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I'm not forming an opinion, just thought it was worth reading...
<From: "Mari Hayes" <marihayes@hotmail.com< <To: aparentukusa@mich.com <CC: ALaird0196@aol.com <Subject: letter about Afghanistan worth reading <Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 11:39:52 < < <I'm forwarding this as it expresses a lot of my sentiment, and I truly feel <any kind of major military attack will open pandora's box, or a wasp nest <if you like and the results will be disasterous. To have thousands more <innocent people die is also an act of terrorism, it IS TIME to see where <all the hate comes from and clean up our own backyard. 600,000 children <have died in Iraq because of the sanctions, Afghanistan exists in the stone <age...yes the Palestinians have committed acts of terror against the <Israeli's, but the Israeli's have also terrorized the Palestinians. YES <those that backed the crimes should be brought to justice but NOT at the <cost of a lot more innocent lives...time to use some of their own tricks <instead of going in with the heavy artillery, which kills indiscriminately. < <Hello all, I thought you might want to read this obviously heartfelt <letter that was forwarded to me from an American that grew up in <Afghanistan. I think the perspective is an interesting one and perhaps one <that few of us have access to. <Anne Sofia < <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." < <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? <Done. 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; but 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 << << < < << << < << << < << << < _________________________________________________________________ << << < Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at << <http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp << << < << << < << << << < << < << < << < _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
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