Wednesday, October 10, 2001

Campus shows the different sides of war
By Jordan Blum
Staff Reporter

Religion Professor Yushau Sodiq compared the United States’ retaliatory strikes against Afghanistan as an elephant fighting an ant.

“I don’t believe in battling violence with violence,” Sodiq said. “If an elephant fights an ant, it gets no credit for winning and gains nothing.”

Sodiq and other professors on campus displayed some feelings of pacifism while some students were more willing to agree with the military action as long as civilian casualties are kept to a minimum.

Gregg Franzwa, chair of the philosophy department, said America is reacting on human instinct but feels human nature has improved over the years to the point where we should know that retaliating violence with is not the best solution.

“Killing a bunch of people in the name of getting back at the people who killed a bunch of others is pretty primitive,” he said. “But it’s human nature and it’s perfectly normal to respond that way, but that doesn’t make it justifiable.

“The progress of human beings throughout civilization has been moving toward restraining violent tendencies and this strikes me as an appropriate, though unpopular, view for this time.”

However, Jordan Benold, a junior business major, fully supports the U.S. military action and said the action taken was necessary to eliminate hostile fire.

“We needed to take out runways and anti-aircraft so our spy planes can track down bin Laden a lot easier,” Benold said. “No civilians have been killed yet and reports of innocent deaths and of our planes being shot down are propaganda issued by the Taliban.”

Fahad Khan, a senior pre-med neuroscience major, said he is a little surprised military action was taken so quickly and he felt more time should have been taken to gather intelligence and fully define goals.

He said he is afraid because he has family in Pakistan and there is the danger of violent riots and even a potential political coup coming from militant Islamic fundamentalists.

“It’s a very confusing and frightening time because there are so many possibilities and I’m trying to figure out what the military wants to do,” he said. “I think there’s going to be a tremendous loss on both sides and there’s the possibility of a political backlash in the Middle East, and I’m afraid there’s a connection with the Anthrax cases in Florida.”

Khan said he supports the fight against the Taliban and hopes the United States supports the Afghani rebel group, the Northern Alliance, but is unsure of how much good U.S. humanitarian efforts will actually do.

“I think the U.S. humanitarian efforts are a good thing but I don’t know how much good it’s doing or how long it’ll last,” he said. “It’s also a good idea to overthrow the Taliban because that’s not Islam and they oppress the people and can’t even help themselves, but I don’t know if the war on terrorism can ever be won.”

Ahmed Al-Khalifa, a senior finance major, said he supports the attacks against terrorism as long as there is not any bombings in the cities.

“I’m against the terrorists and the attacks,” Al-Khalifa said, “But I condemn the attacks against civilians of any kind in the United States or in Afghanistan.”

Religion Professor Andrew Fort said people can virtually justify anything from a religious perspective if they really want to.

“From my Buddhist ethics, it’s very hard to justify violence of any kind and it’s virtually impossible to justify the terrorist acts,” Fort said. “But Buddhists would also attempt to understand their actions and see their perspectives.”

Fort said he is heartened the United States didn’t rush and start bombing indiscriminately like the government may have done in past conflicts.

He does have fears the United States could worsen the economic situation in poverty-stricken Afghanistan. He also said he is hesitant to support military force.

“Although I could never do it, if the government did the right intelligence research, prepared properly, avoided the loss of innocent life and since bin Laden is such an evil terrorist, then biting down I’d have to say that military action is justified,” he said.

Sodiq said most Muslims in the United States oppose the retaliatory attacks.

“Bombing increases the possibility of having more attacks here because violence breeds violence,” he said. “If you kill my son and I kill yours then nothing is solved and people continue to look for opportunities to strike back.

“War is never good.”

Jordan Blum
j.d.blum@student.tcu.edu