Thank you Dominque for presenting the other side of the story in that touching letter.  Leah and Patricia, I understand your concerns and questions on this terrible event and also find it hard to fathom.  However, if we react like the terrorists, we are no better ourselves and thats why we are differnt. My very good friend actually sent me the same letter and wrote this at the beginning of her forward which I thought was very moving:
hey everyone!

my apologies in advance for anyone who's already received this, but i really
feel it needs to be read by as many people as possible. it was forwarded to
me by one of my highscool teachers from back in costa rica; a teacher who
was instrumental in teaching me not to let CNN guide my beliefs, but rather
take it as one source out of many that i can draw my own beliefs.  i have
recieved so many emails about the righteousness of the American government.
i really feel that this is dangerous because it encourages blind support for
whatever they do and however they choose to deal with the current situation.
  we have ample accounts of past American initiatives (Vietnam, Serbia) that
resulted in massive amounts of civilian casualties - after which everyone
hummed and hawed and then got on with their daily lives because after all,
it wasn't Americans being massacred.  do we really want to see history
repeated?
no one that i know seems to have any idea about the reality of life in
Afghanistan, and just what kind of people the US wants to blast to
smithereens in the name of fighting terrorism.   after all the wars we've
fought, after all the bombs we've dropped, after all the sanctions we've
imposed on dissident countries, have we still not learned that attacking
civilians DOES NOT WORK?  this forward sent to me is so well-written,
articulate, and effective because it comes from the mouth of the horse,
so-to-speak.
I truly beleive that a major step along the road to a more peaceable
existence is that we recognize ourselves, individually, as citizens of the
world, and not just as citizens of our respective countries.  if we accept,
and live off the benefits of a country that expounds freedom and democracy
(most importantly a democratically elected government - a "government of the
people")  then we also have to accept resonsibility for what our government
does.  (remember Canucks, we offically support the US) the death of every
single afghani peasant, farmer, and peddler will be on our hands - as the
people who support a regime who goes outside of our borders and kills
innocent people....when in this case, IT IS NOT NECESSARY.

please read on and be aware of the *value* of AWARENESS.  let's educate
ourselves.  where we have no power to act, let's at least change the way we
think.  most of you of my generation will have kids to raise, beliefs to
instill in them, and examples to set for them.  governments are made up of
people and people make mistakes.  let's not support ours doing the same this
time just because we are angry and hurt and sad and scared.  terrorism WILL
beget terrorism, if we let it.

love heather
PS this is what happens to you when you study political science for four
years - you become a raving madwoman re: anything political!
____________________________________________________________________
>>Dear Friends,
>>The following was sent to me by my friend Tamim
>>Ansary. Tamim is an
>>Afghani-American writer. He is also one of the most
>>brilliant people
>>
>>I know in this life. When he writes, I read. When he
>>talks, I listen.
>>Here
>>is his take on Afghanistan and the whole mess we are
>>in.
>>  -Gary T.
>>
>>Dear Gary and whoever else is on this email thread:
>>
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. 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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