Afghanistan

[Guest guest]

For the first time, I published an article on

Realization.org this morning that isn't narrowly

devoted to spiritual matters. This article was

sent to me by Gary Schoubourg. Here's a copy:

 

AFGHANISTAN HAS ALREADY BEEN

BOMBED BACK TO THE STONE AGE

 

By Tamim Ansary

 

Afghanistan Has Already Been Bombed

Back To the Stone Age

 

By TAMIM ANSARY

 

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 Bin 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? Done. 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?

 

Copyright 2001 Tamin Ansary

 

Photo of Afghani child injured by landmine courtesy

Revolutionary Association of Women of Aghanistan

 

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Tamim Ansary is an Afghani-American writer.