(fwd) The following was sent to me by a friend of Randy Milden who was the Dean at Swarthmore. She writes: "Tamim Ansary is an Afghani-American writer. He is also one of the most brilliant people I know in this life. Here is his take on Afghanistan and the whole mess we are in." 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'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? ************************************************ I would like to show this group an alternative perspective. I dug up some links to Jihad and Taleban websites as well as the official Afghan govt. site. I was curious to see what they were saying in their own voice. Some of the images and rhetoric are pretty scary from our Ethnographic perspective. However, I think it is important in a situation as complex as this to see what the other side is saying and try to understand why theythink and act as they do. The U.S. is now considering attacking 10-12 Muslim countries because regions and small groups in those countries have declared a Jihad against us and Israel. I hope that saner voices in the senate and our allies will channel this energy elsewhere. If you look at the links below, you will get a picture of a very complex network of extremist Muslims that covers 1/4 of the planet. These people live in pockets and regions of unstable, forbidding sovereign nations. It would be impossible and just plain stupid to try and fight them with military forces. Here is a quote from a Jihad website, defining to them what Jihad is: "Jihad is the act of supreme sacrifice to preserve human rights bestowed by Allah (God Almighty). It is said the the West having witnessed Jihad in Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya among other places, still chooses to ignore the importance of it in this materialistic world. There is no organization, institution or government willing to do for human rights what Mujahideen can do. It must be understood that wherever Jihad is in progress, Mujahideen are fighting undoubtedly against the tyrannical government and the armies of the area but nowhere do Mujahideen target the non-Muslim or innocent people, whereas the non-believers always attack the innocent men, women and children during their acts of terrorism. This is where lies the difference between Jihad and terrorism." Wrong or right, the terrorists that are attacking our country think they are doing so in the name of civil rights and protection of the innocent. This is obviously not an excuse for suicide bombing. However, for our country to respond by attacking innocent nations plays directly into their hands. Every bomb we drop will undoubtedly raise the threat of more terrorism here exponentially. We need to seek JUSTICE not revenge. We need to show the world through our response that we will not stoop to the methods or level of those that would love to see us retaliate barbarically. Great source of info on Taliban http://www.azzam.com/html/talibanwho.htm The Children of Iraq http://www.azzam.com/html/iraqhome.htm Lands currently under Jihad http://www.azzam.com/html/landshome.htm Official Afghan government http://www.afghan.gov.af/ The Jihad Webring List http://nav.webring.yahoo.com/hub?ring=jihadring&list This link might scare some. It does contain a lot of information. http://members.nbci.com/_XMCM/jihadroad/ Taliban www.taleban.com The link below is a Jihad newspaper. If you read a bit of their rhetoric, you will understand more of how their followers' views are skewed through disinformation. They believe that we are the servents of the devil and they are god's chosen people. http://dharb-i-mumin.com/index.htm
