Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age

[Emma 0]

This is completely unrelated to skydiving so before you read it, you have been warned. However, it was sent to me on an email and I think it's worth reading.
And please, if you read anything that makes sense to you here, copy it into an email and send it on. If there's anything technology has given us, it's the ability for ordinary people to communicate with millions of other ordinary people outside of the media's limited perspective.
Emma
To whoever 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

[BenW 0]

Emma,
This is the way that I see the reason behind this atrocity. For many years, the terrorist groups have been calling for Jihad on the people of the west, but so far it's been limited to terrorist attacks without the mainstream support of the people.
Whoever is behind this, in my opinion, is definately trying to mobilise the whole Muslim world against the west. THAT is a very scary thought. These people have it hard, they see death and suffering everyday of their lives. We don't.
This whole situation is going to need really careful handling if we aren't going to plunge into another world war - one based on religion and belief....
Now that would NOT be a good thing, no matter how much people want swift revenge. A heavy handed, blanket attack isn't the way to go - in MY book.
Let's hope things can be sorted out without a religous war.
B.

[skreamer 1]

Quote

plunge into another world war - one based on religion and belief....

You're right, thats exactly what Bin Laden wants - the West to retaliate in heavy-handed fashion which would turn a lot of moderate Islamics into extremist Islamics. I don't quite buy that whole bit about the Afghans being the suffering victims all this time (in Emma's post). Best result would be to get the Afghan govenment to give Bin Laden and Co. up.
Will

[Emma 0]

Jesus, Will - you're a 'veteran'?? Didn't even know that existed!
The 'Afghan Government' is not the same as the Taliban, so asking the Afghan Government to hand Bin Laden over is difficult, since the Afghan Government have been overthrown by a bunch of psychos.
You can ask the Taleban to hand him over, but please understand that they have slaughtered thousands of Afghanis already, so they are NOT supported by the people of this nation.
Read this:
From the Lonely Planet:
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/letters/meast/afg_pc.htm
From the CIA (scroll down)
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/af.html
From Amnesty International
http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/ASA110071998
Emma

[apoil 0]

A good article. I'm glad it is being distributed.
Some things,
I find the Taliban to resemble the Khmer Rouge far more than the Nazis.
I also doubt that the Afghani people would welcome with open arms a foreign army that came in to liberate them from the evil Taliban.
I suspect it would end up as a vietnam situation where the locals would be turned against the soldiers supposedly there to help (I know the reality of vietnam was more complex than that, but the 19 yr olds in uniform were told they were there to help and were shocked that the south vietnamese didn't support them very much)
It would strengthen the Taliban's hold because they would be able to "prove" everything they have been saying about the west, that it aims to destroy Afghanistan and Islam. These are fierce fighters when their homeland is threatened. The best hope is to work with the so called Northern Alliance who are themselves Afghanis, but say we do bolster them enough to overthrow the Taliban.. then we will be left with another monster of our own creation. And the terrorist network is fanatical, galvanized and worldwide.
Israel and the PLO laying down arms is a surprising and positive step.

[iamcolin 0]

One thing...
I dont think Pakistan will suffer in all this,
Already there are over a million Afghan refugess in Pakistan.. Pakistan is cooperating with the US and has even mobilized troops to the border not letting anymore Afghanistans into Pakistan.. If Afghanistan doesnt hand Bin Laden over to the US Pakistan is letting America use their airspace.
Just thought I'd mention that.
Isn't that sad that they are trying to escape their country for fear of being bombed and they now can't even get out?

[Jumperpaula 0]

And the debate continues...
We COULD do anything from Nuke the whole country and wipe them off the map
to assisination of Bin Ladin only -
How far are we willing to go is the REAL QUESTION
Any truth to the report that one of the pilots met with Sadam Hussan's people only weeks before 911 ?? That would be a new twist to things.
Fly Your Slot !

