I'm passing this on from another mailing list. With comments.
> This commentary comes from Tamim Ansary, a writer and columnist in
> San Francisco, who is a native of 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."
>
So far, this is consistant with JDG's arguements. I don't think that anyone
here thinks that the people of Afganistan are all evil, right?
> 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.
>
I think this arguement shows well how any attack must be focused.
> 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.
That's a fact. But, here I begin to disagree as the author becomes
pessimistic.
>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.
Well, since the column, they have promised to cooperate with a
multi-national force. They are also reported to have closed their borders.
>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.
>
That is a risk that must be appraised and avoided.
> 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?
>
> Tamim Ansary
I think he rightly points out an objective of bin Laden. I think the
leaders of any assult must work hard to make sure that there is no real
chance of his achieving that objective. I think its very doable, but not
something that can be ignored.
Dan M.
