Spare a thought today....

Trev M

....for all the innocents about to be lost in Afghanistan as the US continues to build up its forces for the first strike, it looks inevitable from the latest news

http://www.nytimes.com/

Gar_ptc

can anything be done about it?

they are too ignorant to "listen"to protesters or acknowledge common sense...
a reprisal is needed,but not the one i anticipate is going to happen

Aspro

The Anti-Globalisation movement should mobilise in the same way that the peace movement did against the Vietnam War in the 1960's, explaining to people that a war against Afghanistan will be of no benefit to ordinary Americans.

The US government will try to use the terrorist attacks as an excuse to clamp down on civil liberties and the right to protest against the very injustices that led to the tragedy of Sept. 11th.

War will not bring back the victims in the Twin Towers. It will not protect their jobs from the impending recession. And it could lead to a massive further destabilisation of the Middle East leading to more American and Arab deaths.

It's going to be difficult to try to explain to those who have lost loved ones and workmates that another war is not the solution but, as with Vietnam, when the bodybags start coming home attitudes will change.

thedrowner

> This is a rational and thought provoking commentary. It comes from Tamim,
> a
> writer and columnist in San Francisco, who comes from Afghanistan. This
> is very
> interesting and chilling....
>
>
> 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 inNew
> 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