Well, my last post created a lot of noise, let's see what this one does.

An Afghan-American speaks

You can't bomb us back into the Stone Age. We're already there. But you can start a new world war, and that's exactly what Osama bin Laden wants.

By Mir Tamim Ansary

Salon.com, September 14, 2001

I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on San Francisco's KGO Talk Radio, conceded today 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 in the United States 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 bin 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 healthcare? 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? --END--

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), September 16, 2001

Answers

Link

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), September 16, 2001.

A nice little poor-little-us speech.

We're just innocent victims, we can't help it if we abet evil. Our leaders are at fault. But don't ask for a reckoning for your loss, because we, in our helpless, powerless poverty, will kill billions of you.

Tell you what, stone age boy, direct even a hundredth of that kill- billions -threat to your own leaders whom you allegedly hate, and maybe somebody will buy it.

-- OhDoodahDay (Towelban@camptown.races), September 16, 2001.

Intelligent posts always bring out the trolls and idiots from under their rocks. Somehow they seem to feel threatened by this combination of common sense and good writing skills.

Good post, Unk.

-- Just (another@anonymous.poster), September 16, 2001.

I'm with you, Unc. We need to hunt these bastards down one by one. Future military action may be necessary, but let's not get bogged down in a place like Afganistan that defeated even the brutal Russkies.

-- Lets not (make@serious.mistake), September 16, 2001.

Mornin', Unk! Guess who? :) (Unk sighs and rolls his eyes up, "God, not THIS early....")

DON'T bomb them back to the stone age. That wouldn't be much different than what they did to us.

Just do enough to to the following things:

1) Get and/or kill as many terrorists as possible; wipe out their camps.

2) Replace their government with a free one. Forever.

Re a ground assault -- I know there's plenty of mountains, but don't know the terrain in general. But why couldn't we focus on parachuting in instead? Or a combination?

In any case, we could do a total invasion in concert with other nations, simply massively overwhelming them by sheer numbers alone.

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), September 16, 2001.

I agree - by all means replace tyrants with something slightly less tyrannical under Western control, and by all means extract from these 'people' full financial compensation for what they've done. I suppose Afghanistan in exchange for the WTC is, monetarily speaking, a fair exchange.

-- Just (another@anonymous.poster), September 16, 2001.

Re a ground assault -- I know there's plenty of mountains, but don't know the terrain in general.

According to the latest talking-head comments, the Afghanistan faction that fought against Russia and against the Taliban (and Bin Laden) have made themselves available to assist the U.S. in their ground attack. That would settle the "knowing the terrain" issue but....in precarious situations like this, who do you trust?

-- News (Hound@CNN.com), September 16, 2001.

Unk,

What Eve said.

*THIS* is why we ARE considering a ground assault, and not just bombing. If we replace the Taliban with the original government and are careful to do it right, the people of Afghanistan will probably *THANK* us.

-- Stephen M. Poole (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), September 16, 2001.

... especially if we come in with foreign aid, food, doctors and other humanitarian assistance.

-- Stephen M. Poole (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), September 16, 2001.

To answer your question more directly: No, Unk, I don't want to kill this poor woman, who had nothing to do with what happened in NYC.

I want to target the people who kill innocents in the name of a twisted interpretation of religion.

-- Stephen M. Poole (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), September 16, 2001.

Massive air retaliation = wrong. It won't remove Taliban. There is no infrastructure to smash. It won't even make us feel better. It will kill innocent peasants and martyrize people already attracted to martyrdom.

Ground invasion = wrong. If the Soviets couldn't beat Afghans on the ground, how can we? The logistics are godawful. The loss of young American life could be huge. The expense? We'd need to support a 2 million person Army half a world away for years (remember, we would not merely have to defeat them, we'd have to occupy them) in a country that doesn't even have seaports.

The Muhadjadeen would fade into the mountain just as the Viet Cong faded into the jungles. The Muhadjeen would fade into their own peasants just as the VC faded into theirs. Wouldn't the Muhadjeen run out of weapons/materiel? Afterall, they don't have Soviets and International Communism to supply them as did the VC and North Vietnamese? Well, I think they would get sufficient supplies thru other Muslim states and quite possibly through China.

So what can be done?

This is a war. They have chosen to make it an unconventional war. I say that we oblige them.

1)- Use our superior technical spy technology to identify all terorist camps, world-wide, and take them out by air, by Delta forces, by tactical nukes if necessary. I saw Bill Bennett interviewed recently. He made the interesting observation that, as drug "czar", he knew where all the cocaine labs were in Columbia. He claimed that they could have been destroyed overnight. He claimed that the Columbian Gov would have supported us doing this. Still, for political reasons, it was not done. Yes, he allowed that the labs would be rebuilt. Then we could destroy them again. Each time would have set them back a year.

Do we know whare most of the terrorist camps are? Of course we do. They keep moving them and we still know. Eliminate them.

2)-Bring the war to them but do it covertly. Deny everything but relentlessly exterminate them (the terrorists). Oh, a secret war is not the "American Way"? So bombing cilians is the American way? The American Way is to do what works.

3)-bring the war to them everywhere in the world, especially in the US. They are here. They hide among peaceful American, among peaceful Arab-Asmericans and conspire to kill us. This must be stopped.

3)-Increase domestic security. Again this will come at a cost to civil rights and to the economy. But it must be done. Evacuation plans, counter terorist tactics, gas masks, whatever. Hey, duck and cover.

4)-Follow the money. What they are doing costs hundreds of millions, billions. The US international clout and intelligence skills should enable us to track their money and cut them off. No money, no international terrorism.

