starship-design: a different perspective on Afghanistan

[Curtis Manges <clmanges@yahoo.com>]

Fwd from:   DCox@ag.state.oh.us


this was received by me from a friend.  the writer of this prose is
apparently from afghanistan who has been living in the united states
for a
while.  interesting reading and his conclusion seems to me to be
right on.
i think that a decision to bomb afghanistan would be stupid and would
be the
decision of an ignorant, small person.  if you agree then spread the
word.
peace.  g.

**************************


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

********************************************

For my own part, I'd like all to consider that, in order to prepare
for a war, you need an enemy, which means you have to demonize and
dehumanise some group of targets (living humans), by propaganda
(political slander). And in doing this, in preparing to kill other
people, you kill part of yourself. You shut down or destroy your own
capacity for compassion and reason.

Someone has said that murder is an act of insanity. War is
institutionalized murder.

Yes, we have a right to self-defense. Yes, those responsible for the
attacks must be dealt with. But our response should be limited as
much as possible to those individuals only, and should be done in a
civilized manner.

Curtis

=====
visit my website at: www.geocities.com/clmanges

__________________________________________________
Terrorist Attacks on U.S. - How can you help?
Donate cash, emergency relief information
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/US/Emergency_Information/