Loadstar 207/207.d81/t.war

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u
        US RETALIATION FROM AN
     AFGHANI-AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE

         by Mir Tamim Ansary


 [NOTE:] Seeing the international
terrorist problem from an Afghani
perspective will be crucial in
understanding the war and other
agendas.

 DMM


    Mir Tamim Ansary is an Afghani-
American writer. He is one of the most
brilliant people I know. Here is his
take on Afghanistan and the whole mess
we are in. I know LOADSTAR reaches a
lot of people and I think the
following is really worth forwarding &
quoting:



 [Mir Tamim Ansary on Afghanistan]


    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 that
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 IS BIN LADEN'S PROGRAM.]

    That is exactly what he wants.
That is 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 will win, whatever that will
mean. But the war could last for years
and millions would die, not just
theirs but ours. Who has the belly
for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?

 MTA