[TriLUG] [Fwd: Tamim Ansary article]

[Michael A. McLean]

This article, written by an Afghani-American, compares Bin Laden with
Hitler and the Taliban with the Nazi Party.  Interesting that crypto was
such an important aspect of WWII.  Does anyone really think that strong
US laws regarding encryption in the 30's would have prevented Hitler
from having Enigma?  

----(fwd)------

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 brilliant people 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 are in. 
* 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 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