The gruesome attacks on four American civilians in the city of Fallujah, Iraq show that we live in a world of great peril, hatred and tumult. The war being waged is not of countries, but of ideologies: democracy and freedom vs. tyranny and oppression, the will of the free vs. those who mean to destroy it.

Often the power and resolve of our enemies are forgotten. Their threat is viewed as rhetoric, but let there be no mistake: this enemy is real. It despises America and the ideals it stands for. It’s determined and will stop at nothing but the annihilation of all we hold dear. The attacks in Fallujah should serve as a costly lesson demonstrating the nature of the enemy we’re faced with.

An enemy that would drag a man, still alive, into the middle of the street to stomp on his head, break his limbs and pelt him with bricks until he died, that would then tear off the limbs from his body and decapitate him, simply because he was an American.

An enemy that burnt two other Americans’ dead bodies to a black char and then hung them, limbs mangled and twisted in ways that would make many regurgitate on sight, from the crossbars of a nearby bridge, that attached the body of an American by rope to the bumper of a vehicle, and dragged it around the city as if it were a piece of celebratory debris at the back of a newlywed’s car.

Fallujah brings back horrible memories of the U.S. soldier paraded around in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, leading President Clinton to a quick withdrawal from the area. We mustn’t let this recent attack have the same effect. It should strengthen our resolve and motivate us to the core to stay the course.

Recent polls show the majority of Iraqis believe their lives have changed for the better since the U.S. invasion. The acts of the residents in Fallujah represent the small minority, but also the resolution and hatred of our potent enemy.

We mustn’t back down, and we must press on in our fight for freedom and democracy. Those who mean to destroy it will do so by any means necessary. The near three-year lull since 9/11 has made us complacent about their threat, but it should provide no sense of security; they’re planning and lurking in the shadows, and they’ll attempt to strike again.

A sign under one of the bodies hanging from the bridge stated, “Bush, Bush, shut your mouth!” Our collective message should be that we won’t shut our mouths – and neither should President Bush. The words he uttered as a warning to the world on 9/11 will reverberate through the hearts of our enemies: “There are two sides in the world today, freedom and terror. You are either with us, or them.”

Due to the determination of our troops and government, “them” is losing. Freedom and democracy are contagious. Let not the pictures of the mutilated Americans dishearten you, but rather, let them harden your will. Democracy is winning; you need look no further than the side of the shocking pictures, where you’ll see one of the dancing Iraqi boys clad in a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball shirt.

Don Donelson can be contacted at d.donelson@umiami.edu.

I don’t see what the problem is with the recent credit card controversy on campus. You don’t want credit card debt? Don’t get a credit card. What’s the damn problem? Having a credit card is a big responsibility. If you manage your money poorly, you have no one to blame but yourself. If you get a credit card and run up an exorbitant amount of debt then you need look no further than the mirror to find out who’s at fault.

This whole thing recalls for me a funny story from my time in the Marine Corps. There was always a guy who wrote a bunch of checks for which he had no funds to pay. When asked how he let that happen he’d say, “I’ve still got checks so I must have money.”

Recently, I’ve found myself confronted by the urge to ridicule the concept that a group of people who want to be considered adults are supposedly too inexperienced to withstand the ravages of the Evil Sales Pitch! Apparently, that pitch is so compelling that many students are just unable to resist and end up committing suicide rather than facing the reality of bad credit. Not to make light of the tragedy of suicide, but if it’s true that a student armed with a credit card will rapidly descend into a state of massive bonded indebtedness, then the student deserves bad credit.

My first duty station in the Marine Corps was a technical training school with a student body twice as large as UM’s. Outside the front gate we were confronted by all manner of car dealerships and electronic appliance stores and even evil credit card vendors. These businesses set up there because they knew that the military personnel stationed there were primarily just out of high school and didn’t know crap. They made great sales pitches and pushed all manner of items on us and made a lot of credit sales – at 20 percent plus interest. A lot of people bought stuff and ended up being broke for a very long time or defaulting on their credit arrangement. The way these vendors did business was very well known, and yet many people did business with them anyway.

