Hello, Yus, your points are well taken. But let me try to respond in the
best way that I can. Hopefully, I won't leave anything out...
First of all, yes the case can be made that maybe we may have to
curtail some of our civil liberties, but my question is, how far do we go?
How much should people living in this country be willing to give up? And
how can we say we are fighting to preserve freedom and democracy when we
turn right around and give up some of that freedom for security?
As far as the Arab world and terrorism goes, there are a lot of things
I don't understand. And I never said I knew everything, and I am sure that
there are some things I am wrong about. However, my understadning is that
the religion of Islam is used as justification for committing these
terrorist acts, at least i the case of the attacks of 9-11. To me that is
extremely unfortunate. Espeically since that view is not shared by the vast
majority of Muslims. However, there are many who still hold the view that
Islam condones this sort of behavior. And if it is the case that John
Ashcroft holds this sort of view, then how is that going to affect how he
deals with the cases of the detained men?
Maybe my comparison of Jammeh to the US governemnt was an
oversimplification. However, what I am saying is that the government won't
even say who is being detained, and why they are being detained, and won't
even produce any evidence of any charges against them. That to me is not
right. They should know why they are being detained, what are the charges
agains them.
As far as the terrorism against Israel goes, what about what Israel is
doing to the Palestinian people? I know that is opening a whole new can of
worms, and I'm not trying to get into that debate. except to say that in
that case there is wrong on both sides. It is not just the Arabs
terrorizing the poor Israelis. Besides, who has the upper hand in that
struggle?
Anyway, back to what I was originally saying, what I was trying to say
was that I think that if one is fighting for freedom and democracy in one
place, they should want it everywhere. True, if it were not for the events
of 9-11, we probably wouldn't be detaining people on such a large scale.
But does detaining them and taking away their rights the right thing to do?
I am not sure if my points are making any sense. Maybe this is
soemthing we will just have to disagree on. Just as I am absolutely not in
favor of the detention of innocent people in The Gambia, I also do not want
innocent people to be detained here in America either.
America cannot let its anger, shock, and grief over the events of 9-11
cloud its judgment and thus feel as that it must take revenge on people just
because they happen to be Arab or Muslim, or whatever...
And maybe it is too simple of an analogy, but I, in some ways, think
that there are similarities between Jammeh's detention of innocent people
and the detention of people here in the US. In the sense that in both
cases, laws are being ignored and rights violated. Taht is all I was
saying. I wasn't necessarily saying they were the same thing...
And I was merely saying that it is not fair to want freedom and
democracy for some people but not for others...
That is all I was saying...
Anyway, maybe this answered your points. As I said, I coudl be wrong. And
I really didn't mean to offend anyone...
Ginny
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