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style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject: Letter from an
Afgan-American<SPAN
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"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
<FONT face=Garamond color=black
size=3>This
is very much worth reading ...<SPAN
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<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">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."
<FONT
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<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">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.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> 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.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> I agree that something must be done
about those monsters.
<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">
<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">But the Taliban and
Ben Laden are not Afghanistan.
They're not even the government of Afghanistan.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> The Taliban are a cult of ignorant
psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> 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."
<SPAN
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<FONT
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style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Tw Cen MT'"> <FONT
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<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">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.
<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">
<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">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.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> The soil is littered with land mines,
the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> These are a few of the reasons why the
Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.
<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">
<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">We come now to the
question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Trouble is, that's been done.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> 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.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them
off from medicine and health care? Too late.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Someone already did all
that.
<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">
<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">New bombs would
only stir the rubble of earlier bombs.
Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban
eat, only they have the means to move around.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> They'd slip away and hide.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> 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.
<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">
<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">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.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> 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.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Let's pull our heads out of the
sand. <FONT
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<FONT
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style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Tw Cen MT'"> <FONT
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<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">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.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Because to get any troops to
Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Would they let us? Not likely.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> 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.
<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">
<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">And guess what:
that's Bin Laden's program. That's
exactly what he wants.
<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">
<FONT
face=Verdana color=maroon size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">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.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> 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.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden
does. Anyone else?
<FONT
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style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: maroon; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">
<FONT face=Verdana color=maroon
size=2><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Tamim Ansary<FONT
color=black><SPAN
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