[riggerrob 558]

As the first poster said, bombing Afghanistan back into the stone age won't work. It has already been done.
Asking the Afghan government to hand over Bin Laden won't work either. Afghanistan has never had a strong central government.
Trying to replace the Taliban with a more moderate government won't work either. You would just insert another bunch of fanatics. Moderates don't go to war.
As for sending in ground troops .... the greatest empires of this planet have tried repeatedly and failed repeatedly to conquer Afghanistan. Peter the Great failed to conquer Afghanistan. The British Empire failed to conquer Afghanistan. The Soviet Union failed to conquer Afghanistan.
The only way to stop fanatics like Bin Laden is to remove their popular support. To remove their popular support, you have to eliminate grievances.
Eliminating grievances is far easier said than done.
The first thing that we have to do is listen to their grievances. The strange thing about the latest terrorist attacks is that no-one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, much less publically made any demands.
I suspect that Western politicians and news media are deliberately shielding us from messages that terrorists have already sent.
How about a bit of "conspiracy theory" here?
So we are left guessing at what message these terrorists were trying to send.
The problem is that many of these grievances are based upon over-population.
For example, try convincing a few million Jews to leave Palestine. Ha!
Only the Chinese Communists have been able to convince citizens to stop raising children. Don't hold your breath waiting for the rest of the world to follow suit.
In the short run, the best we Westerners can do is stop meddling in the internal affairs of Moslem nations. Again, something far easier said than done. Big business is making far too much money to stop meddling.
So we are still searching for an answer folks.
But if we ignore terrorists, then all those New Yorkers died in vain!
Thanks for reading my rant.

[favaks 0]

> We COULD do anything from Nuke the whole country and wipe them off the map
Nuking the country will not solve the problem. Chances are, we'll probably see another nuke coming back at us. Besides, Russia won't be too happy to have their backyard nuked.
> How about a bit of "conspiracy theory" here?
I don't buy the crap that we spend billions of dollars every year on Intelligence and we didn't see this coming. I'm not ruling out the possibility that our government let this happened.
-favaks

[SpeedRacer 1]

Well, yeah there are no perfect solutions. This isn't a perfect world. And I agree that we have to listen to mainstream Islamic people & get them on our side. And that should be our long term policy: to the greatest extent possible, politically isolate the terrorist organizations and the governments that support them. Make sure the terrorists don't succeed in trying to paint this as a war against Islam.
But we shouldn't be frightened off every time the Taliban, Sadam, etc. call the war a "jihad". Who cares? Haven't you noticed, they call ALL their wars jihads! When Sadam Hussein sent his troops in to steal oil fields from Kuwait, he told everyone in Iraq, "Hey, guess what! I say that this war is a jihad! Now get in there and get me those oil fields!" Oh, gee, Sadam. A real live jihad, Never would have seen that coming. Well I guess that makes everything different then.
Every year or so some terrorist group attacks the US, blowing up a building here, hijacking a plane there. And we've never really responded with any kind of vigor. I think we definitely need to respond militarily now. If it looks like the Taliban isn't going to hand over bin Laden (and that appears to be the case) then we should go in there and boot the Taliban out, and take our chances with the Northern Alliance. And let's pray that we don't do a half-assed job of it like we did with Iraq. No telling how many terrorists are the guests of Sadam Hussein.
NO it's not a perfect solution, but you can't respond to a someone who hits you like this by just saying "Gee, let's not respond militarily. We'll just keep quiet and maybe they won't hit us again."
And yes, terrorists & the members of the Taliban can always go hide in the mountains, but if we take the major cities & military bases & give them to the opposing political party, the Taliban will at least have suffered a tremendous blow to their power over Afghanistan. But we have to take action. This terrorist shit is not going to stop unless we do something about it.
Speed Racer
"Come up to my lab,
And see what's on the slab!"

[freaksister 0]

Speaking of assassination... I thought we should have annihilated Hussein years ago, too bad it was "illegal." But then last night Clinton was on TV saying something about its only illegal to assassinate heads of state, not renegades/outlaws/terrorists or some shit. In other words, we can assassinate BIN LADEN! WOOHOO!! Take his fuckin' head off!! YEEHAW!!
Did anybody watch the tv report on the "Delta Force?"
There are some kick ass dudes there man, they could dissect Bin Laden and feed him his own fucking spleen!! (oops, maybe I've been reading too much Hannibal....HAHAHAHA) Evil diabolical sister comes out...
By the way, Did anybody notice I didn't get PMS this month? WOOHOO! But I STILL have an excuse for taking an AK47 and shoving it up Bin Laden's ass and blowing his brains out the top of his head...I'm on my period! oh yeah...this will be good!

See I don't like war, just discrete snipers removing the bad guys without killing all the civvies! (Transcendental Damage)...no that's not right...Negotiable Losses? Oh yeah, its COLLATERAL DAMAGE...great term invented by the arseholes!!
Sis
I lust for the ultimate rush...

