I don't think anyone has posted this incredibly thought provoking email on
the list yet. I received it through EVALTALK the American Evaluation
Association's forum.

Sarah Batterbury
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>From: Maryellen Lewis <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: American Evaluation Association Discussion List
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Afghanis crushed under the Bin Laden regime
>Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 10:20:32 -0400
>
>[A very sobering essay, especially the last paragraph.]
>
>--------- Forwarded message ----------
>
>[This commentary comes from Tamim Ansary, an Afghani-American writer and
>columnist in San Francisco.]
>
>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
>
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