only problem is his recommendation is that we do nothing and the american people won't stand for that and if we don't do something bin laden will surely strike again.

-----Original Message-----
From: ZOOEY WHARTON [mailto:ZWHARTON@dawray.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 9:46 AM
To: Husband (E-mail)
Subject: FW: A view from Afghanistan by a UC Berkeley professor


    Another interesting perspective ...
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Nicole Lee [mailto:nicolelee69@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 8:01 AM
To: yrns@0fus.com; jerrykenya@hotmail.com; bill@grafico13.com; brett.simon@commerceone.com; Celine.Lambert@CLAMERICAS.com; dan@disturbances.com; debra.l.garcia@us.andersen.com; forlethal@hotmail.com; haidarian@mac.com; hnicoh@yahoo.fr; JandSKeane@aol.com; jbastone214@yahoo.com; jeff.prybolsky@commerceone.com; jeffrey_brown@hotmail.com; jennifergilmour@hotmail.com; jim.kotulka@commerceone.com; kdttex@hotmail.com; Kylee_Kelley@NAI.com; larrylee415@yahoo.com; mbeckman11@yahoo.com; mc_lestarge@mindspring.com; Cherylstephens@hotmail.com; Nicolem00@earthlink.net; RBryan@salick.com; ssaundersdeston@aol.com; zwharton@dawray.com; wwells@broadjump.com; jbaker@gamd.com
Subject: A view from Afghanistan by a UC Berkeley professor


> 
>A sobering essay forwarded by a UC Berkeley professor: 
> 
>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. 
> 
> 
>Dear Gary and whoever else 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 
> 
> 

  _____  

Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com <http://go.msn.com/bql/hmtag_itl_EN.asp>