[Professional]

LA Times 11/2/2001

The destruction of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network and the destabilization of Afghanistan's extremist Taliban regime will be difficult enough to achieve. Recently, though, Secretary of State Colin Powell and others have begun to hint at another objective: influencing the composition of a post-Taliban government.

There are reports that U.S. leaders have slowed the pace of the U.S. military campaign lest the Taliban collapse before an alternative regime is ready. Such a flirtation with nation-building is both unwise and unnecessary. One might hope that the U.S. had learned from the disastrous experiments in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia. Despite years of work and billions of dollars, the efforts failed big-time in all three cases.

[Professional]

Mainichi 9/15/01

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- As Washington prepares to launch retaliatory attack on Afghanistan for harboring the alleged ringleader of Tuesday's attacks, Osama Bin Laden, some Muslim people are questioning the "self-righteous" justice the United States is seeking. "I wanted to show the image of the World Trade Center collapsing to my long-suffering fellow countrymen," Hayatou Ullar, an Afghan working at a top Islamabad hotel said.

The 38-year-old Afghan said he deplores the attack on innocent people in New York's World Trade Center, but admitted that he was delighted to see the image of America's symbol of power and riches crumbling into dust. "The United States does not really care about the sufferings of Islamic people around the world," he said. "Innocent Muslims are being killed every day in Kashmir, Palestinian territories and other places and the U.S. doesn't show any sympathy. And they call themselves the only superpower on Earth."