Re: I debated with myself over this.
I thought long and hard over submit this, but in the end I felt it was a point of view that should be shared, (especially after reading Barb S.'s post). This was forwarded to me from a friend, I removed all of the e-mail addresses but copied the text as I received it. (Ellis if this is not suitable you can remove it, and I will understand)
oh I'm leaving out the Dali Lama's letter
> Dear friends and family,
>
> Below, you will find a letter from the Dalai Lama
> and a letter from an Afghani-American writer, as well
> as personal thoughts of the person who sent this along. I send it
> in the hope that it will give you another small piece to add to the
> dialogue of these deep times.
>
> Aloha nui loa,
> Barbara
>
>
> 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? Don. 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 w!
> ith 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
>
>