Gee, what a shame.....I'm sure the workers pulling the burned and mutilated
bodies from the rubble will look at it in a new light...
The armed forces will take into acount that the women and children are not
the main target, but anyone with a gun stands a good chance of dieing.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Casey" <CHRISCA@callawaygolf.com>
To: <datsun-roadsters@autox.team.net>
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 11:20 AM
Subject: O/T Something to think about
> This commentary comes from Tamim, a writer and columnist in San Francisco,
> who comes from Afghanistan.
>
> 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. 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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