Old Weird Ward
Unless otherwise noted, that which is posted here is opinion, which is protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. If you don't like my opinions, go somewhere else. Nobody is forcing you to actually read this drivel.
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Wednesday, November 10, 2004
- - - - - Sept 11th in The Classroom - - - - -
According to FrontPage, the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, were actually America's fault!
At least, in a story in FrontPage (HERE), this is the conclusion reached various teachers of grade school, middle school, and high school students who submitted lesson plans to Dickenson College in search of a prize.
Somewhat more forthcoming is the University of Massachusetts’ David Mednicoff. Critics have charged that “Explaining Terror,” Mednicoff’s winning lesson plan, is troublingly true to its mission, explaining terrorism as a logical response to American foreign policy in the Middle East. Confronted with this criticism, Mednicoff bristles at the implication that his course has an underlying agenda. “My interest is in having students ask and answer for themselves questions about the possible connections between terrorism and September 11,” he says in an interview. “I do not indoctrinate my students; my students have no idea what my politics are.”
That may well be true. But even the briefest online sleuthing would disclose the fact that Mednicoff, besides being a severe critic of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, has routinely alleged that this policy laid the seedbed for the terrorism of 9-11. Here, for instance, is how Mednicoff sums up his philosophy on teaching students about 9-11: “What students need is an introduction to Middle Eastern History, politics, a set of questions about what the United States’ role in the region has been in the past and whether its reasonable to make connections between that role and what happened on September 11.” In December of 2003, Mednicoff made a similar point on the Web site of the Chronicle of Higher Education: “[T]he problem is that most Americans, and government in particular, seem uninterested in addressing the connection between American foreign policy general tendencies and unilateral practices and this anger.”
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Now, US foreign policy in the Mid-East may or may not cause Islamist extremists to dislike us. The fact remains that more people died in the World Trade Center, in the Pentagon, and on Flight 93 than died at Pearl Harbor.
And now, the terrorists are trying to re-take Iraq.
My challenge to the "winners" of this prize is: What, exactly, is wrong with the idea of the following:
1. Throw out a brutal dictator.
2. Hold free elections, so that the Iraqis may decide for themselves what government they want.
Come to think of it, isn't that also a question for the UN to answer, if they can?
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