I recieved this mail, maybe some of ya should actually take the time to read it...
| > > > 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
