Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 10:14:27 -0700
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."
And 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.
-- Tamim Ansary
