In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
Afghanistam: Copied, not mine
nunn
Forums Admins, Member, Moderator Posts: 36,078 ******
This was sent to me by someone who requested that I post it here. His reasons for remaining anonymous are his own.None of the words is mine. I pass it along unedited for any who care to read it.Dear Friends,The following was sent to me by my friend Tamim Ansary. Tamim is an Afghani-American writer. He is also one of the most brilliantpeople I know in this life. When he writes, I read. When he talks, I listen. Here is his take on Afghanistan and the whole mess we arein. -Gary T.Dear Gary and whoever else is on this email thread:I've been hearing a lot of talk about, "bombing Afghanistan back to theStone Age." Ron Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing todo 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 anyonewho 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 ofignorant 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. Theywould 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 thereare 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Talibanhas been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by theSoviets.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 anymoral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. Andnot 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 Pakistanwould 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?
Certified SIG pistol armorer/FFL Dealer/Full time Peace Officer, Egotistical Rogue, Evil, Dangerous Racist Moderator of the General Discussion Board on Gunbroker. Email davidnunn@texoma.net Jesus is Lord!
Certified SIG pistol armorer/FFL Dealer/Full time Peace Officer, Egotistical Rogue, Evil, Dangerous Racist Moderator of the General Discussion Board on Gunbroker. Email davidnunn@texoma.net Jesus is Lord!
Comments
I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.--Voltare
IF YOU DON'T LIKE MY RIGHTS - GET OUT OF MY COUNTRY(this includes politicians)[This message has been edited by BlueTic (edited 09-22-2001).]