From: Richard Holt (rholt@telcel.net.ve)
Date: Mon Sep 17 2001 - 21:34:14 CEST
Since this has already begun, here is something for all of us to think about.
My cousin, a psycologist, didn't write it but forwarded it from a mailing list he participates in.
>
>>Dear Friends: The following was sent to me by my friend Tamim Ansary.
>>Tamim is an Afghani-American writer. He is also one of the most brilliant
>>people I know in this life. When he writes, I read. When he talks, I
>>listen. Here is his take on Afghanistan and the whole mess we are in.
--Gary T.
>>
>>Dear Gary 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 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
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