A letter I got in e-mail today....
Dan,
Just I got so worried about too much WAR/MACHO talks on radio/TV/street, I
got
this email from an Indonesian showing another important view. I think we
should
use more brain than gut or muscle handling it. Or, just imagine what if
the 19
bad guys didn't use airplane bombs, but released poison gas at different
spots
in New York ???
> Thanks to Fred Hellerman for this item
>
> A different take on things...
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "RONNIE GILBERT"
[email protected]
> rongil@ mindspring.com
> Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2001
>
> 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.
>
> * * * * 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 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 rat's 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
nationsjust
> 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
Closed Thread
I do think you're right...we do seem to react swiftly, and, partially as a result, harshly/crudely at times. I guess the reason I don't see us as being the same as some others is that I don't see us doing truly evil things. I see us making mistakes, but there's a difference.
