Afghanistan & Bin Laden

[Jasper Fidget]

> > Subject: Afghanistan & Bin Laden
> > 
> > This commentary is by Tamim Ansary, a writer and
> > columnist in San
> > Francisco, who comes from Afghanistan.
> > 
> > 
> > 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
> 
> 
>