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only problem is his recommendation is that we do nothing and the american people won't stand for that and if we don't do something bin laden will surely strike again.
-----Original Message----- From: ZOOEY WHARTON [mailto:ZWHARTON@dawray.com] Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 9:46 AM To: Husband (E-mail) Subject: FW: A view from Afghanistan by a UC Berkeley professor Another interesting perspective ... -----Original Message----- From: Nicole Lee [mailto:nicolelee69@hotmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 8:01 AM To: yrns@0fus.com; jerrykenya@hotmail.com; bill@grafico13.com; brett.simon@commerceone.com; Celine.Lambert@CLAMERICAS.com; dan@disturbances.com; debra.l.garcia@us.andersen.com; forlethal@hotmail.com; haidarian@mac.com; hnicoh@yahoo.fr; JandSKeane@aol.com; jbastone214@yahoo.com; jeff.prybolsky@commerceone.com; jeffrey_brown@hotmail.com; jennifergilmour@hotmail.com; jim.kotulka@commerceone.com; kdttex@hotmail.com; Kylee_Kelley@NAI.com; larrylee415@yahoo.com; mbeckman11@yahoo.com; mc_lestarge@mindspring.com; Cherylstephens@hotmail.com; Nicolem00@earthlink.net; RBryan@salick.com; ssaundersdeston@aol.com; zwharton@dawray.com; wwells@broadjump.com; jbaker@gamd.com Subject: A view from Afghanistan by a UC Berkeley professor < <A sobering essay forwarded by a UC Berkeley professor: < <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 < < _____ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com <http://go.msn.com/bql/hmtag_itl_EN.asp<
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