I agree That the list is not an appropriate place for this discussion,
and I will make this answer short. I had passed on this document
because hearing President Bush speeches worries me. The
museum community is supposed to thrive on objectivity and
perhaps we can spread this objectivity. The person who rather
roughly questioned the origin of the document missed the point, I
had deleted the person who had sent it to me as he is not involved
in the museum world; he is a friend I have known for 25 years, he is
an Indian citizen (religion Parsi). I do not know who Pete is and
does it really matter? Even if this letter was the fruit of somebody's
imagination it still moved me to tears. I spent some time in
Afghanistan before the Russian invasion and loved and admired its
people for their tolerance (by the way I am Jewish). I had a stop
over in Kabul in 1981 during the Russian occupation and could not
recognize anything, it was already rubble then. I do not believe
that any reconstruction has taken place since then...And as 'being
in the UK' does this mean that I do not understand about terrorism?
Bombs have been one of the foremost concern of museums in the
uk for a while (30 years?) and having your bag systematically
searched when going to museums is part of life, as is alerting the
Police as soon as you see an unattended package or walking on
the other side of the pavement near army recruiting offices or not
giving your address or the one of your institution on an open forum
to not figure on anybody's black list. I will not mention where the
money feeding our local terrorists has mostly come from, This is
already much too long and i will be happy to discuss the topic at
length off the list with anybody who wants to.
My name is Dominique Rogers I am an objects conservator I have
been a rather quiet member of this list for I think around 3 years. I
live in England. and ... I am afraid...
Date sent: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 16:26:43 -0400
Send reply to: Museum discussion list <MUSEUM-
[log in to unmask]>
From: "Sweeney, Ginger"
<[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [Re: article: Sep.11 & the nature of museum
mission]
To: [log in to unmask]
I certainly don't believe that is what this individual is saying. Bin
laden wants money and power. It seems like we'll be fighting this
"war"
on computers - with businesses - with bank accounts. Isn't that
better
(and definitely more sane) than killing our fellow man/woman/child?
Thank you to whomever sent this out - it's an interesting look from
another perspective.
My question is this - what can we (as individuals who work in museums)
do about much of any of this? It seems that a Museum discussion list is
not really an appropriate venue for this kind of debate.
-----Original Message-----
From: PATRICIA MCDOUGALL [mailto:[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 >
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