LETTER: Boldness will protect us

Editor,

To the students of UNM:

You have joined with thousands of students around the nation in being willing to raise your questions of concern.

As a nation, we face an administration that is preparing to launch a war that poses most serious and devastating consequences for the world. Millions of people around the world have spoken in recent demonstrations. The governments of Turkey, Russia, France, Germany and China have spoken to the community of nations without equivocation or condition.

Once again, a president seeks to plunge us into a war that does not have the support of the American people. Once again we seek to dominate the national destinies of people halfway around the world.

Now, however, we face a unique circumstance in our recent history. Never in recent history have we confronted such a crisis that incorporates world war, the dismantling of the Constitution of the United States through the use of extra-judicial authority, the attempt to circumvent the United Nations and international law and threats to our national security and defense.

President Bush has compared our witness to that of a "focus group" and has brushed us aside. Our political representatives are just now awakening as city councils and state legislatures around the nation address our concern for the ramifications of the Patriot Act on our rights and liberties.

Only our boldness will protect us; only our truth will win over our fellow countrymen and women; only through our perseverance can we translate this experience into a political expression of the people that will get us off this cycle of permanent war hysteria and international conflict.

Let us listen to a world that has spoken so loudly and act as a nation of conscience and good faith. We are free men and women. It is nothing less than that very freedom, which we hold so precious, is at stake for our children's generation. Let us give them an inheritance, no less valued than the one bequeathed to us.

Martin Zehr

Daily Lobo reader