U.S. should not be compared to Israel in reference to terrorism

I have been outraged by recent claims from Israeli supporters that Israel is a victim of terrorism just as America has been a victim of terrorism. I have been extremely surprised that many Americans accept such a claim. It is a disservice to the United States of America to be compared with a country such as Israel. Although many people see America's foreign policy as far from perfect, America does not commit crimes against humanity the way that Israel does. The perpetrators of Sept. 11 were not victims of humiliation, the way that the Palestinian people are humiliated everyday.

The Israel military destroys homes of innocent Palestinians everyday. The Israeli military kills innocent Palestinian children everyday. Just because the Israelis have "fancier" ways of killing civilians besides suicide bombing does not make it any more right than the actions of the Hamas or Islamic Jihad. America, on the other hand, did nothing against al-Qaida or the Taliban before Sept. 11. The perpetrators of Sept.11 were not victimized by America the way the Palestinian people are victimized by the powerful Israeli military everyday. The perpetrators of Sept. 11 were middle-class men that were brainwashed to do something extremely wicked.

The Palestinian suicide bombers, on the other hand, are Palestinians who have been left in a hopeless position. These young men have seen their people massacred, their families murdered, their homes destroyed, and have then been labeled as terrorists anyway. If these men had a military to join to fight a fair war against Israel, they would much rather choose that path, rather then blowing themselves up, but everyone knows that this war is far from a fair. Israel is allowed to have F-16s, tanks, and even weapons of mass destruction, and to use these powerful weapons to attack young children armed with nothing more than rocks.

The fact is more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis. The fact is Israel's actions are no different than those actions by the Hamas. For some reason, Israeli supporters would have you believe that killing civilians with F-16s and tanks is okay. Well it is not, and to compare a country like Israel to the United States of America is not fair to America, and Americans should be the ones to stand up against such an unfair accusation.

Armand Navabi
computer science junior

Guns are 'dangerous to everyone'

One should always be careful when gun advocates (or conservatives, take your pick) start throwing statistics around. Here are the facts:

According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, 25.6 percent of all violent crimes and 65.6 percent of all murders were committed with a firearm. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistic's National Crime Victimization Survey, 22.7 percent of all aggravated assaults, 21.5 percent of all robberies, and 65 percent of all murders involved the use of firearms.

While it is probably too late to disarm the entire country, we are left to wonder how much safer we would be if no one, including criminals, had access to firearms. I know that I don't feel any safer with the thought that some gun-toting yahoo might open up on the street in "self defense." The police, with years of training, occasionally shoot the wrong person. What makes anyone think that untrained civilians (a few hours of classroom time does not qualify as training) will perform any better under pressure?

Crime is indeed a matter of personal responsibility. We should hold all criminals responsible for their actions. Firearms, however, only make criminals (and law-abiding citizens) more dangerous to everyone. Doesn't it make sense to try and keep to a minimum the damage done by our responsible criminals?

Mark Konty
criminology graduate instructor

Death penalty trials prove more expensive than life-prison term

Kudos to Caitlin Hall for her column in the Friday Wildcat, "A nation of killers and dreamers." She not only brings to light numerous misconceptions of capital punishment, but also challenges readers to think seriously about this truly outdated practice.

I would like to expand the counter argument to one pro-death penalty argument in particular, which states that, "abolishing capital punishment is unfair to the taxpayer, because life imprisonment is more expensive than executions." To the contrary, a murder trial normally takes much longer when the death penalty is a possible outcome. The increased litigation costs of these trials are eventually paid by the taxpayer.

A 1982 study showed that were the death penalty to be reintroduced in New York, the cost of the capital trial alone would be more than double the cost of a life term in prison.

In Maryland, a comparison of trial costs with and without the death penalty for the years 1979-1984 concluded that a death penalty trial costs: "approximately 42 percent more than a case resulting in a non-death sentence." In 1988 and 1989 the Kansas legislature voted against reinstating the death penalty after it was informed that reintroduction would involve a first-year cost of "more than $11 million."

Florida, with one of the nation's largest death rows, has estimated that the true cost of each execution is approximately $3.2 million, or approximately six times the cost of a life-imprisonment sentence.

The only way to make the death penalty more economically feasible than imprisonment is to weaken due process, which is the defendant's (and society's) only protections against inevitable human error in the justice system.

Andrew Farkas
renewable natural resources senior

Don't forget to wipe

What flies through the air, dispenses sanitary tissue, and can empty a commuter aircraft in fifteen minutes? That's right, a toilet-paper roller; it's the latest high-tech terrorist technology. Have we all become na•ve, paranoid, and illogical victims of terrorism?

If the objective of terrorism is to inflict terror, then we are letting the terrorists win by subjecting ourselves to ludicrous measures of protection. Locks on cockpit doors - good: evacuating airplanes because of broken sanitary devices - bad. National security is essential and paramount, but many security precautions taken since Sept. 11 seem to have only illusionary effects. We play the "what-if" game too often. What if that broken toilet paper roller had been a wire linked to a bomb? Well, what if the newspaper you are reading right now is coated in anthrax? Society must smoke a lot of pot; we are a paranoid bunch.

Christopher Marcum
sociology sophomore

The longview of history

With the large number of letters responding to Laura Winsky's March 25 column, "It's not charity; it's an outstanding debt," I would like to put my two cents in and gather together the bits and pieces from the different responses and compile them into a grand view of the issue.

One must step back and view slavery in the U.S. as part of a much larger system of production, profit, and exploitation. I agree with those who wrote that cotton was not the sole source of income in the South or the U.S. in general during the time of slavery. However, if one takes into account the total immigrant and native labor force of the U.S. throughout history, including African slaves, one will see that combined, that force produced nearly all the wealth of this country. Elias made a good point in saying that many immigrants suffered abuse upon arrival into the U.S., i.e. the Irish, Italians, Jews, Africans, Mexicans, Chinese, etc. Some suffered to a greater extent than others, given the conditions of their respective eras, but all were exploited nonetheless.

Hensley points out that it would be absurd to pay reparations to all groups who throughout history have been exploited by the hands of another class. I agree that simple "check cutting" will not get to the core of the problem, just like affirmative action does not solve the problem of unequal competition. In light of the fact that exploitation is not simply a white-black paradigm, one can see that it transcends racial lines and must be simply divided between owners and workers, haves and have-nots. All the wealth of the U.S. and the entire world, was and is produced by a labor force, be it slave or otherwise. Slavery was a profitable enterprise for the owners, but as time passed and the modes of production changed, it had to be replaced by the more productive industrial age. Only the external severity of the exploitation changed. It is still the working class that produces and the owning class that profits. Although in a few exceptional cases, members of the working class are able to rise up to the owning class.

So yes, there are whites today who prosper from the slavery of yesterday, but it is more important to see that it is the owning class that still exploits the working class.

Chris Buja
religious studies senior