Last week when I questioned the wisdom of our military strategy, a lot of readers found it downright amusing. I can’t say I blame you. As was pointed out to me, I have never had military training of any kind, nor have I ever risked my life on the battlefield for a smartass kid while he sits in a late-night coffee shop and philosophizes about the relative importance of his safety.

I was completely unprepared for the tremendous amount of e-mail I received. Coherent, outraged sources ranged from parents of State News employees to my best friend in California. Those who praised me all came, predictably, from the quasi-liberal student body at MSU.

I’m convinced readers were ready to love me or hate me based on the headline my editor wrote for me. They read on, either nodding their heads in excited agreement or handpicking the weakest parts of my argument so they could electronically wave them in my face minutes later.

But to say that our country is divided would not be accurate, since most people are overwhelmingly in favor of the war effort. Dissent is at something of an all-time low.

Popular social critics who dare to voice concerns or imply any vaguely “anti-American” sentiments are condemned with threats of censorship and reprisal. The most lauded three are Noam Chomsky, Bill Maher and Susan Sontag, all of whom, weeks ago, dared to vocally and publicly explore the origins of what made terrorists do this in the first place.

But people aren’t interested in asking those kind of questions yet. When the kids I knew in high school start coming home in body bags, then people will start asking why. For the moment, it’s like we’re at some kind of supercharged football game.

Condoleezza Rice, our president’s national security adviser, contacted the major U.S. networks about two weeks ago and asked them to stop airing statements released by Osama bin Laden. Our government was very open about having made this request. Officials maintained he could be using the statements to communicate encoded messages to his followers. “Kill all the Americans” propaganda isn’t really something the American public needs to hear anyway.

But the first reason for this censorship doesn’t make the least bit of sense. There are other easily accessible sources of media besides the major American networks. The real and important question Rice has raised: Are there certain points of view we don’t need?

The most compelling and popular justification is that this is a time of national crisis, and our complete unity is necessary for success. In other words, this is not a time to question our superiors.

And the reason I questioned the bombing and brought up the innocent people we’ve been killing is precisely because it’s something I hear so very little of. My hate mail provides a good cross section of the sorts of justifications people give for the disassociation of the role they know they share in the continuing violence.

“In all wars there are always innocent casualties” -that’s a popular one. No one ever mentions that the number could be either 10 or 10,000, or that we have any choice in the matter. I’m convinced people haven’t come to terms with the decision we, through our government, have made. It’s an extremely old question: Which do you value more, the lives of civilians, or the lives of the American military? It’s a question everyone has to answer for themselves.

Whatever you decide, I reject the idea that when you do not agree with the decision our government has made you should keep your mouth shut.

The intense and perverse love I have for my country and for what I study is mostly manifest in the adversarial system we’ve set up for our government, for our legal system and for our economy. Nearly all aspects of the American way rely on the law of the jungle - that stronger is better. This is why we do so well.

Dissent is fundamental to the success of this adversarial system -now far more than at any other time. We’re killing people. We should constantly be asking ourselves why we’re doing what we’re doing, whether it truly furthers our goals and whether we are justified in the force we use and where it is directed.

I don’t deny that the time to use deadly force has come, or that bin Laden is hiding behind innocent people we are going to have to kill if we want to get to him. But we’ve been pummeling a nation with missiles for a relatively long time at a very high intensity, and we’re not letting up. And as long as this is true, I think it’s important we help keep the dialogue alive rather than blindly following orders.

For someone, somewhere, it’s a matter of life and death.

Andrew Banyai is a political science and pre-law junior whose column usually appears Tuesday. Reach him at banyaian@msu.edu.