Campus activist not down with protesting the university 
issue du jour 

The Diamondback coverage of the World Bank/International
Monetary Fund protests were much improved from past
coverage. The Diamondback printed relevant and - in the
case of Rugged Rabbit - funny comic strips, sent
reporters, talked to university activists and, on
occasion, actually dealt with the issues at the root of
the protest. Nevertheless, as a campus activist, I was
not only disappointed but also offended by the tone of
the editorial staff ("Don't let activism be a one-night
stand," Oct. 1).

The editorial mockingly stated that since the World Bank
conference is over, we activists can take part in the
"National (insert your favorite charity here) Month," and
the author lists some fund drives for various
organizations in the coming fall. To wrap up, the
articles told us, "... divert some of your attention to
matters closer to the campus." The message of the article
was that we should wise up and do productive work. Even
the title was preachy and presumptuous.

Well, The Diamondback should know that the activists who
went to Washington with the Peace Forum or the Maryland
Action Collective are working all the time on proactive
causes. Members of these groups: build homes with Habitat
for Humanity; feed the poor and give out medical supplies
with MaryPIRG; inform students of their rights and fight
university drug and policing policy with Students for a
Sensible Drug Policy; and started and run Earthworks,
which is a group that leads camping and rock-climbing
trips for Washington youth as an alternative to prison
sentences.  These are simply examples of work that
friends of mine have done while engaging in other forms
of activism.

So the natural question is, what service or pro-activist
work do any of The Diamondback editors take part in? What
gives them the right to preach to those of us who are
busy all day with service and activist projects?

Simon Fitzgerald 
Government and politics 
Sophomore 

Pre-emptive strike against Iraq needed to curtail road 
similar to World War II 

As I walk around the campus, I find myself seeing many
"No war" and "Not in our name" fliers and signs and all I
can think of is one thing:  What I see is British Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain returning from the Munich
Conference in 1938 and announcing to cheering crowds in
London that he had achieved "Peace for our time!" Well, I
believe we all know what happened next. The arguments
then were the same as those today. Instead, we ended up
with millions upon millions of innocent people dead in
the worst war and systematic mass murder in human
history.  Historians have largely agreed that, if the
world powers had stood up to Hitler and gone in
preemptively, the war and the Holocaust could have
largely been avoided.

It is this same sort of pre-emptive action that the left
wing and liberals today are railing against. I do not
want to say I believe Saddam Hussein capable of something
on the scale of Nazi Germany; that was a singular event I
pray will never be repeated. But Saddam Hussein is
capable of the same thing on a smaller scale; indeed he
has already done it, gassing thousands of Kurds in
northern Iraq while the United States and other world
powers did nothing, just as they did nothing as the Nazis
marched all over Europe. Regrettably, a pre-emptive war
in Iraq would kill innocent civilians; a perfect war is
not possible. But I put forth this question at the risk
of sounding cold: What is worse, the accidental killing
of maybe 1,000 civilians in a war, or the slaughter of
hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, because we stood
by and did nothing? Let's not repeat the same mistakes of
1938. I want to be one of those who learns from history,
not one of those doomed to see it repeated.

Daniel Izzo 
Freshman 
Astronomy