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This was sent to me by a friend in NY - I thought it was a helpful Elizabeth Sager 713-853-6349 -----Original Message----- From: "Brock, Alex" <abrock@PoloRalphLauren.com<@ENRON [mailto:IMCEANOTES-+22Brock+2C+20Alex+22+20+3Cabrock+40PoloRalphLauren+2Ecom+3E+40ENRON@ENRON.com] Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2001 8:55 AM To: 'caroline brock'; 'cathleen summersinseattle'; 'charlie'; 'Chi Sager'; 'gail'; 'Gerry Brock'; 'george'; 'jacqueline'; Sager, Elizabeth; 'Nina'; 'sstreet'; 'willy' Subject: FW: Afghani-American writer Tamim Ansary I think so too... -----Original Message----- From: Bridget Mulvey [SMTP:bmulvey@hotmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 12:00 AM To: car@agiweb.org; Cdmulvey@aol.com; cy3k@yahoo.com; kmulvey@MANDTBANK.COM; sahuson@bsuvc.bsu.edu; olliver@nscl.msu.edu; liebert6@aol.com; HHurley5@aol.com; jen_mapes@yahoo.com; kbell64@hotmail.com; rechlin@okstate.edu; bluedvls11@yahoo.com; mgv99@geneseo.edu; gparatore@hotmail.com; MRB9610@geo.tamu.edu; husonrl@eas.slu.edu; roopastarz@yahoo.com; sjlangton@hotmail.com; michele.olsen@colorado.edu; stmulvey@MtHolyoke.edu; sjockman@netscape.net; stevedahlberg@hotmail.com; nayabird@hotmail.com; emugym@hotmail.com Subject: Fwd: Afghani-American writer Tamim Ansary Hi guys. This is really good. My friend Anjali sent this to me and, well, it's worth reading. I wish you all the best. Have a good week. -Bridget <I thought this was a very thought-provoking piece... <Anjali < <<< < The following was sent to me by my friend Tamim Ansary. Tamim is an <<<Afghani-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. <<< < <<< < ***** <<< < <<< < <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 < < _________________________________________________________________ Descargue GRATUITAMENTE MSN Explorer en http://explorer.msn.es/intl.asp
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