HOLY WARS WAGED IN COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION

(In response to Austin Yost’s Wednesday column, “Shooting with holy books: a war within a war.”)

I would like to start by pointing out most people willing to shoot or kill U.S. troops are more than willing to do so because they are American or non-Muslim than what the sights on their weapons have printed on them. For these people, it’s already a crusade or a jihad or a culture war.

The sights in question were selected based on their capabilities — ruggedness, not dependent on batteries, effectiveness — and are intended to improve U.S. and other nations’ troops ability to accomplish their mission and survive. When the comparison is made between the cost of having the words on these sights, the benefits to the troops’ survival, and the probable risk of both of these factors being important is weighed, the probable overall added danger is probably small on a battlefield.

The greater problem is essentially in the court of public opinion.

The inscriptions don’t alter the effectiveness of the sights and only a few soldiers both knew and cared about the inscriptions before the big news blow up. On the other side, many of the potential “benefactors” of these quotes are themselves illiterate and have little access to outside news sources. The worst-case scenario is turning the cultural artifact of these inscriptions into either the withdrawal of these sights without adequate replacement or the creation of outrage in otherwise uninterested groups.

Personally, I think the public’s expressed indignant outrage over the sights is probably communication enough to the otherwise uninterested that jihad — oops, crusade — is not the actual intent.

Carl J. Armstrong Jr.

Undergraduate