[wordup] have we got the belly?

[Adam Shand]

Via: Josh Reineke <josh at spack.org>

I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the
Stone Age." Ron 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 deeply hates the Taliban and
Osama Bin Laden. My hatred comes from first hand experience.  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 Afgh! anistan--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 would not 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?  Unfortunately, Bin Laden does.  Anyone else?

In Peace,
Tamim Ansary