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Mon, 24 Sep 2001 22:15:56 +0000
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--- Anthony Swan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >This was forwarded to me and is well worth the read.
> >----
> >
> >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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>


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