Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---------------------------------------------
Yes, what a sickening thought!
"Sandeep Vaidya (LMI)" wrote:
> Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
> ---------------------------------------------
>
> However there is indeed one thing the US can do to Afghanistan that has not been
>done yet: Plaster thr country with DU.
>
> Sandeep
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nancy Hey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: 18 September 2001 00:57
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Do we "have the belly to do what must be done?"
> [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
>
> Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
> ---------------------------------------------
>
> > Do we "have the belly to do what must be done?"
> > Mon, 17 Sep 2001 00:54:56 EDT
> >
> > >From the Baltimore Greens list:
> >
> > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (George Skepton)
> > Read this commentary from Tamim Ansary, a writer and columnist in San
> > Francisco, who comes from Afghanistan.
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------------
> > 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 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 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�EUR(tm)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?
> >
> > Tamim Ansary
> >
> > _______________________________
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has
>been shut down
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has
>been shut down
>
-------------------------------------------------
This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been
shut down
==^================================================================
EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA
Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
This email was sent to: [email protected]
T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail!
http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register
==^================================================================
