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Afghan opinion

Freeman/Pavey

Freeman/Pavey

Sept. 18, 2001, 4:15 p.m. (Message 27409)

This is a copy of a long email from an Afghan American. Those tired of,
or annoyed with, political comments on the Strathspey List should delete
it. However, I offer it with no apologies. I thought it to be extremely
interesting and thought provoking.

Cole
------------------------------

Dear Friends,    

Yesterday I heard a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the
Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio 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," and
he asked, "What else can we do? What is your suggestion?"  Minutes later
I heard a TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what
must be done."    And I thought about these issues 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 been going on over there. So I 
want to share a few thoughts with anyone who will listen.    

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 fervently wish to see those monsters punished.    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 captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding the
country in bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a
master 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 he perpetrators. They would love for someone to eliminate the
Taliban and clear out the rat's nest of international thugs holed up in
their country. I guarantee it.    

Some say, if that's the case, why don't the Afghans rise up and
overthrown the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they're starved,
exhausted, damaged, and incapacitated.  A few years ago, the United
Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in
Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food.  Millions of Afghans
are widows of the approximately two million men killed during the war
with the Soviets.  And the Taliban has been executing these women for
being women and have buried some of their opponents alive in mass
graves.  The soil of Afghanistan is littered with land mines and almost
all the farms have been destroyed. The Afghan people have tried to
overthrow the Taliban. They haven't been able to.    We come now to the
question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.  Trouble with
that scheme is, it's already been done. The Soviets took care of it. 
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?  There is no
infrastructure.  Cut them off from medicine and health care?  Too late. 
Someone already did all that.    

New bombs would only land in 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.  (They have already, I hear.)  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 be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping
once again the people they've been raping all this time.  So, what else
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. 

I think that when people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to
be done" many of them are thinking in terms of having the belly to kill
as many as needed.  They are thinking about overcoming moral qualms
about killing innocent people. But it's the belly to die not kill that's
actually on the table.  Americans will die in a land war to get Bin
Laden.  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. 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. The invasion approach is a flirtation with global war between
Islam and the West.    And that is Bin Laden's program. That's exactly
what he wants and  why he did this thing.  Read his speeches and
statements.  It's all right there.  

At the moment, of course, "Islam" as such does not exist. There are
Muslims and there are Muslim countries, but no such political entity as
Islam.  Bin Laden believes that if he can get a war started, he can
constitute this entity and he'd be running it.  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 Muslim lands, that's a
billion people with nothing left to lose, even better from Bin Laden's
point of view.  He's probably wrong about winning, in the end the west
would probably overcome--whatever that would mean in such a war; but the
war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but
ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden yes, but anyone else?    I
don't have a solution. But I do believe that suffering and poverty are
the soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his cohorts want to
bait us into creating more such soil, so they and their kind can
flourish. We can't let him do that. That's my humble opinion.  

Tamim Ansary
RuddBaron

RuddBaron

Sept. 18, 2001, 5:13 p.m. (Message 27410, in reply to message 27409)

Right now there is no room for hyphenated Americans. 

s/RBJ

In a message dated Tue, 18 Sep 2001 10:17:37 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
TayHaven <xxx@xxxxxx.xxx> writes:
Martin.Sheffield

Martin.Sheffield

Sept. 18, 2001, 6:44 p.m. (Message 27414, in reply to message 27410)

At 11:13 18/09/01 EDT, you wrote:
>Right now there is no room for hyphenated Americans. 
>
>s/RBJ

And there's no room for bigotry on this list.

We're all in this together.
Martin,
 in Grenoble, France.

 http://perso.wanadoo.fr/scots.in.france/
              (dance groups,  events,  some new dances ...)
Andrew Smith

Andrew Smith

Sept. 18, 2001, 8:15 p.m. (Message 27421, in reply to message 27414)

Absolutely, Martin.
I cannot see any gain at all and the potential for huge loss in blitzing an
already impoverished country, no matter how much we are hurting. I share
Tamim Ansary' views.
Andrew.
Tim Harrison

Tim Harrison

Sept. 18, 2001, 7:35 p.m. (Message 27416, in reply to message 27410)

At 10:13 AM 9/18/01, xxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx wrote:
>Right now there is no room for hyphenated Americans. 

We are all hyphenated Americans or descended from them, unless Native American.

