Worth considering in the current "nuke them" atmosphere.
>
>I got this from my ex-boss who got it from his wife(?) who got
>it from ... who got it from ...
>
>- - - - -
>
>Dear Colleagues,
>
>As we reflect upon the tragic events of this week and an appropriate
>"response," I thought you might like to see this letter from my
>college roommate, Tamim Ansary, who grew up in Afghanistan. I think
>he offers an interesting perspective on Bin Laden, the Taliban, and
>Afghanistan.
>
>*****
>Department of Biology & Microbiology
>
>- - - -
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 10:14:27 -0700
>
> Dear Friends,
>
> Yesterday I heard a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back
to
>the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio 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," and
>he asked, "What else can we do? What is your suggestion?" Minutes
>later I heard a TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do
>what must be done."
>
> And I thought about these issues 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 been going on over there. So I want to share a
>few thoughts with anyone who will listen.
>
> 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 fervently wish to see those monsters punished.
>
> 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 captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been
>holding the country in bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a political
>criminal with a master 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 love for
>someone to eliminate the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of
>international thugs holed up in their country. I guarantee it.
>
> Some say, if that's the case, why don't the Afghans rise up and
>overthrow the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they're starved,
>exhausted, damaged, and incapacitated. A few years ago, the United
>Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in
>Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. Millions of Afghans
>are widows of the approximately two million men killed during the war
>with the Soviets. And the Taliban has been executing these women for
>being women and have buried some of their opponents alive in mass
>graves. The soil of Afghanistan is littered with land mines and
>almost all the farms have been destroyed . The Afghan people have
>tried to overthrow the Taliban. They haven't been able to.
>
> We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the
>Stone Age. Trouble with that scheme is, it's already been done. The
>Soviets took care of it . 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? There is no infrastructure. Cut them off from
>medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.
>
> New bombs would only land in 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. (They have already, I hear.) 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 be making common cause with the
>Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this
>time
>
> So what else 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. I think that when people speak of "having the belly to
>do what needs to be done" many of them are thinking in terms of having
>the belly to kill as many as needed. They are thinking about
>overcoming moral qualms about killing innocent people. But it's the
>belly to die, not kill, that's actually on the table. Americans will
>die in a land war to get Bin Laden. 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. 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. The
>invasion approach is a flirtation with global war between Islam and
>the West.
>
> And that is Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants and
>why he did this thing. Read his speeches and statements. It's all
>right there. At the moment, of course, "Islam" as such does not
>exist. There are Muslims and there are Muslim countries, but no such
>political entity as Islam. Bin Laden believes that if he can get a
>war started, he can constitute this entity and he'd be running it. 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 Muslim
>lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, even better
>from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong about winning, in
>the end the west would probably overcome--whatever that would mean in
>such a war; but the war would last for years and millions would die,
>not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden yes,
>but anyone else?
>
> I don't have a solution. But I do believe that suffering and
>poverty are the soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his
>cohorts want to bait us into creating more such soil, so they and
>their kind can flourish. We can't let him do that. That's my humble
>opinion.
>
> ************
> |
