THE EDITOR, Sir:
I REFER to your March 19 editorial entitled 'Terror in Madrid'.
One of the lessons of what happened in Spain is clearly that anti-terrorist legislation, such as existed in Spain, and which is being proposed here, cannot prevent determined terrorists from carrying out terrorist acts. To use such a Bill to curtail civil liberties makes it doubly objectionable.
The Spanish government chose to ignore the wishes of hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets demanding that the government not get involved in the American war against Iraq. As a result of ignoring those wishes two hundred innocent civilians lost their lives and over a thousand were wounded. I therefore congratulate the Spanish electorate on voting out this pig-headed government and hope that Blair and the others receive a similar fate.
What this is telling us, Mr. Editor, is that what is required to prevent terrorism is above all common sense. This means listening to the people along with a pragmatic assessment of what is fuelling this terrorism. There can be no dispute that until America ends its blind and obstinate support of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory, and end its illegal occupation of Iraq, there will always be an endless supply of people willing to take desperate measures against American interests.
It is not only "certain clauses" in our proposed anti-terrorist Bill which are objectionable. I would like to submit that the very premise of the Bill is flawed. It is based on the mistaken notion that punitive legislation, redundant at that, since we already have laws to punish any conceivable act of terrorism, can prevent such a thing from happening. If the premise of this legislation is flawed, not to mention its failure to define what is terrorism, then the rest of it must also be flawed and should be discarded in its entirety.
I am. etc.,
LLOYD D'AGUILAR
lgdaguilar@aol.com
Kingston 8
Via Go-Jamaica
