Jordan River Forum

Bombings hurt civilians Your Oct. 31 staff editorial contends that the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan should continue. But the only residents of Afghanistan you mention are Osama bin Laden and members of the Taliban. One would never know from your editorial that 22.5 million people, the vast majority of them not terrorists or religious fundamentalists, live there. One in three Afghans -- 7.5 million people -- depend on food shipments from international relief agencies to keep them alive. Relief workers, understandably reluctant to drive their trucks through regions being heavily bombed, have severely curtailed food shipments. "It is now evident that we cannot, in reasonable safety, get food to hungry Afghan people," said Oxfam America President Raymond Offenheiser. "We've reached the point where it is simply unrealistic for us to do our job in Afghanistan. We've run out of food, the borders are closed, we can't reach our staff and time is running out." Many mountain passes will be closed for the winter by snow within two weeks. Without a pause in the bombing soon, at least 500,000 people -- nearly 100 times the number who died in the World Trade Center attacks -- will not receive enough food aid to survive the winter. U.S. food drops are not a meaningful attempt to feed Afghanistan's hungry millions, but a cynical propaganda ploy. "Scattering food parcels, whose rations are unsuitable for starving children, has been insultingly useless," says journalist Mary Riddell. "Even if all the airdrops missed minefields and reached the neediest, the $320 million earmarked by the U.S. would feed only a quarter of the hungry for one day." The United States shows no signs of desiring to suspend its bombing campaign anytime soon. In short, not only have U.S. bombs directly killed more than 1,000 civilians so far, but the United States stands on the brink of committing a Holocaust-scale crime against humanity. And for what? As is painfully obvious in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, 1998's bombing of al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan did nothing whatsoever to disable their terrorist network, which is scattered across dozens of countries. Why would bombing Afghanistan work any better now?

An effective war? We are four weeks into the bombing of Afghanistan, and yet no terrorists have been killed or brought to justice, according to media and the military. I ask everyone: Why do we need to kill for revenge? Unfortunately, thousands of innocent victims who are not associated with the Taliban whatsoever have been subjected to terrorism from the United States in the last four weeks. War is terrorism, and most people don't understand that, because the war isn't in your backyard. The word "terrorism" means the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons. That sounds more like the United States every day! We are, according to President George W. Bush, fighting for freedom, but we need to ask Mr. Bush why we have to lose freedom in the process. Many people come to the United States to escape governments who act the way the U.S. government is acting right now. I urge everyone to look at the whole picture, and please take your American flags off your vehicles, because keeping the flag up means that you support the fascist government's stealing of our rights, and support killing of more innocent people. Bloomington 'unservice' I just started riding the Bloomington Transit (un)service this semester and have realized how bad it really is. In the morning, the bus is supposed to come every five minutes, and every 15 minutes in the afternoon. Depending on what time of the day it is, the bus usually comes every 25 minutes to every half-hour. But on occasion, I have waited for the bus for more than 45 minutes to an hour. In the afternoon, if you miss one bus, you miss them all. The reason behind this is that the buses get so off schedule that they run in a clump, one right after another, bumper to bumper. You would think BT would do something about this since IU is giving them so much money. But, no. I thought the point of calling it a "service" was that the transit was actually supposed to provide something of use to the public. And to all the people who live on campus: you don't need to ride the bus! This excludes those who life in Eigenmann Hall, Tulip Tree and the greek houses, if you consider them on-campus, because that is far. But people who ride the bus from the Indiana Memorial Union and even the Main Library to places like the Wright and Teter Quads, that is just pure laziness. I was an underclassman once and I walked from my dorm to all my classes -- it's just part of being a freshman and getting your leg muscles built up. But I guess kids these days are too good to walk. So if you live on campus and want to ride the bus, think about all those people who live at University Commons and the Fields who walk to class every day.