Opinion column: Proud to disagree

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By Friday Forum

When I read Danielle Sharp’s letter on Tuesday, titled “Be Proud of Your Country,” I became extremely frustrated. I was once again reminded of the Republicans’ constant misrepresentation of those who don’t support President Bush or the war in Iraq as being unpatriotic and lending to international antipathy for the United States.

First, Sharp writes that as those “who have traveled abroad in the last few years know, the United States, and especially President Bush, are highly unpopular.” She then goes on to argue this is our fault and that we shouldn’t expect the rest of the world to revere the United States and its leaders when U.S. citizens don’t.

Maybe it is our fault to the extent we voted an unpopular president into office (after all, former Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote by around a half-million votes).

Or maybe it’s our fault because U.S. citizens having different points of views probably creates mass confusion when the international community is trying to figure out what our foreign policy actually stipulates. I would have to say though, with slightly more confidence, that the international community doesn’t support Bush (and therefore the United States) for the same reasons why many U.S. citizens don’t support Bush. Get it? Not because U.S. citizens don’t support Bush, but for the same reasons U.S. citizens don’t support Bush.

Sharp also writes how she’s left in awe by those who decide to protest the war for “one reason or another,” and that we should be supportive of the men and women risking their lives for freedom and democracy, etc.

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First, this is tantamount to saying that once our government sends troops abroad, we must support our country’s actions irrespective of rationale and justification. Okay.

Second, you and your fellow Republicans still are trying to set up this fallacious disjunctive between being pro-U.S. and anti-war – attempting to divide the country between those who are pro-Bush and those who must be “traitors” living among us, longing to see U.S. soldiers captured while switching off weeks hiding Osama in our basements.

The greatest counter example for your argument of supporting the troops – supporting the war – that I can give you, is that of Nazi Germany. I know you’d never say a German who opposed the Holocaust would be someone who was unpatriotic and should have kept his or her mouth shut. He or she simply was voicing what they believed to be right, regardless if it disagreed with his or her government’s policies. But, if you used your argument exactly as constructed, including your desire to support the president and to forget about “petty ideologies (justice and peace, for example),” you would attempt to silence those Germans who were in opposition to Hitler’s war.

Because you “clearly understand the principles of the Constitution and its amendments,” (pretty impressive for a senior in LAS) you obviously must realize our freedom of speech should not be censored in times of conflict but relished and exercised. And that nicely segues to why I’m extremely proud of my country. No matter who tries to silence me by branding me a traitor or an anti-American, I can exercise the rights our wise forefathers bestowed upon us and remind people that supporting your president without consideration doesn’t make you a patriot – but standing up for your beliefs and voicing your opinions does.

Adam White

senior in LAS