Sometimes I feel very anti-American, at a time when everyone is expected to behave with solidarity, even if it's towards a country you can't stand. But in reality I'm not. I like the idea of America, of freedom of speech, liberty and all that. True, I understand the downfalls of the constitution, but I'm not against it. But I don't believe the American way of life is the only way of life, or even that it's better than any other way of life. I don't believe in American imperialism, and I don't believe in the motives of the current administration or the Republican party in general. That's all a load of crap.

I couldn't, therefore, really understand the desire of Americans to go to war with anyone they could find in retaliation, or the way they completely failed to see the point of view of anyone else. But it was through looking at some pictures of the World Trade Center, some only taken a few weeks ago, that I realized the real magnitude of this month. The last fifty years of the past century marked the United States' rise from a minor power to a world-dominating minority, and the start of this century sees the first real backlash because of this. But more importantly a hell of a lot of people have died, very few of whom were even slightly considerable as 'military targets'. True, the US has killed many thousands of innocents over the past few years, either directly through 'collateral damage' or indirectly through it's foreign policy. But it has never set out to kill innocents.

So I can understand the anger of most Americans. I can understand the desire to find someone who's to blame, even if that person might well be innocent. But I cannot understand the desire for war with Afghanistan or with the Islamic world in general. There's almost never any excuse for war. True, I agree that the Second World War was a war which had to be fought, but I still don't agree with the way it was fought. The 'eye for an eye' philosophy of war never works; when one enemy kills a civilian on your side, it's never an excuse to kill a civilian on theirs. Therefore I can't condone any sort of military action on Afghanistan, any more than I did towards Iraq. The only people who are ever truly hurt by war are the innocents, and the same can be said of economic warfare through sanctions and the like, or blackmail through aid which can be quickly removed.

It's true that people like Bin Laden, Sadam Hussien and the Taliban are dangerous. It's not true that we should be at war with their countries. The Gulf War demonstrated that nothing is achieved by this kind of conflict. The only change the Gulf War made to Iraq is that now the Iraqi people are starving and the political regime has become even more repressive. Nice one, America. I have no doubt the same thing could happen in Afghanistan, but with even worse consequences. It's impossible for the US to benevolently interfere with another countries' culture, but that's not to say they can't help. Declaring war on the Taliban will only mean more death.

Yet the assumption of many Americans seems to be that one American life is worth ten Muslim lives. So it's 'okay' for American to got to war with anyone in order to root out Bin Laden; the four thousand deaths in American can be avenged with four million deaths elsewhere, providing they have revenge. Anyone can tell you revenge is never a sound motive for conflict.

What we don't need is war. What we do need is American changing the way it sees itself in the world; by making itself a military target it puts its citizens in danger. And for what? Power? American's aggressive, militaristic stance endangers its people for no viable reason. Now the civil liberties that supposedly make America special are being destroyed; the FBI are arresting anyone Muslim or even Arabic and the very fabric of the constitution is being undermined. Bolting down the hatches and preparing for war only invites war, and if America continues on this tack then war will probably be their gift. Yes, we need to find who's responsible for these acts of terrorism, but we don't need to make America a bigger target than it already is.
 

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