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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical [Fwd: Great article about afghanistan/taliban/bin laden]
One of our colleague posted the following article and it really shows the plight of the real afghans. Regards, Imran > > 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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