From: Joe Dees (joedees@addall.com)
Date: Sat Sep 15 2001 - 08:49:08 MDT
>
>Following is an Afghani-American writer, on Afghanistan and what an
>invasion might mean.
>
>Obligatory Extro relevance: sounds like clear thinking, mostly.
>
>---------------------------------------------
>
>I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to
>the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that
>this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do
>with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral
>damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit
>discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."
>
>And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I
>am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years
>I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell
>anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.
>
>I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no
>doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity
>in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters.
>
>But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even
>the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant
>psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a
>political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis.
>When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the
>people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps."
>It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this
>atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would
>exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear
>out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.
>
>Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban?
>The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated,
>suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there
>are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no
>economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has
>been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered
>with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These
>are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown
>the Taliban.
>
>We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone
>Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it
>already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level
>their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done.
>Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut
>them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did
>all that.
>
>New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at
>least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the
>Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip
>away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled
>orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs.
>But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike
>against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would
>only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again
>the people they've been raping all this time
>
>So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with
>true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in
>there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to
>do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the
>belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any
>moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out
>of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not
>just because some Americans would die fighting their way through
>Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks.
>Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through
>Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan
>would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You
>see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam
>and the West.
>
>And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he
>wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's
>all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It
>might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world
>into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west
>wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with
>nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of
>view. He's probably wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever
>that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would
>die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden
>does. Anyone else?
>
>Tamim Ansary
------------------------------------------------------------
Looking for a book? Want a deal? No problem AddALL!
http://www.addall.com compares book price at 41 online stores.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:10:39 MST