: This is from Tamim Ansary, a writer and columnist in
: San Francisco who is a native of Afghanistan. It's
: both interesting and chilling....
I've already seen this same crap posted on other boards.
Important Note: My comments below are intended for the original author, Tamim Ansary.
: > * * * *
: > 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."
Failure to act will result in more terrorist attacks, each more deadlier than the last. I don't give a crap about "belly"; I want us to exhibit some backbone!
: > 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.
Do you understand what it looks like from the people outside the World Trade Center? From the Pentagon?
: > 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.
Okay, how about a suggestion or two? You seem to have no problem criticizing demands for a prompt decisive response, so how about putting your plan on the table? Or maybe you don't even have a plan.
: > 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."
The Taliban are running Afghanistan. They have done this for years. There is no doubt about this.
Ninety five percent of the population of Afghanistan either support the Taliban or are too cowardly to rebel against them. Comparing them with Jews in Nazi concentration camps is an utter insult and displays an appalling lack of knowledge of history. Emitting this kind of bullshit totally destroys whatever credibility you might have had.
: > 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.
As far as I can see, millions of those in Afghanistan care only about their own skins and are running away to other countries. True, a few in the Northern Alliance are trying to put the Taliban out of business. They would succeed if the majority of Afghanis weren't cowards.
: > 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.
Sounds too much like what I heard from professional victim classes. If they refuse to defend themselves, then they get what they deserve.
: > 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.
Apparently, the Taliban have no problem maintaining internal communication, power generation, power distribution, and any number of other phenomena not associated with being in the Stone Age. So that whole paragraph of yours is just more crap.
: > New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier
: bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not
If the bombs are big enough, then they will work just fine.
: 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
Perhaps the uncles, cousins, and other relatives of those orphans might decide to show a little bravery for once and strike against their Taliban masters. But I'm not holding my breath on this.
: 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
Taking out the war fighting capability of terrorists and those that give them safe harbor can only help innocent people no matter where they live.
: > 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.>
If the 95 percent of Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban had any kind of "belly", then ouside action would not be necessary.
: 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
Read the news, idiot. Pakistan has given us their full support.
: 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.
If that's what it will take to end terrorism, then that's what has to be done.
: > 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
It will be hard for him to issue any commands when his atoms have been distributed in the stratosphere.
: 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
Millions of ours do not have to die.
: ours. Who has the belly for that?
: Bin Laden does. Anyone else?
Fuck bin Laden. He is going to be dead, and very soon, I'm sure.
Warning to all: DO NOT DOUBT THE DEEP AND ENDURING STRENGTH OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
: Tamim Ansary
Hey Tamim, you seem to like Afghanistan. Certainly you are trying to save the miserable asses of the twenty million Taliban supporters. Why don't you return there instead of using up valuable American oxygen?
