Fw: More victims of whom most of us were not aware

["superpat" <superpat@ccountry.net>]

Got this letter from a friend. Thought you'd be interested. IHO it makes
more sense than I have read and heard all week.
Pat

>  >Dear Friends,
>  >
>  >The following was sent to me by my  friend Tamim Ansary. Tamim is an
>  >Afghan-American writer. He is also one of  the most brilliant people I
>  >know in this life. When he writes, I read. When  he talks, I listen.
>  >Here is his take on Afghanistan and the whole mess we are  in. -Gary T.
>
>  >
>  >Dear Gary and whoever else is on this email  thread:
>  >
>  >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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