The following was an email conversation that took place between myself (Shad Larson) and Thamasanqa Mahlangabeza April 30th and May 3rd 2013. All the questions presented to me by Thamasanqa are in blue and my responses are in red.
A lot has been happening in the States in the past couple of weeks which makes it difficult to know where to begin. But you can rest your mind assured that I want to pick your brain on all of them.
As for Boston I do not know what to make of it exactly. It definitely does seem to be caused by religious extremist thought, but I do not think it is attached to anything international and was just the actions of rogue misguided people. I am scared that people are again going to have a knee jerk reaction and continues grouping all Muslims into the category of terrorist. I really like the Muslim people and believe that the majority of them just want to live peacefully and believe that attacks on civilians is a sin. Of the American Muslims I have met, I see them as simply Americans just like me who want to live the American dream in peace. Its always unfortunate when extremist step in and put a bad reputation on an excellent group of people. If Christians could live Christianity as good as Muslims live Islam, the world would be a much better place. Now to how the government reacted I do not agree with the actions they took. First of all the police and FBI stormed and searched hundreds of houses and kicked normal Americans out of their homes without Warrants or without declaring Martial law. Also by forcing a shutdown of the entire of city of Boston again without declaring martial law is a problem. Thus I see a grave violation of constitutional rights and law by the security officials, the mayor, and the Governor. Secondly I did not like the call by many republican congressmen to try the suspect as an enemy combatant thereby striping him of his rights as an American citizen and being able to hold him indefinitely without a trail. I do not care what crime he committed, he is still a citizen and has the same rights as any other citizen convicted of a crime regardless if he was born here or immigrated here. So that was extremely concerning to me that there were actually lawmakers who would violate constitutional rights so quickly and easily. I care deeply about the precedent such decisions would set. In the future, the government could just claim any citizen a combatant and suspend habeus corpus and ship them to some CIA black site. That is scary to me. Now I am glad that the Obama Administration decided to try him in the civilian court not as an enemy combatant, but I am very disappointed that the administration chose not to give him his Miranda Rights till around 4 hours after FBI interrogation. This is another scary move by the government who seems to be able to justify bypassing laws set up to protect its citizens when it thinks its national security is at risk. So by and large I do not like the government reaction to the situation and I see a potential for the government to act in a Totalitarian manner easily. By them being so easily to disregard the laws for people rights it scares me to think what they will do when a larger problem shows up.
Now for the immigration bill I do want our immigration laws changed. I haven't necessarily looked at the entire bill but I do like the idea that would allow illegal immigrants to gain citizenship status. We have millions of illegals in this country and contrary to the Republican ideas we CANNOT deport them all. It would be practically impossible to do so and they actually do benefit our economy greatly. As for me I view the United States as a land of immigrants and I would love more people from every country in the world to immigrate to the U.S.A. Its what makes us America. Being American to me does not mean that you have to be white and speak english. American to me is black, white, latino, asian, ect.. and all their different languages. WE ARE ALL IMMIGRANTS. Somewhere down the line someone in everyone's family was an immigrant. So I hate our current immigration policy and I look forward to it changing so that legal immigration is easier and illegals in the country have a chance to earn their citizenship and become American. As for the gun bill I am kind of split. I am, probably to your dismay, a gun rights proponent. I am a concealed carry permit holder and do own my own guns. Parts of the bill I did not totally disagree with such as the background check when a person buys a gun. I had to get a background check to get my concealed weapons permit so I do not see a problem with it every time a person buys a gun. Do i think it would solve the issue, no, but it would help a little bit to keep legal guns out of the wrong hands but if bad guys want guns they will get them somehow. So that part I was ok with, but excessive gun control by the government scares me. I do not like when governments gets larger and has more people. It needs to fear its people so that it does not overstep its bounds. It reminds me of what happened to the saints of the church in Missouri at the beginning of our LDS history when the Missouri government took away all of the saints weapons promising protection but then turned on them and illegal drove them out of the state and allowed hundreds to be killed by mobs because they could not protect themselves. As I see the government step more into controlling guns I see a totalitarian tendency for complete control. The government does not like uncertainty and civilians having so many guns creates uncertainty for the government which they do not like. So problems like that always come to my mind when I think about government controlling the arms of civilians. I do not trust government enough to advocate for strict gun control. If we had a perfectly upright and good government I would advocate for gun control but we do not and we the people have the right to protect ourselves where the government fails to do so.
Thirdly, Obama said "a red line" would be crossed by Syria if they start using chemical weapons against its citizen. A report to confirm that they have crossed it is out, so it would appear that Al Basir has called your president's bluff; what now for America?
Over the Syrian issue I am very torn over what to do. First off I am disgusted by American hypocrisy in the matter. We justified going into Iraq because we claimed that they had these weapons of mass destruction but they didn't. The whole premise of the attack was based on that one point. Now Syria has apparently used chemical weapons and the U.S does nothing. Its interesting that for a potential Iraq with these weapons we justified attacking, but a Syria with confirmed reports of using these weapons we do nothing. I just think its interesting. However, this does not mean that I am necessarily advocating for a U.S intervention considering we do not even know who the rebels are anymore. Also I do not want a direct U.S intervention because the United States has proved it cannot be unbiased in helping other countries and is always just interested in its own interests and not necessarily the interests of the people that live in these other countries. I would however support a U.N led intervention in the country with U.S support. I do not want the U.S doing anything for their own interests, if we do anything it must be for the best interests of the people of Syria and the best way to ensure this is the U.N taking the lead in the matter. Maybe a no fly zone imposed over the country by U.N countries would be an appropriate response to the use of chemical weapons by Assad. As for Obama's red line comment he should have never made it. It doesn't look like he will do anything which weakens his rhetoric in the Middle east and he should just have directed all response to the U.N because that is what it was created for.
I do think that South Korean fears are unjustified. We have never shown any lack of commitment to the country and have been consistently aiding the country in deterring the North. Also I think the U.S will stand by Japan and South Korean more than it did for Vietnam because we have much more to loose if South Korea or Japan fall. First off we need our bases in Korea and Japan. They are located in a very tactical position to deal with any potential Chinese threat and provide security for the region. Also we are so economically tied to both Japan and South Korea it would be a big blow to our economic interests if they were to be overrun by North Korea. So yes I do think that they can rely on the U.S to provide security and deterrence against North Korea. But in the end it will probably never really be needed because the North is just full of threats but will never do anything, They know they cannot win a war against the South and the U.S. This aggressive behavior is just an attempt to get the U.S to enter into bilateral negotiations. They just want more aid and concessions from the U.S. This is how they have always acted in the past and it is what they are doing now. It is just a political game they are playing with the international community and the international community is playing right into their hands. We need to just ignore them and not respond to their threats.
Fifthly, Japan is at loggerheads with China over five small inhabited islands.
Finally for the Japanese and Chinese problem I think the U.S needs to try and get the U.N more involved to create a compromise. It seems that neither country is willing to back down from the Islands so there does need to be some sort of international negotiating started so that we can avoid incidents liked the Chinese radar locking
