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).