Fwd: [nhne] Taliban v/s the Afghanis

[Guest guest]

>Tamim Ansary Writes:

>

>Dear Friends,

>

>Yesterday I heard a lot of talk about " bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone

>Age. " Ron Owens, on KGO Talk Radio 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, " and he asked, " What else can

>we do? What is your suggestion? " Minutes later I heard a TV pundit

>discussing whether we " have the belly to do what must be done. " And I

>thought about these issues 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

>been going on over there. So I want to share a few thoughts with anyone who

>will listen.

>

>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 fervently wish to see those monsters punished. 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 captured Afghanistan in

>1997 and have been holding the country in bondage ever since.

>

>Bin Laden is a political criminal with a master 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 love

>for someone to eliminate the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of

>international thugs holed up in their country. I guarantee it.

>

>Some say, if that's the case, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow

>the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, damaged,

>and incapacitated. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there

>are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan -- a country with no economy, no

>food. Millions of Afghans are widows of the approximately two million men

>killed during the war with the Soviets. And the Taliban has been executing

>these women for being women and has buried some of their opponents alive in

>mass graves. The soil of Afghanistan is littered with land mines and almost

>all the farms have been destroyed.

>

>The Afghan people have tried to overthrow the Taliban. They haven't been

>able to. We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the

>Stone Age. Trouble with that scheme is, it's already been done. The Soviets

>took care of it. 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? There is no

>infrastructure. Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late.

>Someone already did all that. New bombs would only land in 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. (They have already, I hear.) 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

>be making common cause with the Taliban -- by raping once again the people

>they've been raping all this time

>

>So what else 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. I think that when people speak of " having the belly to do what needs

>to be done " many of them are thinking in terms of having the belly to kill

>as many as needed. They are thinking about overcoming moral qualms about

>killing innocent people. But it's the belly to die not kill that's actually

>on the table. Americans will die in a land war to get Bin Laden. 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.

>

>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. The

>invasion approach is a flirtation with global war between Islam and the

>West. And that is Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants and

>why he did this thing. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right

>there.

>

>At the moment, of course, " Islam " as such does not exist. There are Muslims

>and there are Muslim countries, but no such political entity as Islam. Bin

>Laden believes that if he can get a war started, he can constitute this

>entity and he'd be running it. 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 Muslim lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to

>lose, even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong about

>winning, in the end the west would probably overcome -- whatever that would

>mean in such a war; but the war would last for years and millions would die,

>not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden yes, but

>anyone else?

>

>I don't have a solution. But I do believe that suffering and poverty are the

>soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his cohorts want to bait us

>into creating more such soil, so they and their kind can flourish. We can't

>let him do that. That's my humble opinion.

>

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