View of Afgan-American

Got this forward, the formatting will probably be a little messed up but i spent enough time prettying it up for you guys.

The guy doesn't offer a solution, but it is a different perspective and something to think about.


here it is:


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? one. 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; bu! t 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 really don't interpret it that way Dane. Would the Jew have wanted us to bomb the concentration camps? No, they wanted to be liberated.

Like I said, he doesn't offer a solution. But I don't think that bombing the country to hell will help anything, you don't know that you got the right people. And the country has been in a civil war for the past ever. It just happens that the bad guys are currently winning.

I definately think that we have to do something, bombing my be involved if you have the right targets, but I personally don't see how to accomplish the mission without sending ground troops in to fight. That is where I disagree with him, we have to send troops in to make sure we get their leaders and Bin Laden. But I don't like the idea of sending our troops into a country that is covered with mines, but we managed in Iraq and we will manage in Afghan...

And don't be too hard on the guy for not going to Afghanastan and picking up and AK47 to help his countrymen. Not everyone is able to do that, he is trying to help them in his own way by showing people the the Afghan people are good people and do not deserve to be slaughtered. The need to be liberated from their tyranical government and the evil organizations that operate in their country.

I come from South Africa. This is a country that for years totally opressed the black people. I might add that blacks in South Africa out number whites by a margin of at least 6 to 1. Now you ask why didn't they just rise up and overthrow the government? Well it is not that easy when that government is better educated, better equipped, and puts down any uprising with efficient, effective, brutallity. When you are so busy trying to find food for yourself and your family while avoiding land mines, you cannot always contemplate how to overthrough the government or what terrorist organizations are operating in your country, you are too busy trying to aviod them killing you while still scrounging enough food to eat.

I think the point of his letter was a good one. Bombing the capital will not get the people responsible, and that is the goal of any action we will take. I personally do not believe that the US will be random in our attacks, they will be very specific and precise. And unfortunattly this will most likely call for ground troops which means that the US will be paying a big price for our actions. But I believe it is a price we must pay because it is the right thing to do.

I was reading a book last night and there was a line in there that was very fitting, I don't remember what is was exactly but the jist of it was this:

Don't do what you have to do out of vengence, do it because it is the right thing to do. That way in the future your judgement will not be clouded by anger and hatred, but you will do the right thing.

The right thing to do is to rid the world of these terrorist bastards. That does not mean we have to kill millions of innocents to do it. (I know innocents will die, i have no illusions of the grandure (sp?) of war, but we can do our best to limit the numbers.)

Rayz

 

me too doubts we are gonna level anything.

But there is also gonna be lots o terrorists that just plain aint gonna wake up one morning cause their heads is not fully attached to their bodys.

It makes me happy.

 

As for South Africa. The major difference their is that South Africa didn't hate the US. There was terrorism in South Africa against the policies of the government. The sanctions initailly only hurt the poorer people of the country, but they did eventually play a pivotal role in bringing about change in the country.

Like in Afghanastan, who do you think the sanctions hurt most? Its the common poor dude.

I view the letter differently. See I will support the government in what they feel they have to do. But I do not like the anti arab, muslim, afghan, feeling that you sometimes get from people who cannot differentiate between normal people and terrorists.

I thought the letter did a good job reminding everyone that there are people in Afghanastan, suffering people, not just terrorists. I think it only strengthens the fact that we must do something. Not only to stop terrorism but to help the suffering people.