On Sun, Sep 16, 2001 at 02:04:54PM -0500, Rick Sivernell wrote:
...
> I stick by my statement that the current Afgan government as well as all
>other > governments who participate in state sponsored terrorism must be
>removed from the face of the earth. If they are not, the cost of having them
>around will consistantly rise.
Here's something to think about that came in on another list I maintain:
Subject: From an Afghani in the US - good think piece
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 11:54:12 -0400
From: Charles Riggs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Food for thought for the Militarists
Written by an Afghani in the U.S.
I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the
Stone Age." Ron 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 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?
Unfortunately, Bin Laden does. Anyone else?
In Peace,
Tamim Ansary
Charles Riggs - Gunsite 1991 - DVC!
"Fight Crime - Be armed - Fight back!"
President, KC3 - GOA - NRA
*********************************
A parable for our times:
http://www.kc3.org/sheep.htm
*********************************
Bill
--
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UUCP: camco!bill PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
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``It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of
their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or
so incoherent that they cannot be understood.''
-James Madison, Federalist Paper #62
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