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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (26837)	9/13/2001 1:24:20 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

On the topic of Afghanistan, did you catch this article yesterday, Karen? Taliban Plead for Mercy to the Miserable in a Land of Nothing nytimes.com Whatever else there is to say about this entreaty, one part that is indisputably true is that this land-locked, ruggedly beautiful nation is in absolute misery. Here in Kabul, the capital, roaming clusters of widows beg in the streets, their palms seemingly frozen in a supplicant pose. Withered men pull overloaded carts, their labor less costly than the price of a donkey. Children play in vast ruins, their limbs sometimes wrenched away by remnant land mines. The national life expectancy, according to the central statistics office, has fallen to 42 for males and 40 for females. The prolonged drought has sent nearly a million Afghans — about 5 percent of the population — on a desperate flight from hunger. Some have gone to other Afghan cities, others across the border. More than one million are "at risk of starvation," according to the United Nations. Famine is the catastrophe Afghans are used to hearing about. Few yet know of the threat of an American reprisal. The Taliban long ago banned television, and the lack of electricity keeps most people from listening to radio. Bombing Afghanistan back to the stone age isn't really necessary, by all indications they're about as close as you can get already. The events in the US were tragic, and the attack reprehensible, but it's over, and it's not likely to happen again. Even in our worst days, our misery can't compare to what Afghanistan is suffering, day in, day out, for years past and, by all indications for years to come. The US would be doing Afghans a tremendous favor by invading and getting rid of the Taliban. Dumping a bunch of bombs on Afghanistan might make some among us feel good, but what else it would accomplish is questionable. Khair Khana, a man selling fertilizer in a market, knew just a bit about the attack. He thought a plane had crashed into the White House. And he considered the perpetrators, whoever they are, to be "enemies of God," though he also felt "Americans should look into their hearts and minds about why someone would kill themselves and others" in such a way. He had not thought much about an American retaliation against Afghanistan. When he did consider it, standing in a ramshackle collection of stalls, he shrugged and said: "Americans are powerful and can do anything they like without us stopping them." But to what end? As Mr. Khana says, maybe "Americans should look into their hearts and minds about why someone would kill themselves and others" . And then think about whether some atavistic tit-for-tat mass destruction retaliation is going to make for fewer people like that, or more. A difficult and unfashionable thing to do, but it beats the local "debate" anyway. And just for good measure, I will compliment George W Bush for keeping cool. He may have wanted to disengage from the world and go it alone, but the world has engaged him anyway. It's good to see him working with the international institutions that didn't seem too fashionable in his circles up until a few days ago.

To: Lane3 who wrote (26837)	9/13/2001 2:33:05 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

During WWII, hundreds of thousands, very probably millions of innocent German and Japanese civilians were killed. There only crime was being where they were. Should we have left the Nazis in possession of continental Europe and the Japanese in possession of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere to avoid those deaths? Pardon me, but I fail to see the difference between these situations. War may be an evil, but it is an evil that does not leave us. Only the dead have seen the end of war.