Posted on 09/14/2001 10:18:48 AM PDT by nina0113
Note from Nina: There was a chain of e-mail addresses, ending up at our law firm
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 11:59 PM
Subject: A view from Afghanistan
FYI -- I got this from a Boalt professor. I thought it was important to think about.
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
As to the content, I think it is largely right on, with this exception.
If the US plays its cards right, and the early signs are we may, we could come in through a friendly Pakistan, with the Pakistani army. If so, this would be the first successful battle in a campaign to cripple the Jihad/Islamist war on civilization. It would cost blood and treasure, but it may be, I believe it is, time to begin it.
Enough talk of "retaliation" and "crimes" and "accountability" and "revenge."
All that talk is weak, reactionary, and fundamentally defensive.
If we have the will and the might, we should start strategic offensives to shrink this evil to the vanishing point.
Richard F.
She abhors the Islamic Jihad and has taught me that Islam does not condone murder or hate. These people are being led by the devil and don't know it
Ground troops is a tough choice to make, but I believe it is better than bombs. The soviet experience makes that option so much more difficult to make.
Gum
Before we invade with ground tropps, however, it might be wise to examine the history of previous attempts to conquer Afghanistan. Specifically, the Russian attempt of the late 20th century, and various British attempts during the 19th should be studied carefully.
If there was ever a people and terrain designed for guerrilla warfare, it is Afghanistan. There is no question the US has the potential power to conquer the place. I strongly doubt we would have the ongoing will to do what would be necessary to accomplish this.
A far more likely scenario is massive assistance to political opponents of the Taliban. The same applies to opponents of their supporters in Pakistan.
Watch the NATO allies run for cover when they realize this is necessary.They're already trying to soften talk of war.
Watch the NATO allies run for cover when they realize this is necessary.They're already trying to soften talk of war.
Well, yeah. Good analogy. But not exactly the analogy he seems to think it is.
What precisely does this guy think happened in World War II? Does he think we did surgical strikes against centers of Nazi activity and left the German people alone?
The sins of the state, elected or unelected, loved or hated, fall upon the heads of the people.
You got all that right. The second-favorite sport in Afghanistan is shooting at each other. The favorite sport is shooting at invaders. If we invade or attack Afghanistan, we unify the tribes in that country. It is better to work to destabilize the Taliban.
Fighting this war by conventional means would be like wrestling smoke. We need to first secure our own country - these terrorists did not come from the Bekaa valley, they were here for months going to pilot school. We need to investigate EVERY immigrant from the Middle East over the last five years and boot out any one that has any ties to terrorism. Second, we need to cut off the money for terrorism - we need to go to countries with bank secrecy and tell them that a country that harbors the money of terrorists is just as culpable as a country that harbors terrorists themselves. THEN we move against the governments that harbor terrorists and the LEADERS of the terrorists. If we kill a thousand mujadeen, there will be three thousand new recruits the next day. We have to find the heads of this beast AND KILL THEM. But widespread, undisciplined violence against the peoples of the Middle East will only make matters worse.
Not in Afghanistan. Invading that country would only unify the tribes with the Taliban. Best to work to destablize the Taliban with assistance to other groups. Get the Russians involved - they're experts at this game.
But we don't want to conquer Afghanistan. Our goal should be neither to rule Afghanistan ourselves, nor to install a friendly government, but simply to kill as many Taliban members and terrorists as possible, and smash as much stuff as possible, then leave the place to burn.
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