May 18: Terror and genocide

By Published by The Editorial Board

Published: May 18, 2008

We can’t give in to them

To the editor:
Appeasement is not without cost. President Bush is being criticized for stating the truth in his speech in Israel. This year is Israel’s 60th anniversary and is the 75th anniversary of Hitler coming to power. Bush brought out four points in his speech in Israel:

• The founding charter of Hamas calls for the “elimination of Israel.”

• The followers of Hezbollah chant “Death to Israel, Death to America!”

• Osama bin Laden teaches that “the killing of Jews and Americans is one of the biggest duties.”

• The president of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.

The opposition party called the president’s comments “political.” I believe they are realistic. This is clearly not just a foreign problem. The president only pointed out the consequence of appeasement toward terrorists, which are very real. The threat to this country is limited only by these people’s inability to carry out their threats. Every day that we stand by while they are gaining this ability brings us closer to the final results of our appeasement. In spite of numerous United Nations “resolutions,” Iran is expanding its nuclear capabilities.
Today’s terrorists may seem to be a reincarnation of the Nazis, but if there are no convenient Christians, they blow up their own people in mosques and marketplaces. They kill innocent women and children by the hundreds to prove some perverted idealism.
Just as today, many politicians of the 1930s believed that this country was not to be involved until we were attacked. They seem to forget that on 9/11, al-Qaida destroyed two of our tallest and finest buildings, crashed into the Pentagon (our military headquarters) and took the lives of four airplane loads of innocent people. They forget the brave passengers who sacrificed themselves to crash the airplane in Pennsylvania. The target of the crashed plane is believed to have been the U. S. Capitol. Would these politicians in Washington want to go after the terrorists outside this country if their meeting house had been destroyed?
Bush was pointing out history lessons that these politicians like to forget. British politicians tried to undermine the validity of Winston Churchill’s pleas to stop Hitler’s aggression. In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the great appeaser, signed the Munich Agreement which gave part of Czechoslovakia to Germany. Chamberlain believed the Germans were badly treated after World War I.
His ideas were widely popular, and his agreement appeared to have avoided war. In 1939, Hitler’s army seized the rest of Czechoslovakia. The “deal with the devil” allowed the country to be lost without a battle.
“Uncle Joe” Stalin also found what an agreement with Hitler was worth. In 1939, he signed a non-aggression pact with the Germans. In 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union. In response, it became an ally of the United States and Great Britain.
Those who want to talk with Iran and other dictators might be sorry when these aggressive dictators carry out their promises. To them we are the “great Satan.” When they obtain nuclear weapons — and nothing is being done to stop them —they might take out the United States before eliminating Israel. Why should we not believe that they would do what they clearly state they would do when they have the ability to accomplish their goal? But some people only want to talk.
Do those who want to negotiate with these dishonest terrorists believe that they might find some agreement with their stated goals of aggression? Agreements with aggressive and dishonest leaders are one-sided. Like Munich and the non-aggression pact, any agreement would be seen as weakness by our enemies and an opportunity to profit by violating its terms.
Most of Great Britain was anti-war in the 1930s. In 1940, Chamberlain was forced to resign. The English people were suddenly awakened when Germany invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Without our belated help, after our Navy was bombed at Pearl Harbor, the British would have been next and then the United States.

DANNY RICKETTS
Danville

To the editor:
In Darfur, America does have strategic interests at stake.
First, consider the Sudan is where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida got its start. Given the perpetrators of the genocide there are Muslim — coupled with the history of U.S. involvement — we may be facing a new generation of international terrorists.
Second, the interconnected issues of China’s unfair trade practices and concerns over Russia’s arms sales to the Sudan.
Third, there are issues of divestment of federal, state and individual funds to prevent our money from supporting the genocide.
Perhaps most relevant, there are sociological, social psychology, political/policy and practical factors at play that could have a direct correlation to a crisis in the United States — including Danville — that will be explored at a forum sponsored by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on May 20 at 6 p.m. at Mount Carmel Church off Halifax Road. People will be joining again in an interfaith effort aimed at praying globally — now teamed with acting locally.
Homicide is the leading cause of death for black males between the ages of 15-34. Faced all too often with unfair socioeconomic conditions, struggling or failing schools fostering excessively high dropout rates and continuing extreme inequities in criminal penalization among blacks compared to whites, we are facing a new type of American racial-cultural-political “genocide.”
Drug trafficking is fueling violence, but notably, huge variances exist in arrest and conviction rates for blacks compared to other groups engaged in similar criminal activities. For example, blacks are arrested for drug crimes at twice the rate, although studies show whites are engaged in equal or even substantially more drug offenses. Black males with no previous record under 18 are 48 more times likely than their white counterparts engaged in similar crime to be sentenced, and statistically face harsher sentences. Blacks get the death penalty more than whites engaged in similar crimes. A CDC Youth Risk Behavior Study found black youth carry weapons slightly less than white youth, but 32 percent of all juvenile weapons arrests are black. The statistics go on, and we in Danville have born witness to the violence.
The factors that breed the sociological machinery for the “urban genocide” — and particularly the black-on-black aspect of the violence, are multi-faceted and complex. In part, like the absence of social justice and severe water shortages in Darfur, in the United States, lingering inequities on multiple fronts, discrimination’s pervasive effects on opportunity and disproportionate representation among poverty ranks collude to create an absence of social justice that destroys the peace and topples the scales of balance in criminal justice.
The genocide in Darfur and the “urban genocide” taking place on American soil are two parallels on numerous levels that should be explored in terms of prevention and resolution.
I hope those who joined the launch of the Southside Darfur Project, or had wanted to, will join with the SCLC at this forum when some of the same panelists will engage in a dialogue and answer questions on May 20. We will not only be examining the international parallels and talking about the U.S. crisis from an overall standpoint, but a particular emphasis will be placed on all the recent killing and violence in Danville, and about what has fostered the local crisis and in enlisting a productive discussion aimed at concrete solutions.
I previously said that if we could find one thing we could all agree upon — decrying a genocide — despite all that divides us, we might forge new alliances and find new common ground for addressing community problems. The fusion could set off a positive chain reaction.
At the end of the Darfur launch event, the most inspiring part for me was when Muslims, Jews, Christians and secular folks clustered in a tight-knit group holding hands as we were led in an interfaith closing prayer.
At the SCLC forum, we will again pray for Darfur as we seek to pray globally, but we will also act locally to address the violence which plagues Danville like so many American urban areas. Let’s get moving, Southside! For Darfur and Danville, let’s join together to stop the killing — and start the healing.

REV. JAYNE WEBB
Danville