SCN: Re: [tesccrier] FW: Afgani-American writer's take on the situation in Afghanistan

[Doug Schuler]

Another point of view....

-- Doug

On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, Ralph, Dan wrote:

> Forgive me if this is the wrong list for this article, but I thought it was
> important enough to send.
> 
> ----------
> Subject:  FW: Afgani-American writer's take on the situation in Afghanistan
> 
> Sent to me today by a colleague.  Please read carefully and with an open 
> mind.  It's an interesting and rational point of view.
> 
> Peace and Love,
> Barbara
> 
> Dear Friends,
> The following was sent to me by my friend Tamim
> Ansary. Tamim is an Afghani-American writer.  He is
> also one of the most brilliant people I know in this
> life.  When he writes, I read.
> 
> When he talks, I listen.
> Here is his take on Afghanistan and the whole mess
> we are in.
> *	Gary T.
> 
> 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
> 
> 
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