Posted on 09/16/2001 8:55:15 AM PDT by liberalism=failure
By Tamim Ansary
I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on San Francisco's KGO Talk Radio, conceded today 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 in the United States 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 bin 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 healthcare? 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?
I do however disagree that the next step has to be be an inevitable war against Islam, it did not happen with the attack of Iraq and so far (although things could change) most of the Arab states have been reasonably cooperative in this.
HOPEFULLY what will happen is--if we punish 1 or 2 state sponsors of terrorism that they will serve as examples to other states and they will want no part of it any longer.
I hope so, but we'll see. There really is no other choice at this point.
Sorry fellah, you lost me at this point.
The accurate comparison is the German people, not the helpless victims.
How many people in Afghanistan?
What do they fear?
Acquiescing for years and empowering the Taliban and the terrorists because it was convenient, has exacted a price.
They did not choose wisely...
he is right. they are not completely innocent if they have not risen up to overthrow this government that has given safe harbor to these thugs. those that have risen up, oh well. i am concerned about OUR survival more than anything else. this will send the right message to other peoples, in other nations.
IMO, ground troops are out of the question. Afghanistan has almost no infrastructure and the terrain is moon-like. I've seen documentaries about that country. There are almost no paved roads or bridges and many of the roads that exist are narrow and barely passable.
Recall that the Russians, with the full might of their military, could not get enough troops and equipment into Afghanistan to take it over back in 1980-81. And you can be sure that the Afghans, if they saw us coming, would make sure that ground transportation was impossible. And also consider that we have no realy allies on the border with Afghan. from where we could stage.
IMO, if military action is taken, it will be from the air and guerrilla-like ground actions supported by air--sort of a hit and run exercise.
On a sidenote I think gov.org is about to trim the tree but does not have the will to cut it down and pull out the root.
Regroup, go for target number two.
Save the ground troops for something worth occupying.
In the same light as we are all responsible for Bill Clinton whether we like it or not.
In fact, reading some of the breaking news stories, it seems like Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are already drawing swords and getting ready to bloody each other before we even get there. I'm always for other soldiers doing our dying for us. (Remember Patton? And the body counts for Russia and the US for WWII?)
Setting a VERY few examples aside, American troops have always spent a decent amount of energy moderating the amount of civilian casualties. While we were not squeamish about bombing Germany, no matter how many German citizens held anti-Hitler sentiments, we did do our best to support loyalists in France and Germany. This will not be very different, no matter how many hotheads like myself scream for total annihilation... unless and until the opposition changes the equations, yet again.
(21st Century guerrilla warfare on American soil... a whole BUNCH of new experiences for us, and some expensive lessons coming up)
One needs only to remind countries in this region of history and how WWII ended in the Pacific.
Line up with those folks. Make it absolutely clear that you are limiting the action to get rid of the Taliban. Couple the effort with food and relief for Afghans, and flood the airwaves with those pictures. You don't have to hunt down the entire Taliban and hold the country. You just have to break the cusp of their military power enough to allow more moderate elements to finish the job. Those moderate elements might have defeated the Taliban anyway if not for Pakistani support. Now, the Taliban is deprived of Pakistani support and the moderates will have our help.
If we pitch this correctly, it may be closer to the relatively united front we had against Saddam rather than a war against islam.
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