Friends---this was sent to me, and in the service of "knowing the
enemy" I share it with those who are interested.  Even though the
picture is grim, it is important to know what options may or may not
be credible--and this is an inside view.

>
>This is a commentary from Tamim Ansary, a writer
>and columnist in San Francisco, who comes from Afghanistan. Please read it
>and, if you are so moved, please forward
>
>* * * * * * * * *
>Who is Bin Laden?
>
>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

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