Hello All.
The term, 'Terrorism' is being used in connection with NY and Washington.
I've had a problem with that which has been niggling for days.
Perhaps, 'Provocation' would be better?
World conflict is that which is being provoked and the US is walking blindly
right into it.
Terrorism works more subtlety and to more psychological effect than blowing
up 5,000 people at one strike.
Wake up people! This is going to become dangerous, and Tamim should be
listened to.
Right now we need restraint; i understand that may sound indecisive to many,
but the conflict of values in this situation cannot be resolved using brute
force: History has all the warning signs one could wish for, and yet again
they are not being heeded.
My fear at this time is that the current president of the US views life as
one big baseball game with one winner and one loser. Life is rarely that
simple?
Squonk.
In a message dated 9/16/01 1:58:12 AM GMT Daylight Time, HisSheedness@aol.com
writes:
<< Subj: Re: MD I am an American
Date: 9/16/01 1:58:12 AM GMT Daylight Time
From: HisSheedness@aol.com
Sender: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
Reply-to: moq_discuss@moq.org
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Everyone,
Here is an account sent to me by a friend which may help all of you gain a
better understanding of the current situation in Afghanistan.
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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