[apoil 0]

Quote

And yes, terrorists & the members of the Taliban can always go hide in the mountains, but if we take the major cities & military bases & give them to the opposing political party, the Taliban will at least have suffered a tremendous blow to their power over Afghanistan. But we have to take action. This terrorist shit is not going to stop unless we do something about it.

I agree with you that we've got to do something about it, but you are falling into the trap of thinking that defeating them will be like defeating another traditional state.
There are no major cities. And these guys didn't need a militarty base to do what they did to us.
The Taliban is not a central government, they are just the dominant warlord tribe. Their leader is in hiding most of the time!
The Northern Alliance is our only hope, however what do we do once they are control and begin harboring terrorists themselves?

[billvon 2,400]

>And yes, terrorists & the members of the Taliban can always go hide in the
> mountains, but if we take the major cities & military bases & give them to the
> opposing political party, the Taliban will at least have suffered a tremendous
> blow to their power over Afghanistan. But we have to take action. This terrorist
> shit is not going to stop unless we do something about it.
There was an excellent article in the LA times from a former Soviet army officer who was part of the army that "took over" Afghanistan. His first assignment was mop-up after their air force had bombed an Afghani military base. When he arrived he found about a dozen mud huts, lots of craters, and a twelve year old girl with her foot blown off. A few of the Afghans were dead, but the majority had fled and were waiting in the hills with rifles.
Even if we do that a thousand times, at a thousand "military bases," think it will make a difference? Afghanistan has an almost endless supply of mud huts and twelve year olds.
-bill von

[SpeedRacer 1]

billvon,
Alright then, what do you think we should do?
Speed Racer
"Come up to my lab,
And see what's on the slab!"

[Tee 0]

I fully agree that the Taliban needs to be punished for their monstrosities, but I don't agree that an entire country (who is already suffering) should be part of that punishment. If the tables were turned and there was a terrorist group in the USA, I wouldn't want some country bombing the untire US to get to them. So many people would suffer needlessly.
Tee

[freeflir29 0]

"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. "
Awwww....poor fuckers. Much different than America at the start of the Revolutionary War. I say fuck em! They have chosen to live on their knees instead of dieing on their feet. If they aren't part of the solution they are part of the problem. This US is in large part what it is because long ago people not too differen't than you and I made a choice. They chose to live on their feet instead of dieing on their knees. Fuck the poor bastards in Afghanistan. They have made their choice now we must make ours!
"and behold, a pale horse, and he who sat on it, his name was death"-Revelations
Clay

[billvon 2,400]

>Alright then, what do you think we should do?
Go in, get Bin Laden and his supporters, and get out. Do it as quickly as possible and with as few bombs as possible. If anyone fires on us, kill them. Otherwise let them be.
-bill von

[freeflir29 0]

Well....getting Bin Laden is only a start. He is merely a figurehead primarily created by western media. He is a hero to many. I personally don't think it would change terrorism much at all if thats all we did. The Taliban must be removed. States like Iraq that have every reason in the world to sponsor terrorism must be dismantled. Funny....I haven't heard but small mention of North Korea in all this. They are one of the largest sponsors of terrorism in the world. Hmmm....let's see how big Bush's balls really are.
"This conversation ends right here Captain! You can talk to the ALO when he gets back."-Me
Clay

[dkearns 0]

First off some country is not going to do a traditional bombing on the US. This fight is going to be carried out by the Spec War community. Bush is not so dumb, I think to go willy nilly killing everybody in Afganastan to get bin laden and thus isolate us from the rest of the world. We will get our intelligence, find out where our target is and send in the specialists with some very good close air support and take out the bung holes.(do you have teepee) Why do you think we have not done any kind of retaliatory strike yet? Because we can't can't afford to make a huge mistake and kill a bunch of inicent civilians and isolate our selves from the the muslim world. We have to keep the world on our side and while were doing our thing, make it right for the rest of the world to root out the terrorists that live in there countries. Root it all out out and kill it.

