Flame me if you must, but I found this supposed manifesto from an American of Afghani descent very interesting, and extremely logical. It only further complicates our recourse, and gives credence to the notion that the conspirators behinds this havok have considered what our reaction/recourse might be. Remember, it's all about THEIR cause....


As follows:

"Dear Friends,
The following was sent to me by my friend Tamim Ansary.
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

 

Actually, I happen to agree with this. Wars are never between people, they are between governments and armies. Unfortunately, ever since the Spanish Civil War, civilians have been seen as open targets.

This will be a new kind of war fought in new kinds of ways. I only hope we can do it well. Bin Laden's organization isn't the only terrorist group out there.

 

I agree....our issue is not w/the people of Afghanistan(unless they are helping OBL). This is going to be a long undertaking I'm afraid, & we may loose more American lives........

 

He is already wrong: Pakistan has promised to do whatever we need. There won't be any fighting Pakistan to get to Afghanistan: Pakistan welcomes our planes and soldiers, as long as Pakastanis don't have to fight.

This same pattern will hold true with the moderate Arab countries; our enemies will remain the same countries which support terrorism and hate the U.S.. We can only pray that Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, etc., send their terrorists and mujahadeen to fight us in Afghanistan!

I like the 'Jews in concentration camp' quote, and I partially agree that common Afghanis are not the real enemy. He is leaving out a big chunk of the population, though, which supports Bin Laden and the Taliban. When we invade, I have a feeling that we will find a lot more than a few dozen terrorists and some orphans waiting for us.

Since he is an expert on the country, it would have been nice if he had offered alternate solutions (arming the Northern Alliance) instead of just predicting a world war and mass death. Doing nothing is not an option.

 

Pretty poor analogy. They may be innocent bystanders, but they are not the subject of genocide by Bin Laden or the Taliban. To compare them to such a group is misleading and disrespectful to those in both Germany and NY who died because of fanatical religous hatred.

A more accurate comparison would be comparing them to the German civilians in Dresden.

...but Afganistan has no real infrastrucure. Nothing to really bomb. Lots of desert, mountains, and nomadic tribes.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tanqueray
[B]
Since he is an expert on the country, it would have been nice if he had offered alternate solutions (arming the Northern Alliance) instead of just predicting a world war and mass death.

 

pfb,

I see your point, but according to a lot of informaiton I have recently seen, the Taliban is at odds not only with Jews, Christians and other Westerners, but also non-fundamentalist Islamic sects. I have seen several reports of mass genocide of these "lesser Muslims", so I think the analogy, while extreme, remains accurate.

 

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