-- Tim Harrison
-- Austin, Texas
RuddBaron

RuddBaron

Sept. 18, 2001, 8:10 p.m. (Message 27417, in reply to message 27409)

Nothing bigotted about that. We're either American or we're not,
regardless of national origin. If this "Afghan-American" is from
Afghanistan but now American, he's American.

s/RBJ

In a message dated Tue, 18 Sep 2001  1:04:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
M Sheffield <xxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxx.xx> writes:
RuddBaron

RuddBaron

Sept. 18, 2001, 8:14 p.m. (Message 27418, in reply to message 27409)

In a message dated Tue, 18 Sep 2001  1:34:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
Tim Harrison <xxxxxxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx> writes:

> We are all hyphenated Americans or descended from them, unless Native American.
> 
Harrison
> -- Austin, Texas

--- A "Native" of anywhere is someone who was born there. The so
called "NAtive Americans," meaning American Indians, also are
immigrants. My family has been here 10 generations...before this
country was this country. I was born here. I am, therefore, a native.
As for hyphens...especially in a time of war there is no room for a
half-assed committment. We must be united as Americans. Hyphens split
us up.

s/RBJ
Tim Harrison

Tim Harrison

Sept. 18, 2001, 9:31 p.m. (Message 27426, in reply to message 27418)

At 01:14 PM 9/18/01, xxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx wrote:
>--- A "Native" of anywhere is someone who was born there. The so
called "NAtive Americans," meaning American Indians, also are
immigrants. My family has been here 10 generations...before this
country was this country. I was born here. I am, therefore, a native.
As for hyphens...especially in a time of war there is no room for a
half-assed committment. We must be united as Americans. Hyphens split
us up.

Being proud of one's ancestry and cultural heritage doesn't
automatically cause one to have a "half-assed" commitment to all
others.

End of my participation in this thread. I seem to be encouraging more
inflammatory statements.

-- Tim Harrison
-- Austin, Texas
Norah Link

Norah Link

Sept. 18, 2001, 8:50 p.m. (Message 27419, in reply to message 27409)

Are you objecting to what this person wrote or to the fact that someone
else, who is not even a citizen of the United States, referred to them as an
"Afghan American"?

Norah
Marilynn Knight

Marilynn Knight

Sept. 18, 2001, 8:55 p.m. (Message 27420, in reply to message 27409)

Inyouropinion....IMHO, hyphens can unite us and give us added, wonderful
color.
RuddBaron

RuddBaron

Sept. 18, 2001, 9:05 p.m. (Message 27423, in reply to message 27409)

In a message dated Tue, 18 Sep 2001  2:54:33 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
Norah Link <xxxxx@xxx.xxx> writes:

> Are you objecting to what this person wrote or to the fact that someone
> else, who is not even a citizen of the United States, referred to them as an
> "Afghan American"?
> 
> Norah
> 
--- Both.
Alan Paterson

Alan Paterson

Sept. 19, 2001, 8:23 a.m. (Message 27443, in reply to message 27423)

xxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx wrote:
> 
> In a message dated Tue, 18 Sep 2001  2:54:33 PM Eastern Daylight
Time, Norah Link <xxxxx@xxx.xxx> writes:
> 
> > Are you objecting to what this person wrote or to the fact that someone
> > else, who is not even a citizen of the United States, referred to them as an
> > "Afghan American"?
> >
> > Norah
> >
> --- Both.

The person who put together the original article (I cannot remember if he was
named by the original poster in this thread) was someone called Gary T. No idea
what nationality he is, but aren't the chances rather high that he is American?
(His friend, Mr Amsary, lives in Chicago, I believe). Also, if you have doubts
of the credentials of the author of the central part of the posting, then try
putting in the authors name "Tamim Amsary" into the Google search engine.

Alan
RuddBaron

RuddBaron

Sept. 18, 2001, 9:06 p.m. (Message 27424, in reply to message 27409)

In a message dated Tue, 18 Sep 2001  2:56:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
Marilynn Knight <xxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.xxx> writes:

> Inyouropinion....IMHO, hyphens can unite us and give us added, wonderful
> color.
> 
--- Unless we remain throroughly united, about the only color we're
going to be seeing a lot of is red...blood red. And it's going to come
from our soldiers, and likely even many people at home.

s/RBJ
RuddBaron

RuddBaron

Sept. 18, 2001, 9:08 p.m. (Message 27425, in reply to message 27409)

I do believe they just declared war on us...or were talking about it.
Either way, they are harboring and supporting someone who has declared
war on us and is doing a fine job of carrying out his intentions.

