[Fwd: Great article about afghanistan/taliban/bin laden] (fwd)

[baptista at pccf.net]

Here is a good article originally posted to nanog which is a good write up
on afganistan and the horros which await.

-- 
The dot.GOD Registry, Limited

http://www.dot-god.com/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 15:32:41 -0700
From: Imran Qureshi <qureshi at cisco.com>
To: nanog at merit.edu
Subject: [Fwd: Great article about afghanistan/taliban/bin laden]


One of our colleague posted the following article and it really shows the 
plight of the real afghans.

Regards,

Imran


> >  > 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