Seeing it from an Afgani/American perspective

[Moppie]

I got this in an email from a mate with to much time on his hands. I dont know where he found it, but it is far to true.



> This is from Tamim Ansary, a writer and columnist in San Francisco, a
> woman of Afghan origin:
>
>
> 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 rat's 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
>

[kris]

I say we forget this bombing shit, and forget the whole thing ever happened.

[kris]

I will be sure to foreward that email to my friend on his way to Egypt.

[primera man]

Pictures can speak a thousand words.

[gang$tarr]

yeah i think we should let them do whatever they want

[YogsVR4]

I saw this posted on the borland newgroups. Its thoughtful and probably comes from the heart. However, it does not mean that the Afgan people cannot be held responsible for letting their government sponser terrorists. Several thousand people are dead. Bin Laden want all Americans dead. This is war. War is dirty. You have three choices. Help, Get the hell out of the way, or die. We're coming. Bet your ass on that.

[JD@af]

I've bounced around so many times as to where I stand. I know that hitting back may be a very bad decision, as the last thing we need now is to enrage the impressionable youth of Afghanistan and other nations of the Middle East, and incite them to follow in the footsteps of those who led the attacks on the WTC, Pentagon, and the other, unknown target. We must remember that Afghanistan may have nukes, and that most of the threat are people already living among us. So I also thought about the "turn the other cheek" philospohy, but I don't think that is it either. While on the one hand, we may be powerless to stop all the points of attack that these terrorists pose against us, but can we really just sit around and wait to get shellacked again? There are a lot of buildings, people, and targets in general out there to attack, so from a numbers perspective they can only get to so many of us. But can we really just wait it out, and hope that this terrorist activity is comprised of a finite number of "cells" (that is being of the assumption that bin Laden's not through with us yet), and therefore a string of attacks that will just run its own course and come to an end?

I don't know what to do. Nothing has ever been so unclear to me. Part of me wants to march down to my local armed forces recruiter right now and say get me in the action, even if just so I can go overseas, stare the enemy in the face and say "fuck you," just so I can die, proudly, for my country. Part of me also knows that the best thing most of us can do, besides donating blood and finances to the relief efforts, is to just go about our daily lives, keep working, spending, etc. (and not to stop using the air lines - the layoffs have got to stop - if the airlines all go under, our economy is going to be the worst its been since the 1930's.. maybe worse). I do know that we need leadership right now, a strong, wise government to make these tough decisions that I hope I never have to consider for myself.

[gang$tarr]

Originally posted by JD@af
if the airlines all go under, our economy is going to be the worst its been since the 1930's.. maybe worse

there's no way in hell we'd ever have a depression like that

[JD@af]

Originally posted by gang$tarr


there's no way in hell we'd ever have a depression like that

You don't think so? Stop and really think long and hard about it. Imagine the effects of all the domestic airlines losing enough money so that they had to fold. The airlines are already in survival of the fittest mode. They have already laid off on the order of 100,000 employees since September 11th. They need to invest lots of money into beefing up security measures, including retro-fitting steel doors into the airplanes to isolate the cockpit from the remainder of the plane (at least last I heard), all this into an industry that most Americans are now afraid to use. That is large enough to at least threaten their closure, collectively. Considering how much business in this country is dependent upon the passenger airlines, I shudder to think about how many businesses (particularly large businesses) would be hammered by the side effects of the airlines shutting their doors.

Consider this as well: consumer confidence fed our incredible economic machine of the 1990's. We got to the point as a people where no matter what waves were in the water, we didn't lose our confidence in our stocks, investments, and therefore our capitalistic machine. The route of this consumer confidence is the belief that there are certain things that can be taken for granted, things that will always be safe and never be in jeopardy. The airlines being among these seems like a safe bet to me. I have little doubt that seeing the airlines close would be the fuel to the fire for consumers to lose their confidence and doubt other portions of our solid institution, close their doors, batten down the hatches, pull all their money from the stock market and other investments - in other words, prepare for the worst. And this is exactly what happened in 1929.

Hundreds (thousands) of businesses are fueled by investment dollars, i.e. publicly owned businesses via the stock market. With the rug pulled out from under them in the form of losing those investment dollars, they lose their ability to maintain productivity and quickly fall prey to negative balance sheets. Now the country, for lack of a better term, is fucked.

Because there would be so many more mouths to feed than in the 1930's, and because our business world has become so heavily dependent upon airline travel, I honestly think this could rival the state the country was in 70 years ago. True, the Depression of the 1930's was partially fueled by the "Dust Bowl," the large period of drought that destroyed so much of our agriculture and our ability to sustain ourselves. But those resources have to feed so many more people today that it would be easier to strain them now.

Hey man, I hope I am wrong. I usually hate being wrong, but let's say, for the sake of argument, that the domestic airlines do close.. and we are able to continue to spend, invest, etc. do what we need to do to keep the economy at an even clip, well more power to us. Because that would be an incredible accomplishment.. and I don't know if it can be done. But please, let me be wrong.

[Chris]

Its gonna take time. We have to kill the evil people only. Then we pump in billions of dollars and help the people. We bring them into the modern era. They will then like us. That will eliminate a lot of terrorism. This will take many, many years, but it can be done, probable in 30 or less years.

Make love not war is very true.