Madeleine K. Albright and the majority of our leaders quickly and loosely use the words "cowardly," "murder," and "terrorism" when describing the recent acts against Americans in Kenya and Tanzania. It should be an insult to our intelligence when she uses propaganda-like tactics to get us to hate or dislike an underdog that eludes and aggravate us. The truth is that an opponent that has no ships, no planes and no cruise missiles, has become formidable. Much like the North Vietnamese, so-called terrorists are doing it without the expensive conveniences of modern technology. We may not like how they are doing it but if anything we should admire their success against Goliath; it is much like our own story. America needs only to take a look in our brief history at acts like the Boston Tea Party and our Declaration of Independence from the tyranny of the Crown. When the massive army of a world power said it's "fine" for British soldiers to oppress the tiny colonies they were defeated by using guerrilla warfare tactics that the British would have called cowardly. This is the very essence of our existence as a nation.

We condemn actions after we've take advantage of it. We are hypocrites at best. We slaughter the natives and now we've sent soldiers to Bosnia to stop their ethnic cleansing. We destroy Europe trying to stop Hitler from creating a system of wealth and racial superiority of the white race when he used the American south as his model. We celebrate independence while we still owned slaves. We claimed that if Sadam has nuclear weapons it would be in the wrong hands, but it was we who dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities killing non-combatants. America seems to think that we should make all the rules but only after we have taken advantage of them. These so-called terrorists have declared war against us; either we free them or we fight them. If we continue to live on the advantageous side of double standards, then we should continue to expect the underdog, the oppressed, and the different to wage war against our tyranny.

Copyright © 1998 by A.C. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.
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