Posted on 09/18/2001 7:05:27 AM PDT by betty boop
This letter, signed by one Tamim Ansary, an Afghan living in the US, offers an interesting perspective on problems “on the ground” in the Islamic world.
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 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 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 Afghanistan 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.
Lest there be any doubt, by "them" I meant the Afghanistans who let the Taliban take over their country.
While I understand the point you're trying to make, what happened a week ago is not "twice as sad" as what has happened to Afghanistan over several decades. It's not even close. Yours is precisely the sort of knee-jerk reaction bin Laden is trying to provoke.
Perhaps you need to read once again what this fellow said, and recognize that it contains the seeds of a strategy. Most of the people over there are not fanatics -- they just want to be left alone. We can follow your apparent preference and bomb them, but then they'd flock to bin Laden and the Taliban. Ooops.
The proper approach is to find a way to separate the normal Afghanis from the Taliban, and from bin Laden. The Taliban have done a pretty good job of alienating the hearts and minds of most Afghans, so if we play our cards right, we've got a good starting point. This would probably require warfare, and there's already a viable opposition to the Taliban operating in-country.
Pakistan presents another opportunity. The author is probably wrong in assuming that we'd have to invade Pakistan: their government has a vested interest in opposing "Islam," just as do most normal people in that region. An ascendent bin Laden is a far more immediate danger to them than to us.
I suspect that a "Radio Free Islam," geared toward publicizing and promoting the "mainstream" muslim message would also help matters, as it would help to paint the wild-eyed fundamentalists as the rabid dogs they are. But of course, that message must also be backed up with force.
Yes and no. There was a multi-sided civil war in Afghanistan after the Russians left, and the Taliban seem to have bubbled to the top for a while. There are numerous other opposition groups, all of whom would (and did) leap at the opportunity to take advantage of anarchy.
Hi TKEman. In the pursuit of our interests, it seems quite clear to me that we cannot derive an advantage by giving Osama bin Laden what he wants. He wants the Great Satan to ACT like, well, the Great Satan. He wants to galvanize all of Islam into an implacable opponent of the West. The last thing we want to do, it seems to me, is to go around creating a whole lot of martyrs for his cause. The "Great Man" doesn't give a fig for the "little people" -- ours or even his own. American or Muslim, the deaths of innocents are merely the tools he uses to get what he wants. The United States must not allow him to manipulate us into a no-win situation by drawing us into a rash conflict principally involving civilians. IMHO.
Also IMHO: This war must be about justice. If we let it be about revenge, America as we know and love it surely will die. This is a time for wisdom, prudence, and restraint --even as we go after the bad guys with guns blazing. For whatever my opinion is worth. best wishes, bb.
Most of the people HERE are not fanatics -- WE just want to be left alone.
Those in the WTC did not ask for this either.
I do not feel that we should tip-toe in, be really nice, and ask for Bin Laden, "please".
It's knee-jerk reactions like yours that Bin Laden is PRAYING for!
Please don't misunderstand my post. I've noticed that people of all political colorations are extremely jumpy these days.
It's knee-jerk reactions like yours that Bin Laden is PRAYING for!
I see now that you're just blowing off steam, and not paying any attention whatsoever to what anybody else has to say. Perhaps you should take 100 deep breaths and start the day again.
No! This act of terrorism must not stand. The taliban (hereinafter referred to as talies) live within the overall society, and to some degree with the connivance of that society. If the society cannot or will not remove the cancer, then we must. When a tumor is excised, healthy cells are often killed as well. But this is as it must be. The terrorists, and their source the talies, must be eradicated. And if that means killing civilians, bring it on.
Does anyone find it unusaul the virulence of this email? I bet I received 7 copies of it yesterday and twice again today. This was written on a computer in Foggy Bottom or Langley.
...and most of them presumably using either US or Russian weapons left over from the earlier war-by-proxy..?
Liberal propaganda ?? After all, defending America is "not good for the whole."
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