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>Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 19:22:38 -0700
> "Michael M. Butler" <butler@comp-lib.org> extropians@extropy.org [Fwd: Afghani-American View]Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
>
Yeah; I do, because the alternative - global capitulation to a medieval anextropian, is even worse. For make no mistake - this fanatical monster will settle for nothing less. All people like that understand is violence, strength and weakness, and our NOT kunting him and his organization down and wip[ing them out would be interpreted by him and his as exactly the type of weakness that would spur them on to further atrocities. We can do it now, and it will be costly, or we can try to do it later, when it would be more costly, and maybe even impossible. My vote, the only possible rational one, is for now.
>
>Following is an Afghani-American writer, on Afghanistan and what an
>invasion might mean.
>
>Obligatory Extro relevance: sounds like clear thinking, mostly.
>
>---------------------------------------------
>
>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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