5)-Use covert ops, assassination, total deniability. The model is Israel. The model is Mossad. They must know that no terror act will go unpunished, ever. Remember 1994(?), the winter Plympics in Lillejammer (Sp?), Norway? That hitherto unknown town was where the Mossad had recently caught the last Palestinian terrorist from the 1972 Olympics in Munich. They simply assassinated him. That is justice. The Mossad had tracked these people for over 20 years.

6)-Use international allies, including competing Afghan tribes and Arab tribes. These tribes are constantly in-fighting. Our enemy is not monolithic. Divide and coquer, sew dissent, buy information, hire saboteurs and Ninjas, commit espionage. Get as many involved in the anti-terrorist effort as possible. Russia has had many Arab terrorist problems. Likewise Germany, Italy and Europe in general.

I think our weopons are many. I think "conventional" war is not an option. Avoid international courts. Avoid domestic courts. Let's kick ass.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 16, 2001.

You are making this much too complicated. We are dealing with the Muslim Extremist Community, a people that have permeated the societies of many countries. These people have but one mission in life: exterminate ALL non-believers. They will give no quarter and as we have seen over and over, will gladly give their lives for this mission. There is but one way to deal with these people: eliminate them from the face of this earth. We must steel ourselves to the fact that many ‘innocents’ will perish in order to meet this objective. They care not for any human life and to defeat them we must march forward with remorseless aggression. This is not the time for weak sisters to have a voice. Right now, the world needs the bad asses of liberty’s quest to take over.

-- Your (Supreme@Commander.com), September 16, 2001.

Here is a News analysis from LA Times -

Broad New U.S. Strategy to Fight Terror Emerging

Snip -

On the military side, officials are "thinking outside the box," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said--management jargon for breaking free of old assumptions. "One has to think about, if necessary, larger forces. One has to think about accepting casualties," Wolfowitz said in a television interview. "One has to think about sustained campaigns. One has to think about broad possibilities. And we're trying to present that full range of possibilities to the president."

The goals that the administration has set out "will almost certainly require an expeditionary force on the ground in Afghanistan," said L. Paul Bremer, a former State Department counter-terrorism chief. "It's going to be a hell of an operation."

Another snip -

The United States officially considers seven countries (in addition to the Taliban) to be sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, North Korea and Cuba.

-- Debra (Thisis@it.com), September 16, 2001.

Lars,

To that, I would add that it IS a legitimate thing to make war on those governments which sponsor terrorism. For that, you need ground troops.

I disagree that a ground war in Afghanistan couldn't be won, anyway. Our military is now vastly superior to the one that the Soviets used. The Soviets made the same mistake that we made in Vietnam, thinking that big set-piece battles were the way to do it.

Well, we won every set-piece battle that we ever met in Vietnam, and we still lost the war. But our military LEARNED from that.

And let's examine this statement, which is the most troubling of all. (You're not the only one who's said this, so I'm not picking on you.)

Increase domestic security. Again this will come at a cost to civil rights and to the economy. But it must be done. Evacuation plans, counter terorist tactics, gas masks, whatever. Hey, duck and cover.

I agree ... to a point. It's an important point, too.

Lars, I'm not the enemy. The American people are not to blame for what happened. It is WRONG to punish the American people by taking away their hard-won liberties if there is an alternative, and I say there is: if we were to smash the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Sadaam Hussein in Iraq and the Islamic Fundies in Iran, we wouldn't *HAVE* to make America a police state.

Making ours a police state so that we can say, "look, we didn't do no ground invasions and topple governments!" is just flat wrong-headed.

I'm not saying you'd necessarily disagree with me in the main, and I'm not necessarily targeting all of these comments at YOU. But I've watching these calls that Americans may have to surrender some of their civil rights with grave concern.

Why should *WE* have to become a police state because of what criminals overseas have done to us? That's just wrong.

-- Stephen M. Poole (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), September 16, 2001.

I think you may be indulging thie "slippery slope" fallacy Stephen. We need not become a plice-state in order to tighten security. In times of war, security has to be increased. Some civil rights have to be curtailed, temporarily. WWII was an example. Ironically, increased security will increase our civil rights from what they would be otherwise. Do you want to continue flying with the current level of aviation "security"?

I have no expertise on military matters. You may be right about the feasibility of land operations. Taliban has no military strength to speak of. They have no tanks, no AirForce, no artillery, etc. Militarily they are equivelent to the Mafia, or the Medallin Cartel, or to the Crips n Bloods. On the other hand, they may have nukes by way of Iraq and China. They may have bio/chemical also. They have the delivery systems (people) and the will to use them. Unless the public is confidant that Security is adequate, they will avoid unneccessary risk; ie, a self-imposed limitation of Civil Rights. Do you have any immediate plans to take your family to Disney World, to the Super Bowl, to any high profile place/event?

Another thing I hope we avoid is the "Negotiation Syndrome". The Oslo Accords ought to (but won't) convince us that these terrorists have no more respect for Peace Treaties than did Hitler.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 16, 2001.

1 freeze their bank accounts

2 seize their oilfields

3 feed them a steady diet of US movies and television (worst punishment of all, alone) it worked on the rest of the world, it will work on them

-- simple solution (for@ll.of.you), September 16, 2001.

simple solution,

How about old Donnie and Marie videos?

That would bring ANYONE to their knees. :)

-- Stephen M. Poole (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), September 16, 2001.

Videos of Paula Gordon seminars. That'll put 'em in comas.

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), September 16, 2001.

CL,

Now, now.

We don't want to get into crimes against humanity here.

:)

-- Stephen M. Poole (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), September 16, 2001.