|
|
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
|
OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
A place for articles. Emails received regarding US response/position
A sobering essay forwarded by a UC Berkeley professor:
Dear Gary (and whoever else is on this email thread-)
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?
Tamim Ansary
Tamim Ansary is an Afghani-American writer.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 2,661
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 2,661 |
...Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?
Which is precisely why a surgical extraction of the specific person(s) is necessary... yet, unfortunately, that reality will be lost in the "emotional revenge".
There is *nothing wrong with an emotional response, just one that is *purely emotional...(JMO)...
... you're about to get {another} one. Let me state, however, I am 'beotching' about the "tone of the discussion, not the opinions of others in the following:
I was sickened by last night's PBS Chicago Tonight sponsored "discussion" of what a military campaign may be, not because of what answers were given to that question, but because of how shallow the arguments and their tone became... they had a slight hint of "if I talk louder, my facts have more meaning".
A political representative, a retired General, a Afghan-American writer, and a representative from the Muslim-American (trade?)community were present. They all seem to have different perspectives as are indicative of what they DO, and I have to applaud the coordinator Phil Ponce for his control of the direction of the discussion, with his usual skill. However, when an attempt was made by the Afghan-American writer to explain the mindset of the Afghan people whether they be Afghan government or religious representatives, in Afghan as rebels, part of the Taliban (is there a difference), or just a "commmon" Afghan/Muslim citizen, that the sense of honor they feel is deep, and trying to relate a sense of understanding of what would go on in their minds in deciding what, why, how, where...etc to "hand over" bin liner (Thanks Mav)... the response from the "political representative" sounded like... "yeh, but our honor is bigger than their honor".
What we truly need are more "real" people and less politicians talking about this through the mass media... Countless times we have seen these kinds of debilitating words *happen before...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 275
enthusiast
|
|
enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 275 |
wow
Thank you for posting that e-mail. It is one of the most thoughtful piece among the many that have been circulating lately.
It is someone using words in a very meticulous way, to inform , to enlighten, to commiserate.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
WOW, thank you, thank you, and thanks to the writer of that article. I already knew a good bit of what he says, but it makes the situation of the Afghanis perfectly clear and lays out in the starkest terms what is really going on and what is at stake. I hope to God that this information is before those who are in the process of making decisions and that they are giving due attention to it.
It may be that the right way to root out bin Laden and the Taliban will have to be by ground troops airdropped or something (if the Pakistanis don't cooperate) and that will mean terrible American casualties, since it's a notoriously inhospitable place, as the Brits and Russians learned to their cost. So those who are now crying, "War is hell," meaning, "Too bad, it will have to be hell on the Afghans", will learn that it will be hell on us as well, maybe more so. But it has to be done -- there will never be any security any more, ever, if it isn't. (This presuming that bin Laden really is the culprit, for which the proof is not yet forthcoming, but which I also believe is the case.)
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
In today's email edition of Armed Forces News : Officials Warn Against Solicitation Scams Consumer advocacy groups are warning against mass e-mails soliciting donations for survivors of the attacks in New York and on the Pentagon. A typical message might contain the phrases "Express Relief Fund" or "Victims Survivor Fund." The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail, a non-profit consumer protection group, said, "Virtually no bona-fide relief agencies request funds by sending e-mail to people who are not already involved in that agency." DoD officials recommend that individuals wishing to make donations to survivors of those killed in the attack on the Pentagon contact the following: Army Emergency Relief Society, Pentagon Victims Fund, (703) 325-0463, http://www.aerhq.org Navy and Marine Corps Relief Society, Pentagon Assistance Fund, (703) 696-4904, http://www.nmcrs.org Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund, (303) 933-7580, http://www.feea.org.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
Hey IP, I've seen some sad sites in my time, but this one ... 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636 |
IP, did you check out this site in it's entirety? I did! What a complete HOOT! Thanks.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
Consuelo,
!?como no?! -- !por nada!
|
|
|
|
Forums16
Topics13,915
Posts229,916
Members9,197
| |
Most Online3,341
Dec 9th, 2011
|
|
|
1 members (wofahulicodoc),
732
guests, and
2
robots. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
