I received this e-mail from a colleague this morning, a letter from an Afghani/American writer. I don't know if you are tired of hearing about everyone elses different opinions and views on what happened. If you are, I suggest you skip reading this. I just wanted to share this with the ones who still haven't made up their minds on how they stand on the US response, or perhaps just are interested. After all, its just another opinion:
"This email is originally from Tamim Ansary. Tamim is an
Afghani-American writer.
Here is his take on Afghanistan and the whole mess we're in.
****
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"
/B
"This email is originally from Tamim Ansary. Tamim is an
Afghani-American writer.
Here is his take on Afghanistan and the whole mess we're in.
****
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"
/B
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