I agree with much that he is saying, but does he (or anyone suggest) an
alternative? Leah

> -----Original Message-----
> From: PATRICIA MCDOUGALL [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 4:16 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: [Re: article: Sep.11 & the nature of museum mission]
>
> So he's saying do nothing because a war is what bin laden wants?
>
> Dominique Rogers <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Subject: Afghanistan - please read this
>
> > Following on from my earlier email, here's the flip side. You
> have to
> > hear
> both sides of an argument in order to form an opinion - I hope
> this helps.
> > > Pete > > ========================= > > The
> following was sent by Tamim
> Ansary.  Tamim is an Afghani-American writer. Here is his take
> on
> Afghanistan and the whole mess we are in. > > 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. 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 >
>
> =========================================================
> Important Subscriber Information:
>
> The Museum-L FAQ file is located at
> http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/
> . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by
> sending a
> one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the
> message should read "help" (without the quotes).
>
> If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to
> [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read
> "Signoff
> Museum-L" (without the quotes).
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________________
> Get free email and a permanent address at http://www.amexmail.com/?A=1
>
> ========================================================Important
> Subscriber Information:
>
> The Museum-L FAQ file is located at
> http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed
> information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail
> message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should
> read "help" (without the quotes).
>
> If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to
> [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read
> "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).

=========================================================
Important Subscriber Information:

The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).

If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).