Fwd: What shall we do?

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> As we reflect upon the tragic events of this
> week and an appropriate 
> "response," I thought you might like to see
> this letter from my college 
> roommate, Tamim Ansary, who grew up in
> Afghanistan.  I think he offers an 
> interesting perspective on Bin Laden, the
> Taliban, and Afghanistan.
> Toivo Kallas
> Department of Biology & Microbiology
> 
> 
>     Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 10:14:27 -0700
> 
> 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 hae 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.
> Tamim Ansary


=====
"I can NOT be held responsible
 for anything I say, do or even
 think"

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