Wake Up

These are strange days we live in. From now and for eternity America will be evolving in a perpetual state of post 9-11. The events of Sept. 11, 2001 have changed the face of America permanently. It was the catalyst for the revisiting of American history - the part of our history that isn't filled with glory and strength, but a history of the legislated defamation of civil liberties.

Now, it is almost criminal to be unpatriotic, to question the efforts of our government, or to question the reasons the tragedy of 9-11 happened. The bereavement of the American people has been used as justification for war. But, is revenge and retaliation the true reason for this impending war?

What many people may not know is that the media has been extremely censored in the last year. The information provided by the news is very vague and open ended. Here is some information that our newspapers and CNN don't tell you:

In the 1980s, the United States gave $5 billion to Islamic fundamentalist rebels that were fighting the Soviets who then occupied Afghanistan.

Where am I going with this? Well, some of that money was filtered to the Taliban. Also, according to New York's WBAI radio report, a big time oil company, Unocal, found that there was a vast amount of oil to be exploited in the Caspian Basin, but in order to get this oil a 1,000-mile pipeline would have to be built through Afghanistan. Everything was going according to plan, with U.S. diplomats in place, until the Taliban took over Kabul in 1996. They weren't going to allow that to happen; America would get the oil the same way they always drain resources from third world countries - by force.

This oil conflict began long before Sept. 11, but now President Bush has a reason to go to war with the sentiment of the American people behind him. So it's okay to go into Afghanistan and kill people, but what about Iraq? America wants to go there and find out what type of weapons they have. Could you imagine a country ever having the audacity to even suggest coming into America and roaming around military training camps and bases? Oh yeah, search the White House, too. It would be a snowstorm in Sin City before that ever happened. But the United States feels that it is okay to do this to another country. This inequity is presented to us as a way of securing the freedom of America. We need to realize that America is the most powerful country on the planet and the only people that can take away our freedom is ourselves.

The media doesn't cushion the tension or give the whole story; they only try to confirm fears and use it as an approval for whatever our government does, including racial profiling and the unconstitutional imprisonment of Middle Eastern people. The Homeland Security Bill will allow the government to profile all Arabian people before allowing them to enter or leave the country. Not just a felon or an illegal alien, but anyone of that descent - a schoolteacher, physician, or a student. According to the Judicial Report, thousands of men from five Muslim countries - Libya, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria - will be fingerprinted and photographed as part of the anti-terrorism phenomenon. This legislation is racist and unconstitutional. But, we have to remember that the constitution can be suspended when our government deems it beneficial for the American people. Does that make sense? The one document that is supposed to protect our privacy and way of life can be taken away at any given moment. I think that many students of the MTV generation don't really care about these things because we think that it won't affect us, but every big endeavor that our government makes trickles down and will affect each of us personally.

We college students should take it upon ourselves to be aware of what is happening in our world and understand it. We pay all this money for our education so that we can one day keep the planet going. Open your eyes. I like a good party like everybody else, but there is more to living than youthful hedonism. You don't have to be an activist or a tree-hugger, or some super serious political nerd. We should just be aware of the world that is evolving around us so that we can live better in it.