Author Topic: Check Out This Article (About Afghanistan)  (Read 78 times)

Dope Money Clean

Check Out This Article (About Afghanistan)
« on: September 22, 2001, 09:11:33 PM »
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 onlystir 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, and 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
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 PM by 1034398800 »
 

Dope Money Clean

Re: Check Out This Article (About Afghanistan)
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2001, 09:12:35 PM »
Makes u think twice about we gonna do.  we in for some shit.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 PM by 1034398800 »
 

Trauma-san

Re: Check Out This Article (About Afghanistan)
« Reply #2 on: September 23, 2001, 10:40:28 AM »
Yeah, This Is How I've Seen It All Along, This Guy Is Dead On.

Nobody Said We're Going To Attack Afganistan.  As A Matter Of Fact, The Government In America Has NEVER Blamed Afganistan! That's Why I Don't Get This, The War Is Against The Taliban, And Bin Ladin.  The Government Has Never Even MENTIONED Afganistan.  That Just Happens To Be Where They Are.

This Won't Be A Bomb The City Till It's Gone War, It'll Be 1 With The U.S. Backing The Northern Alliance Of Afganistan, And Sending In Our Troops, As Well As Precision Air Strikes, On Smaller, Isolated Taliban Interests.  They Won't Be Carpetbombing The Whole City, Or Country.  Nobody Ever Said They Would... That's Why I Hate All the American Criticism (Not Yall, Others), Because We Haven't Said Anything About WHAT Kind Of Attack IsComing.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 PM by 1034398800 »