affairs.