U.S. Should Set An Example

To the Editors:

America must bring to justice those responsible for so many deaths of innocent people last week. But because we know how painful it is to lose our loved ones, we are challenged to do everything possible to spare the lives of innocent people.
As we pray for those who lost loved ones and praise all the rescuers, it becomes even more obvious how great America is. No country is more powerful militarily than the United States; no country offers more freedom and hope to us and to the rest of the world. We must, therefore, use the minimum force necessary to obtain the maximum security of our great country.
We have more nuclear weapons and more means of unleashing them than perhaps all the other countries combined. All the nations together cannot rival us in our capacity to kill others and to kill them so swiftly. But with all this power to retaliate and gain a good measure of revenge, our most potent and first weapon to be unleashed must be a renewal of America’s commitment to be a far more just and humane nation both at home and abroad.
Few doubt that we will use our military might effectively to defend America and virtually all of us support that. However, it is doubtful that America will embark upon a more vigorous policy of ensuring that all Americans and all others in the world will be treated more justly and more humanely in the future.
Unless we perpetually sow the seeds of justice and humanity world-wide, we will perpetually reap a harvest of wars and upheavals in spite of our military superiority. No military superiority alone can ever bring us the security we long for today.
Without the implementation of such a policy, there will always be strikes from terrorists from abroad and at home. It should never surprise us that people will give their lives gladly if they feel themselves treated unjustly. America is hardly the world’s greatest country just because it possesses such an awesome military. Its greatness is due in part to the promises it held out to Martin Luther King, to Malcolm X, to Thurgood Marshall, to Harriet Tubman and to our ancestors. Blacks have always stood by America in peace and in war. We have understood that if America suddenly ceased to exist, conditions throughout most of the world would get worse very quickly for most people, including black Americans.
It is easy to understand that if some of African-Americans’ longstanding problems are to be properly addressed, they must be addressed by the country most responsible for those problems and most able to solve them. That country is America, where the greatest hope for liberty and justice exists.
In spite of America’s unkept promises in the past and today, we Americans must accept the solemn duty and challenge to see that we do achieve liberty and justice for all human beings, including those who now hate us. No less is expected of a great country.

–Booker C. Peek
Professor of African American Studies Associate Professor
African-American Studies Department