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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (6722)	9/16/2001 10:46:15 PM
From: Patricia Trinchero	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 93284

HEre is some food for thought. I received this in email form from a friend in Wisconsin. I have removed the names to protect anonymity. Dear Friends and UW-Oshkosh Students, 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, who grew up in Afghanistan. I think he offers an interesting perspective on Bin Laden, the Taliban, and Afghanistan. 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.

To: Mephisto who wrote (6722)	9/17/2001 11:32:43 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 93284

Why do they hate us so badly? It's beyond comprehension. Is it? Two choices. Choice A: US support of the Shah of Iran. Encouraging the Iraq/Iran war as a means of balancing power within the region. Support of the Israelis vis a vis the Palestinians. US involvement in Afghanistan; we helped train them in the noble battle of overcoming the evil empire. Economic sanctions in Iraq, starving children of Iraq, etc. Think back a bit and we could probably come up with some more. Or .... Choice B: We can take the "political" choice...they hate us for our freedoms and our financial success. Other related topics. Kashmir has lost 5,000 people per year for the last 12 years in war/terrorism. Does the US give a ....? The IRA has had a steady supply of money coming out of US based sources. [Boston and New York mostly as I recall.] The US wishes to protect financial safe havens. Fairly important in the operation of criminal activities, including terrorism. The US doesn't seem to care too much about the Small Arms treaty. Keep feeding weapons and instability throughout the third world. We can look at history, choose choice A. or B. and decide what to do next. History tells us we pick Choice B. and repeat variations of Choice A. jttmab

To: Mephisto who wrote (6722)	9/18/2001 2:27:28 AM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 93284

Why do they hate us so badly? It's beyond comprehension. Pat, your question raises deeper answers. Tonight, I watched Sixty Minutes, Part 2. CBS interviewed a bin Laden follower only two months ago. The fellow said it would be easy to take out The White House with a couple of people willing to commit suicide. The bin Laden followers hate our western way of life. They hate the equality that women have achieved. They attend our best universities. They have lived openly in our society. Yet, they remain isolated from our culture because they are sent here in groups of 4 or 5. Tomorrow night, I believe CBS will air Sixty Minutes, Part 3. The show aired on my local tv station at 9 pm west coast time. I was horrified at what these people are willing to do to eradicate our western way of life. Actually, I was shaking from fear while I watched the show.