This never happened to me. Why? Because when faced with those sales pitches, I said, “No thanks, don’t want the debt.” And then I walked away.

Scott Wacholtz can be contacted at s.wacholtz@umiami.edu.

Often when hearing some of my fellow students’ opinions, I feel like I’m listening to a condensed and neatly-packed week’s worth of misleading rhetoric from Fox News. The lack of political diversity in some of these positions typically sounds like the children of Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity spewing neo-con banter, such as the view that because the Spanish people ousted the conservative party, terrorism won.

As an “impudent liberal,” as these people would call me, I feel it to be my American duty to respond to these brash, conservative contentions.

Why is every action outside of the extreme Bush agenda a victory for the terrorists? Instead of flinging around “terrorist,” let’s look at the facts regarding Spain.

The self-proclaimed Partido Popular was apparently not too popular after all. They had been defying the will of the Spanish people by allying with the Bush administration. In fact, only 13 percent of the Spanish people were in favor of the invasion of Iraq. I may not be a math major, but 13 percent doesn’t sound very Popular to me. One of Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s pledges during the campaign was to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. Considering the support for Iraq, I’d have to guess that it was a popular platform.

Following the 3/11 attacks, Spanish government officials blamed ETA – dismissing the possibility that Al-Qaeda was responsible. As mounting evidence refuted the government’s claims, Spaniards criticized the Partido not-so-Popular for withholding information to prevent a foreign policy backlash. Voter turnout was high, especially among youth (what a concept!), at 77.2 percent, 9 percent more than in 2000.

The Spaniards didn’t hand the country over to Al-Qaeda; they were just tired of being lied to by their government. I can relate!

I’ll let Zapatero respond to my neo-conservative friends’ fear-inducing implications that “Socialist” is synonymous to unabashedly soft on terrorism: “My immediate priority will be to combat all kinds of terrorism…The terrorists must know that they will confront all of us together. We will win.”

Spain was combating terror Bush’s way, and look what happened. The fact that the people of a country formerly known as one of our closest allies elected a leftist, anti-Iraq party does not indicate a victory for Al-Qaeda; on the contrary, it does indicate a victory for the people of Spain, who sought to punish the Partido un-Popular. I share similar sentiments as I look forward to punishing the Partido Republicano in November.

Chris Fisher can be contacted at c.fisher2@umiami.edu.

To the Editor:

Your April 6 editorial, “Lost in Translation,” missed the point in the immigration debate. Yes, Miami became what it is in no small part due to multiculturalism, and various ethnic groups have added wonderful dynamics to this city. The same is true for all cities where immigrants have clustered.
However, I must concur with Huntington’s notion that immigrants must share in the American dream “in English.” Many of us grew up never suspecting that we’d have to learn Spanish, but now we wonder if we’ll be able to succeed without it – yet we lack the time and energy to learn it. If people are going to live in America, they ought to learn English rather than make the country accommodate them by learning their native tongue. The same should hold true for any immigrant in any other country.
An ever-more-significant minority acts like it can come to America and still pledge its first loyalty to its countries of origin. There are more than a few American-born children of Hispanic nationals who do this because they can get away with it, and I suspect the problem stems largely from our country’s bumper supply of illegal aliens. That is the real problem. People who have no respect for our borders (and therefore our laws) probably don’t have too much respect for us or for our culture in general.
We should welcome immigrants who come to pursue the American dream and appreciate the contributions they make to our culture. All we should expect in return is that they not look for handouts, break our laws or try leaving language barriers between themselves and the general public – common courtesy, really.

