Please Read...
-----Original Message-----
From: Stacey <slhester@earthlink.net>
To: kristenm@jschmid.com <kristenm@jschmid.com>
Date: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 3:53 PM
Subject: FW: insights into afganistan



----------
From: Brettgelman@aol.com
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 11:45:00 EDT
To: cgelman@earthlink.net, GelBros@aol.com
Subject: Fwd: insights into afganistan

Hey Mom and Dad,

Noah sent me this, and I think it is very important to read.

Love,
Brett

From: "noah tevye warner" <tevye39@hotmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 9:55 AM
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Subject: Fwd: insights into afganistan

>Hello everyone,
>>The following was posted here by a co-worker on our companies internal.
>>It
>
>>comes from her friend, Tamim, a writer and columnist in San Francisco, who
>>is also originally from afghanistan.

>>
>>
>>--->
>>
>>In light of Tuesdays tragedy and the unthinkable idea of what is yet to
>>come, I thought I should share this with as many people as possible.
>>
>>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 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 deeply hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. My hatred
>>comes from first hand experience. 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 would not 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? Unfortunately, Bin Laden does. Anyone else?
>>
>>In Peace, Tamim Ansary
>


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