Posted on 09/16/2001 3:56:56 PM PDT by Marcella
Need help from Freepers: Read this Houston Chronicle Article. This guy teaches our children. I have copied the information below the article from the University of Texas at Austin site. Could all of you send emails to him, make phone calls to him and University of Texas President's Office, any of you living in or around Austin go down there and picket his office and do anythingelse you can think of to rid Texas of this blight. He needs to go to some other country, maybe Afghanistan. I haven't gone to his "home page" but think I will to see what that is like. If I find more stuff there you would be interested to know will post that.
Houston Chronicle 9/14/01U.S. just as guilty of committing own violent acts By ROBERT JENSEN
Sept. 11 was a day of sadness, anger and fear. Like everyone in the United States and around the world, I shared the deep sadness at the deaths of thousands. But as I listened to people around me talk, I realized the anger and fear I felt were very different, for my primary anger is directed at the leaders of this country and my fear is not only for the safety of Americans but for innocent civilians in other countries. It should need not be said, but I will say it: The acts of terrorism that killed civilians in New York and Washington were reprehensible and indefensible; to try to defend them would be to abandon one's humanity. No matter what the motivation of the attackers, the method is beyond discussion. But this act was no more despicable than the massive acts of terrorism -- the deliberate killing of civilians for political purposes -- that the U.S. government has committed during my lifetime. For more than five decades throughout the Third World, the United States has deliberately targeted civilians or engaged in violence so indiscriminate that there is no other way to understand it except as terrorism. And it has supported similar acts of terrorism by client states. If that statement seems outrageous, ask the people of Vietnam. Or Cambodia and Laos. Or Indonesia and East Timor. Or Chile. Or Central America. Or Iraq. Or Palestine. The list of countries and peoples who have felt the violence of this country is long. Vietnamese civilians bombed by the United States. Timorese civilians killed by a U.S. ally with U.S.-supplied weapons. Nicaraguan civilians killed by a U.S. proxy army of terrorists. Iraqi civilians killed by the deliberate bombing of an entire country's infrastructure. So, my anger is directed not only at individuals who engineered the Sept. 11 tragedy, but at those who have held power in the United States and have engineered attacks on civilians every bit as tragic. That anger is compounded by hypocritical U.S. officials' talk of their commitment to higher ideals, as President Bush proclaimed "our resolve for justice and peace." To the president, I can only say: The stilled voices of the millions killed in Southeast Asia, in Central America, in the Middle East as a direct result of U.S. policy are the evidence of our resolve for justice and peace. Though that anger stayed with me off and on all day on Sept. 11, it quickly gave way to fear, but not the fear of "Where will the terrorists strike next?" which I heard voiced all around me. Instead, I almost immediately had to face the question: "When will the United States, without regard for civilian casualties, retaliate?" I wish the question were, "Will the United States retaliate?" But if history is a guide, it is a question only of when and where. So, the question is which civilians will be unlucky enough to be in the way of the U.S. bombs and missiles that might be unleashed. The last time the United States responded to terrorism, the attack on its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, it was innocents in the Sudan and Afghanistan who were in the way. We were told that time around they hit only military targets, though the target in the Sudan turned out to be a pharmaceutical factory. As I monitored television during the day on Tuesday, the talk of retaliation was in the air; in the voices of some of the national security "experts" there was a hunger for retaliation. Even the journalists couldn't resist; speculating on a military strike that might come, Peter Jennings of ABC News said, "The response is going to have to be massive," if it is to be effective. Let us not forget that a "massive response" will kill people, and if thepattern of past U.S. actions holds, it will kill innocents. Innocentpeople, just like the ones in the towers in New York and the ones on theairplanes that were hijacked. To borrow from President Bush, "mother andfathers, friends and neighbors" will surely die in a massive response. If we are truly going to claim to be decent people, our tears must flow not only for those of our own country. People are people, and grief that is limited to those within a specific political boundary denies the humanity of others. And if we are to be decent people, we all must demand of our government -- the government that a great man of peace, Martin Luther King Jr., once described as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world" -- that the insanity stop here. Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas in Austin. Faculty Member Robert Jensen Associate Professorrjensen@mail.utexas.edu Courses Fall 2001J310 Critical Issues in JournalismFS301 The Ethics and Politics of Everyday LifeTC357 Freedom of Expression Contact Info Mailing Address:Journalism Dept.Mail Code: A1000University of TexasAustin, TX 78712 Phone512.471.1990 Fax512.471.7979 OfficeCMA 5.134D W 8:30 - 11:30 a.m. LinksBob Jensen's HomepageBob Jensen's PortfolioFaculty Books Page Robert Jensen became a member of the UT journalism faculty in 1992 after earning his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Jensen received an M.A. in journalism and public affairs from American University and his B.S. in social studies/education from Moorehead State University.Jensen has received the 1996-97 Texas Excellence Teaching Award for the College of Communication. This annual award is based on student nominations. Recently he won the 2000-01 Dads' Association Centennial Teaching Fellowship, a university-wide award honoring excellence in undergraduate teaching, with an emphasis on teaching first-year students. Jensen's writings cover topics including media law and ethics, news gathering and news construction, media depictions of gender and sexuality, pornography and violence against women, as well as feminist ethics and jurisprudence. He has written two books: Freeing the First Amendment and Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality.He is currently affiliated with several local political groups, such as the UT Radical Action Network and National Network to End the War against Iraq, which have organized teach-ins, demonstrations and public education events about U.S. foreign policy. He is a member of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) and a supporter of the University Staff Association's fight for fair wages. Course History: Name Robert JensenRobert W Jensen Title Assoc Professor, Ph.D. College/Department Department of JournalismCollege of Communication E-Mail rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu Office Phone +1 512-471-1990 Office Address Journalism DeptCampus Mail Code: A1000University of TexasAustin, TX 78712 Room CMA 4.112 Home Phone +1 512-371-9327 Home Address 4209 Burnet Rd #204Austin, TX 78756
Duh,this guys a professor??
Oh, he's a Journalist, why am I not surprised
Enough said!
Yup, this professor must be right... It's just a shame that it didn't happen this way. It never ceases to amaze me when I see these pointy headed intellectuals theorize about how much better things would have been if they had only been done some other way...
Hey, prof... I hate to tell you, but the genie is already out of the bottle. For better or worse, earlier generations of politicians have made decisions that they decided would be in the best interest of the country. Now we have to deal with it...
If the US were to go in and kill every Jew in Israel tomorrow, that still wouldn't stop terrorists like Hamas or Bin Laden: They are on a mission to rid the world of all western influences, and they won't stop with just the middle east.
We have to deal with the terrorist threat now, and capitulation isn't the way to deal with it... I find it interesting that when Israel used to deal with terrorists by killing them and displacing their families, the number of terrorist attacks dropped. However, when trying to deal with terrorists as though they were just political adversaries, well, has anybody else noticed that there have been an increase in the number of bombings in Israel over the last few years?
There is great wisdom in the old phrase, Peace Through Superior Firepower.
Mark
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