The Taliban and Bin Laden Are Not Afghanistan
I had just left watching the re-run of Bill Moyer's report on Bin Laden, an
obviously clever guy, when I came upon Marcia Newfield's post here of a SF writer
from Afghanistan who has lived in this country for the past 35 years. It supplies
what is most likely the last act in Bin Laden's game plan -- tricking Bush (none
too bright) into launching for him the Holy War that will unite the Muslim world
-- or a significant portion of it -- against the US. Remember, Bin Laden is from
Saudia Arabia (as were a number of the hijackers) and deeply resents the US having
propped up the corrupt regime there that would seem to be his primary target. Will
Bush do Bin Laden's dirty work for him? Read the following and then watch to see
how the scenario plays out. I have tightened the editing and will be sending it widely
by blind copy.
Ed Kent --
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 11:14 AM Subject: Letter from a writer in San
Francisco who is from Afghanistan
This is a rational and thought provoking commentary. It comes from Tamim, a writer
and columnist in San Francisco, who comes from Afghanistan. This is very interesting
and chilling....
* * * *
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 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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