----- Forwarded message from daniel thies -----
Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 15:09:30
From: "daniel thies" []
To: [a bunch of people]
>From: "Kate Thies" []
>To: [a bunch of people]
>CC: []
>Subject: Afghanistan: this is worth reading
>Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 01:40:45 -0400
>
_________________________________________________________________
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References
1. http://go.msn.com/bql/hmtag_itl_EN.asp
Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 01:40:45 -0400
From: "Kate Thies" []
To: [a bunch of people]
Cc: []
Subject: Afghanistan: this is worth reading
I was sent this e-mail by a friend at Saint Mike's, and I'm sending to
all of you, my family, because I think it's worth reading and thinking
about despite our various and differing opinions regarding how our
government and the world should react to the recent tragedy and how we
should ultimately retaliate. --Kate
From: Gary Turchin []
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 2:18 AM
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 StoneAge." 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
References
1. http://lw6fd.law6.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/compose?curmbox=F000000001&a=f414795687f96870daa9652cdc839518&mailto=1&to=torch@sirius.com&msg=MSG1000498585.7&start=823268&len=10596&src=&type=x