Figrin D an
Sep 14th, 2001, 07:22:22 PM
This was an open letter written by an native Afgani now living in the United States. He offers an bit of a different perspective on how to handle retalitory action... I find myself agreeing with many of his points. Don't get me wrong, I feel military action is necessary... but we have to be very careful how and when it is undertaken...
*****
Dear Friends,
Yesterday I heard a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone
Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio 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," and he asked, "What else can
we do? What is your suggestion?" Minutes later I heard a TV pundit
discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."
And I thought about these issues 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 been going on over there. So I want to share a few thoughts with anyone who will listen.
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 fervently wish to see those monsters punished.
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 captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding the country in bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a master plan. When you think Taliban, think ****s. 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 love for someone to eliminate the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of
international thugs holed up in their country. I guarantee it.
Some say, if that's the case, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, damaged, and incapacitated. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food.
Millions of Afghans are widows of the approximately two million men killed
during the war with the Soviets. And the Taliban has been executing these
women for being women and have buried some of their opponents alive in mass graves. The soil of Afghanistan is littered with land mines and almost all the farms have been destroyed . The Afghan people have tried to overthrow the Taliban. They haven't been able to.
We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.
Trouble with that scheme is, it's already been done. The Soviets took care
of it.
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?
There is no infrastructure.
Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.
New bombs would only land in 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. (They
have already, I hear.)
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 be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this
time.
So what else 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.
I think that when people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" many of them are thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. They are thinking about overcoming moral qualms about
killing innocent people.
But it's the belly to die not kill that's actually on the table.
Americans will die in a land war to get Bin Laden. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through fghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that, folks.
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. The invasion approach is a flirtation with global war between Islam and the West.
And that is Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants and why he did
this thing. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. AT the
moment, of course, "Islam" as such does not exist. There are Muslims and
there are Muslim countries, but no such political entity as Islam. Bin Laden
believes that if he can get a war started, he can constitute this entity and
he'd be running it. 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 Muslim lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, even better from Bin Laden's point of view.
He's probably wrong about winning, in the end the west would probably overcome--whatever that would mean in such a war;
but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but
ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden yes, but anyone else?
I don't have a solution. But I do believe that suffering and poverty are the soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his cohorts want to bait us into creating more such soil, so they and their kind can flourish. We can't let
him do that. That's my humble opinion.
Tamim Ansary
*****
*****
Dear Friends,
Yesterday I heard a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone
Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio 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," and he asked, "What else can
we do? What is your suggestion?" Minutes later I heard a TV pundit
discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."
And I thought about these issues 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 been going on over there. So I want to share a few thoughts with anyone who will listen.
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 fervently wish to see those monsters punished.
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 captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding the country in bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a master plan. When you think Taliban, think ****s. 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 love for someone to eliminate the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of
international thugs holed up in their country. I guarantee it.
Some say, if that's the case, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, damaged, and incapacitated. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food.
Millions of Afghans are widows of the approximately two million men killed
during the war with the Soviets. And the Taliban has been executing these
women for being women and have buried some of their opponents alive in mass graves. The soil of Afghanistan is littered with land mines and almost all the farms have been destroyed . The Afghan people have tried to overthrow the Taliban. They haven't been able to.
We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.
Trouble with that scheme is, it's already been done. The Soviets took care
of it.
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?
There is no infrastructure.
Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.
New bombs would only land in 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. (They
have already, I hear.)
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 be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this
time.
So what else 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.
I think that when people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" many of them are thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. They are thinking about overcoming moral qualms about
killing innocent people.
But it's the belly to die not kill that's actually on the table.
Americans will die in a land war to get Bin Laden. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through fghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that, folks.
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. The invasion approach is a flirtation with global war between Islam and the West.
And that is Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants and why he did
this thing. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. AT the
moment, of course, "Islam" as such does not exist. There are Muslims and
there are Muslim countries, but no such political entity as Islam. Bin Laden
believes that if he can get a war started, he can constitute this entity and
he'd be running it. 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 Muslim lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, even better from Bin Laden's point of view.
He's probably wrong about winning, in the end the west would probably overcome--whatever that would mean in such a war;
but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but
ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden yes, but anyone else?
I don't have a solution. But I do believe that suffering and poverty are the soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his cohorts want to bait us into creating more such soil, so they and their kind can flourish. We can't let
him do that. That's my humble opinion.
Tamim Ansary
*****