Good analysis of the whole thing from an Afghan-American's POV

[Undertoad]

From DaveNet, here -

Mir Tamim Ansary on Afghanistan

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?

Mir Tamim Ansary

[jaguar]

Another fantastic one.
Pity this won't get heard by enough people.
ON a side note i think pakistan would let people though, they are propped up by the US, they need the US.

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by jaguar
Another fantastic one.
Pity this won't get heard by enough people.
ON a side note i think pakistan would let people though, they are propped up by the US, they need the US.

Musharraf needs to show the world that the military government in Pakistan is fair and just. By allowing the US to set up camp there, it gives him a shot of credibility. At the same time, it seems that Pakistan does not want the blood on its hands. Sort of a "Set up shop, but don't ask for too much help." Of course, it gives the US essentially what it wanted. But could Pakistan really refuse? What would have happened if Pakistan declined? Would they have been enemies of the state?

[jaguar]

It would have been what Bin Laden wants, all out war.

[tw]

Originally posted by sycamore
Musharraf needs to show the world that the military government in Pakistan is fair and just. ... But could Pakistan really refuse? What would have happened if Pakistan declined? Would they have been enemies of the state?

Pakistan could easily have refused. But they have been under economic pressure since the nuclear bomb fiasco (India and Pakistan). We don't know what carrot was offered to Pakistan other than economic and military aid. Does it restore relations with the US? Maybe. But I suspect something more telling was confronting the Pakistani leadership. Bush's statement that this was war, combined with previous treaty obligations between Pakistan and the US made it necessary for Pakistan to make a decision. It was probably stated, straight out, that they no longer had the option of the usual ternary answer. The US made it clear that "maybe" or "conditional" was "No" with all the adverse conditions associated with "No".

The fact that Pakistan said "yes" (and I hope the US State Dept did not misunderstand the conditions) and that Pakistan will send a high level delegation to Afghanstan implies that the Bush administration has finally taken a leadership position.

We (the public) also don't know the mental state of Muslim world leadership. They are being coy. I suspect if he could do so, the President of Iran would have offered to the US some territorial access (if you understand relations between Iran and Afghanistan). But Muslim world leadership is also playing it low key - which is why we don't know their mindset. The Pakistani leadership, though, was in a position of "Shit or get off the pot". I think we will know better on Monday what they did.

[elSicomoro]

I found this story on the BBC this morning. It's about getting news to the Afghanis, given the oppressive nature of the Taleban.