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The following post was from another site and is worth a read whatever your viewpoint or inclinations.
.......................................
Again I bring you more insight into what we are getting into, you may not agree with some of my thoughts, but please at least read this.
We are getting into some complex things, hopefully the right retaliation will be chosen.
"An Afghani-AMERICAN'S take
Dear XXXX and whoever else is on this email thread:
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 million 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
.......................................
Again I bring you more insight into what we are getting into, you may not agree with some of my thoughts, but please at least read this.
We are getting into some complex things, hopefully the right retaliation will be chosen.
"An Afghani-AMERICAN'S take
Dear XXXX and whoever else is on this email thread:
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 million 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
