This was sent to me by a friend in NY - I thought it was a helpful

Elizabeth Sager
713-853-6349

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	"Brock, Alex" <abrock@PoloRalphLauren.com>@ENRON [mailto:IMCEANOTES-+22Brock+2C+20Alex+22+20+3Cabrock+40PoloRalphLauren+2Ecom+3E+40ENRON@ENRON.com] 
Sent:	Wednesday, September 19, 2001 8:55 AM
To:	'caroline brock'; 'cathleen summersinseattle'; 'charlie'; 'Chi Sager'; 'gail'; 'Gerry Brock'; 'george'; 'jacqueline'; Sager, Elizabeth; 'Nina'; 'sstreet'; 'willy'
Subject:	FW: Afghani-American writer Tamim Ansary


I think so too... 
-----Original Message----- 
From:   Bridget Mulvey [SMTP:bmulvey@hotmail.com] 
Sent:   Tuesday, September 18, 2001 12:00 AM 
To:     car@agiweb.org; Cdmulvey@aol.com; cy3k@yahoo.com; kmulvey@MANDTBANK.COM; sahuson@bsuvc.bsu.edu; olliver@nscl.msu.edu; liebert6@aol.com; HHurley5@aol.com; jen_mapes@yahoo.com; kbell64@hotmail.com; rechlin@okstate.edu; bluedvls11@yahoo.com; mgv99@geneseo.edu; gparatore@hotmail.com; MRB9610@geo.tamu.edu; husonrl@eas.slu.edu; roopastarz@yahoo.com; sjlangton@hotmail.com; michele.olsen@colorado.edu; stmulvey@MtHolyoke.edu; sjockman@netscape.net; stevedahlberg@hotmail.com; nayabird@hotmail.com; emugym@hotmail.com
Subject:        Fwd: Afghani-American writer Tamim Ansary 
Hi guys. This is really good. My friend Anjali sent this to me and, well, 
it's worth reading. I wish you all the best. Have a good week. 
-Bridget 
>I thought this was a very thought-provoking piece... 
>Anjali 
> 
>>> > 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 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 
> 
> 
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