This came as a fwd which I often don't read but it reflects much of my
own thinking on this subject!
Peace.......Sharon
>
> Friends,
> The following was written by an Afghani writer who lives in the Bay Area.
> The wisest words I've encountered this week about what has happened and
> where we might be headed. Take a minute to read. It's worth it.
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
>
> 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 deeply hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. My hatred
> comes from first hand experience. 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 would not 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 head 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?
> Unfortunately, Bin Laden does. Anyone else?
> In Peace,
> Tamin Ansary
>
> Sharon...I tried to send this to Catherine [EMAIL PROTECTED] has she
> changed her email address? We were delighted to heaar about Anders birth ..a
> bright spot in a very depressing and frightening week. xoxo Ruth
