[979] in peace2
Commentary from Anonymous Afghani (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John S Reed)
Fri Sep 14 21:38:24 2001
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To: peace-list@MIT.EDU
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Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 21:38:19 -0400
From: John S Reed <jreed@MIT.EDU>
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This is from an Afghan-American. He casts light on this situation in a
slightly different way.
>====================
>
>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 Talibanhas 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
>whodid this horrific thing. Actually it would only bemaking 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 thebelly for that?
>
>Unfortunately, Bin Laden does. Anyone else?
>
>In Peace
>
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