Sincerely,

Nicholas G. Moses

To the Editor:

A recent column posed the question of circumcision being an unnecessary, inhuman surgery. Opinions are personal, but medical and historical factors can’t be refuted.
Circumcision isn’t a surgery but a preemptive treatment, done with the help of anesthesia and sterilized medical equipment. It’s an attempt to avoid a series of medical problems whose chance might be increased without it.
The only medical downfall listed in the column is the supposed loss of pleasure during intercourse. While children might experience some swelling in the area for a day or two, the medical consensus is that loss of sexual feelings only happens if circumcision is performed during adulthood. Being circumcised, I can testify circumcised adults have just as much fun.
The medical upsides of being circumcised are numerous: less chance of developing serious kidney infections than uncircumcised ones, less chance of acquiring STDs – including HIV – and less chance of invasive cancer of the penis. Circumcised men are less susceptible to developing eczema, psoriasis and phimosis. The only solution: immediate circumcision, no matter the age.
While one could argue the ethics of parents deciding for newborns, the law allows parents to decide for their children’s medical procedures up to 10 or 14 years of age, depending on the situation.
Finally, circumcision isn’t a practice only of Jews or Arabs; it has been performed by tribes from Africa to Australia, with no related religious affiliation, for many years. In today’s society you don’t need to belong to any one religion to be circumcised – people got smarter than that.

Sincerely,

Danny Paskin

In just over a month, the nation will celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of the most famous and impacting Supreme Court decisions in history. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, decided May 17, 1954, changed the landscape of American politics and paved the way for a new era of civil rights. The landmark decision declared segregation in American public schools to be unconstitutional.

Brown has had immense impact in our country. It served as a catalyst for the vital civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s and can be pointed to as a major factor in the appropriate upgrading of African Americans from second-class to first-class citizens. And, while there is definitely still room for improvement in making the public school system more equal and diverse, Brown was undoubtedly a great step forward.

However, while Brown is clearly one of the bright, shining moments of forward thinking of our Court, for every Brown, there are three other cases in which the Court failed miserably. Those cases often become largely forgotten, and aside from professionals in the legal field, cannot even be identified by the common American. It’s those cases in which we failed that we must be most familiar with, for those are the cases we can learn the most from.

In 1856, the Court decided on the case Dred Scott v. Sandford. Dred Scott was a slave who was moved with his master to a free territory, and so Scott then claimed that his presence in that territory freed him from slave status. The Court’s decision stated that because Scott was a slave, he had no right to even file a lawsuit in the first place; this decision solidified the pro-slavery factions and played a major factor in the beginning of the Civil War.

Later, in 1892, the Court decided on the case Plessy v. Ferguson. This case established the horrific “separate but equal” doctrine that the South relied on for half a century as its reasoning for furthering segregation and oppressing the rights of African Americans living within its borders – the doctrine is often referred to as “separate but unequal.” It was this decision that was eventually overturned by Brown.

Finally, in 1944, the Court heard Korematsu v. United States. This case, heard by many of the same justices that would later hear arguments in Brown, upheld the U.S. government’s ability to arbitrarily uproot Japanese Americans from their homes and throw them in “internment camps” meant for the protection of our national security.

Although Dred Scott, Plessy and Korematsu all took place before Brown – in fact, Brown is one of the few instances in which the Court reversed itself – they show how the Court is not always right. This is worthwhile to remember when looking at current Court decisions, since a ruling considered correct today might prove to be unacceptable in the future.

Brown was a landmark case that saw the judicial system of our country succeed marvelously. Yet, it’s vitally important that we take notice of the many times our justice system has failed us. It’s the times in which it fails to which we can look for lessons on what to be careful not to do in the future.

Cases like Brown v. Board and Roe v. Wade – the cases everyone knows – are the ones in which the political process, regardless of one’s personal political feelings, succeeded in checking the other two branches of government and interpreted constitutional rights favorable to a minority group of U.S. citizens.

However, we must realize that for every Linda Brown, there is a Dred Scott, a Homer Plessy and a Toyosaburo Korematsu. On this 50-year anniversary, they, too, should be remembered.