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 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 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
Comments?
[ September 20, 2001: Message edited by: Tahna Los ]
His original article was published by Salon.com and can be found here.
As for my comments, while some of the article strikes me a bit suspect, the author nonetheless makes a good point. At least in my opinion, he does. I've been reading a lot of the threads devoted to this over at the Straight Dope message boards, and I'm learning a good deal of information about that country.
Such information I've learned is that only two of Afghanistan's cities have electricity. Only two cities, and only about 5 to 10 percent of the nation's citizens live in those cities. The rest of the population lives in the rural areas trying to survive by farming and ranching; however, they are in the middle of a long drought. Most of the population probably does not know that these attacks happened. And these same people would very well be more innocent souls to perish should we take military action.
On the other hand, any other course of action we take would still lead to the death of more innocent souls. The Taliban is doing nothing to help the citizens of Afghanistan. If we were to go in and take bin Laden by force, that might destabilize the Taliban governing structure enough for it to topple. Then again, it might not. In short, there are hard decisions to be made here, and I have nothing but sympathy for the persons who are going to have to make them.
I'd also like to point out that we could go through Russia to enter Afghanistan, but there would be problems. First, Kabul is right next to the Pakistan border. It's fairly distant from the Russia border. That gives the Taliban too much time to flee. Second, the Soviets tried this route when they attempted to reinforce the Communist government there in 1979. After ten years of warfare, the Soviets withdrew without having accomplished anything. We could go through Russia, but we'd likely encounter many of the same problems they did. I was watching a special on Afghanistan and bin Laden last night on TLC. As an interesting note, the people that were resisting and fighting the Soviets at this time were not Afghans. They were largely Moslem extremists from neighboring Arab countries.
You can't go through Russia into Afganistan. You'd have to go through at least two other countries in the process.
Of course, we could do the entire operation using airdropped troops, but I don't know how well that would work for tanks...
Maybe we should use our nifty little international coalition to actually help the people of Afganistan. Take out the Taliban, or at least drive them off, and rebuild the country. Preferably with the help of their immediate neighbors. It might be good PR.
[ September 20, 2001: Message edited by: Omega ]
quote:
Khyber Pass
Didn't several thousand Brits get massacred there? Although I forget the number, I think only one escaped ...
I'm pretty sure the US govt is aware of all of the facts listed in the letter, and if a military action was attempted it would of course be against the taliban and the bin laden camps, not the people. i hope, anyway
The people talking about bombing the country itself are radio DJs and wags on internet message boards. thats who the letter should be for.
[ September 20, 2001: Message edited by: CaptainMike ]
during the cold war there were a lot of countries sticking their noses into the business of smaller powers like afghanistan. im sure there were a lot of silly military actions we cant determine a reason for now that the communist dust has settled. vietnam comes to mind
Why are we trying to determine why the Soviet Union went in to Afghanistan? What matters now is that they went in and got a serious ass-kicking. Same with the British. And if we can't go in and accomplish our goals without getting lots of our (American, British, etc.) soldiers killed, we might want to reaxamine our goals ...
The Brits attempt a few half hearted punitive expeditions after that but not much else.
Ironic, however, that the Brits were right about a Russian invasion, but was only off by about 100 years or so.
Yet another example of the long and bloody history of foreign powers in Afghanistan.
[ September 20, 2001: Message edited by: USS Vanguard ]
*echoes across the surface of Regula I*