Check the facts
To the Editor:
This is in reponse to Lauren Bialystok's column ("Penn's peace movement looks for the answers," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 9/25/01). In it, she claimed that the group Penn for Peace "discovered that the CNN clips of Palestinians supposedly rejoicing at the latest terrorist successes were actually filed 10 years ago."
I want Penn for Peace to know that the images shown by CNN were in fact accurate and up to date. The claim that these were invalid images is false, and the source of this false claim has been identified. It has been traced back to a university student and his teacher in Brazil.
I hope that in the future more thorough investigation is done before using such questionable evidence in an article or column.
The U.S. war on terrorism demands that the truth be front and center. I find it very ironic that those who claim to know the best path to peace would believe such disgusting deception and trickery.
Seth Finck
College '02
Due process for all
To the Editor:
Mark Fiore's column ("Students to Soldiers," DP, 9/24/01) is an insult to those in the United States and throughout the world who are dedicated to a peaceful solution to conflict.
Most pacifists do not believe that "The United States should take its medicine and move on," as he so blithely asserts. Instead, they believe that a violent response to violence only creates more of the same.
Answering an atrocity with more atrocities is a tactic worthy of Josef Stalin, but not of our great country. While going forward with war against Afghanistan might hurt the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden, it definitely would hurt and kill many, many innocents who neither have nor want a part in terrorism.
Similarly, Fiore's belief that due process for the terrorists would be "an insult," is one that does not seem worthy of our country. One of the great things of the American judicial system is the right to trial by an impartial jury. Taking criminals out back and shooting them, while superficially just, goes against the principles that the Founding Fathers were willing to fight and die for. "An eye for an eye," as Gandhi said, "leaves the whole world blind."
Perhaps Fiore should have more respect for those who are working towards the day when, "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; they shall not learn war any more."
Brian Pitt
College '04