[freeflir29 0]

"send in the specialists with some very good close air support"
Only one problem with that. In a place as unstable and hostile as Afghanistan the ghosts of Black Thursday (Somailia) and Desert One (Iran) still haunt the Spec Ops community. There's a course a lot of folks attend called "Introduction to Secial Ops" One of the speakers in this course is a veteran of Desert One. The whole course recounts past failures so that new generations dont make the same mistakes. I think the environment in Afghanistan is a bit hostile for a small force to go in alone. It don't quite work like the movies. We'll have to send in some regular Joe's to get a little closer to Jackass and his compadres.
"This conversation ends right here Captain! You can talk to the ALO when he gets back."-Me
Clay

[Jumperpaula 0]

This was a very long interview with Bin Laden in Esquire Mag 2/99, here's the highlights:
"For the future, bin Laden told me his first priority is to get the American military out of Saudi Arabia, the holiest of lands in Islam. "Every day the Americans delay their departure, they will receive a new corpse."
Already, U. S. forces have been dealt devastating blows there. Nineteen servicemen were killed in the 1996 bombing of the air-force barracks in Dhahran, and five U. S. military personnel were killed in a similar bombing in Riyadh in 1995. Investigators believe bin Laden is tied at some level to both attacks. Bin Laden said that the American military would leave Saudi Arabia, regardless of the fact that the Saudi royal family welcomes the American presence. "It does not make a difference if the government wants you to stay or leave. You will leave when the youth send you in wooden boxes and coffins. And you will carry in them the bodies of American troops and civilians. This is when you will leave."
Civilians?
"We do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians; they are all targets in this fatwa." Bin Laden argued that American outrage at attacks on American civilians constitutes a great double standard. Bin Laden believes that what we consider to be terrorism is just the amount of violence required to get the attention of the American people. His aim is to get Americans to consider whether continued support of Israel is worth the bloodshed he promises.
"So we tell the Americans as people," bin Laden said softly, "and we tell the mothers of soldiers and American mothers in general that if they value their lives and the lives of their children, to find a nationalistic government that will look after their interests and not the interests of the Jews. The continuation of tyranny will bring the fight to America, as Ramzi Yousef and others did. This is my message to the American people: to look for a serious government that looks out for their interests and does not attack others, their lands, or their honor. And my word to American journalists is not to ask why we did that but ask what their government has done that forced us to defend ourselves."
His last words to the camera were, "It is our duty to lead people to the light."
He's a Sick Man
Fly Your Slot !

[iamcolin 0]

What do you think would happen if instead of retaliating helped Afghanistan? Put an effort in to helping the middle east countries not sanctioning them and getting them on their feet. Instead of using the money to attack them use it to help them...
I know the countries with the oil don't want to follow the oil union thing whatever it is rules and want to sell their oil dirt cheap and kind of ruin it for us... Which is somewhat of the reason why the US has been bombing there lately and sanctioning.. But.. Does their decision to sell their oil at a different price than the set price of some thought up union to "keep the economy in place" even give us the right to do that? It keeps our economy well yeah but it fucks over those countries that have evenmore oil than us. Do you know how much cheaper gas would even be if AAAAUGH now im getting off topic.. Anyways I brought up the oil topic because that is one reason to not help them because they wont follow those rules set by the union.. But do we have the authority to dictate what they should price their oil at? Not really in a sense... But even if we did help them under agreement that they would follow rules set by the union i dont see how bad things could com eof it... I know there is evidence that shit will go down this saturday and everything but. Whatever Im babbling
This is Colin.. Signing off

[Jumperpaula 0]

Quote

...to sell their oil dirt cheap and kind of ruin it for us... Which is somewhat of the reason why the US has been bombing there lately and sanctioning..

Dude, I wish it were EVEN CLOSE to that simple.
Fly Your Slot !

[NewGuy 0]

Quote

What do you think would happen if instead of retaliating helped Afghanistan? Put an effort in to helping the middle east countries not sanctioning them and getting them on their feet. Instead of using the money to attack them use it to help them...

Honestly Colin, what do YOU think?
Do you believe Afghanastan (who has already been helped by the US to defend from the Soviets) would then turn over bin Laden if the west helped them out? Would bin Laden then stop all terrorist activity if the west helped out even more?
Perhaps it is worth questioning why a country would risk such fearsom retaliation from the US (and the West) for one person?. A person that is a known terrorist?
Peace is what the west wants. The thought of innocent Afghans in the middle of this is heartwrenching. To that end, I bring you back to the question: why protect one person, who is a known terrorist while risking the lives of so many of your countrymen? The answere is scary. You tell me.

[iamcolin 0]

Alright alright alright..
Lets just forget I said that then.