I'm not forming an opinion, just thought it was worth reading...


>From: "Mari Hayes" <marihayes@hotmail.com>
>To: aparentukusa@mich.com
>CC: ALaird0196@aol.com
>Subject: letter about Afghanistan worth reading
>Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 11:39:52
>
>
>I'm forwarding this as it expresses a lot of my sentiment, and I truly feel
>any kind of major military attack will open pandora's box, or a wasp nest
>if you like and the results will be disasterous.  To have thousands more
>innocent people die is also an act of terrorism, it IS TIME to see where
>all the hate comes from and clean up our own backyard. 600,000 children
>have died in Iraq because of the sanctions, Afghanistan exists in the stone
>age...yes the Palestinians have committed acts of terror against the
>Israeli's, but the Israeli's have also terrorized the Palestinians. YES
>those that backed the crimes should be brought to justice but NOT at the
>cost of a lot more innocent lives...time to use some of their own tricks
>instead of going in with the heavy artillery, which kills indiscriminately.
>
>Hello all, I thought you might want to read this obviously heartfelt
>letter that was forwarded to me from an American that grew up in
>Afghanistan. I think the perspective is an interesting one and perhaps one
>that few of us have access to.
>Anne Sofia
>
>Dear Friends, Yesterday I heard a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan
>back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio 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," and he
>asked, "What else can we do? What is your suggestion?" Minutes later I
>heard a TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be
>done."
>
>I thought about these issues 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 been going on over there. So I want to share a few
>thoughts with anyone who will listen.
>
>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 fervently wish to see those monsters punished.
>
>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 captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding the country in
>bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a master
>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 love for someone to eliminate the Taliban and
>clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their
>country. I guarantee it.
>
>Some say, if that's the case, why don't the Afghans rise up and
>overthrow the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they're starved,
>exhausted, damaged, and incapacitated. A few years ago, the United
>Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in
>Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. Millions of Afghans
>are widows of the approximately two million men killed during the war with
>the Soviets. And the Taliban has been executing these women for being women
>and have buried some of their opponents alive in mass graves. The soil of
>Afghanistan is littered with land mines and almost all the farms have been
>destroyed . The Afghan people have tried to overthrow the Taliban. They
>haven't been able to.
>
>We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone
>Age. Trouble with that scheme is, it's already been done. The Soviets
>took care of it . 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? There
>is no infrastructure. Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late.
>Someone already did all that.
>
>New bombs would only land in 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. (They have already, I hear.) 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
>be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people
>they've been raping all this time
>
>So what else 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. I think that when people speak of "having the belly to do what
>needs to be done" many of them are thinking in terms of having the
>belly to kill as many as needed. They are thinking about overcoming moral
>qualms about killing innocent people. But it's the belly to die not kill
>that's actually on the table. Americans will die in a land war to get Bin
>Laden. 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. 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.
>The invasion approach is a flirtation with global war between Islam and the
>West.
>
>And that is Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants and why
>he did this thing. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there.
>AT the moment, of course, "Islam" as such does not exist. There are Muslims
>and there are Muslim countries, but no such political entity as Islam. Bin
>Laden believes that if he can get a war started, he can constitute this
>entity and he'd be running it. 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 Muslim lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to
>lose, even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong about
>winning, in the end the west would probably overcome--whatever that would
>mean in such a war; but the war would last for years and millions would
>die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden yes,
>but anyone else?
>
>I don't have a solution. But I do believe that suffering and poverty
>are the soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his cohorts want to
>bait us into creating more such soil, so they and their kind can
>flourish. We can't let him do that. That's my humble opinion.
>
>Tamim Ansary
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