Tuesday, March 28, 2006
A Letter From An Afghani American
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.
> > >
> > >
> > >
Dear whoever 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
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.
> > >
> > >
> > >
Dear whoever 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