s/RBJ

In a message dated Tue, 18 Sep 2001  2:58:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
"Andrew Smith" <xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx.xx.xx> writes:
RuddBaron

RuddBaron

Sept. 18, 2001, 9:33 p.m. (Message 27427, in reply to message 27409)

In a message dated Tue, 18 Sep 2001  3:30:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
Tim Harrison <xxxxxxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx> writes:
> 
> Being proud of one's ancestry and cultural heritage doesn't
automatically cause one to have a "half-assed" commitment to all
others.
> 
--- Being proud of and participating in one's cultural heritage
certainly isn't bad, and is usually a very good thing. Saying one is
French or Teutonic or Celtic, or whatever, helps one to learn who one
is. That can be beneficial in things like a war. However, when it
comes to stating nationality, African-American, Scottish-American,
Irish-American, Hindu-Pakistani-Germanic-American, etc., all have
detractors from the "American" part.
Miriam L. Mueller

Miriam L. Mueller

Sept. 19, 2001, 5:56 p.m. (Message 27464, in reply to message 27409)

Oh Rudd - 
What a half-empty glass view it is when you say:
	"However, when it comes to stating nationality, African-American,
Scottish-American, Irish-	American, Hindu-Pakistani-Germanic-American,
etc., all have detractors from the "American" 	part."
Quite the reverse - it is one of the prides and blessings of living here
that the hyphen ADDS to the definition and richness of "American". 
Miriam Mueller
ron.mackey

ron.mackey

Sept. 19, 2001, 8:55 p.m. (Message 27468, in reply to message 27464)

> From:          "Miriam L. Mueller" <xxxxxxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx>
> What a half-empty glass view it is when you say:

	Hi, Miriam
		The only thing I know about a half-filled (or empty) glass is that 
to an optimist it is still half full and to a pessimist it's 
already half empty!  :)



Cheers,  Ron   :)

 < 0   Ron Mackey,(Purveyor of Pat's Party Pieces)
  'O>  Mottingham, 
  /#\  London. UK.
   l>
xxx.xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx
Jean Hayes

Jean Hayes

Sept. 20, 2001, 1:12 a.m. (Message 27471, in reply to message 27468)

The only thing I know about a half-filled (or empty) glass is that
>to an optimist it is still half full and to a pessimist it's
>already half empty!  :)

************
>From a list of "engineer jokes" came:

He sees the glass not as half empty, not as half full, but as a poorly
engineered specimen of a vessel!

Jean
Ray Brown

Ray Brown

Sept. 20, 2001, 6:53 a.m. (Message 27473, in reply to message 27468)


	    
	  
Pia Walker

Pia Walker

Sept. 20, 2001, 8:37 a.m. (Message 27475, in reply to message 27473)

I myself would blame the people who filled it :>) and there's a hyphen in
over-designed - :>)

Pia
Whose children are anglo-danes.
Angus Henry

Angus Henry

Sept. 20, 2001, 1:57 p.m. (Message 27480, in reply to message 27475)

Why not just take the optimist's approach?  Puka and I have a son who 
is Scottish+Papuan.

Angus

>I myself would blame the people who filled it :>) and there's a hyphen in
>over-designed - :>)
>
>Pia
>Whose children are anglo-danes.
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Ray Brown <xxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx>
>To: <xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx>
>Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 5:53 AM
>Subject: Re: Afghan opinion
>
>
>>  ----- Original Message -----
>>  From: <xxx.xxxxxx@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx>
>>  >
>>  > The only thing I know about a half-filled (or empty) glass is that
>>  > to an optimist it is still half full and to a pessimist it's
>>  > already half empty!  :)
>>
>>    And, of course, an engineer will say that it's over-designed. (laugh)
>  >
>  >                 _Ray_
>  >
>  >

-- 

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
   Angus & Puka Henry:- 4 Eagle Court, Wulagi, DARWIN, NT 0812, AUSTRALIA
PHONE: (International) + 61 (0)8 8927 9203
FAX: as phone, but phone FIRST to arrange for it to be switched on!
Website: <http://www.octa4.net.au/ahenry/>
RuddBaron

RuddBaron

Sept. 19, 2001, 7:35 p.m. (Message 27465, in reply to message 27409)

The glass is only half-empty when one is removing liquid from it. If
it reaches its equilibrium state from above, i.e., more full, it is
half empty. If it reaches it from below, it is half-full...all
assuming that change is only in one direction. However, when one knows
not whether the liquid is being added or removed, and the liquid is at
the half-mark, it can be neither half empty nor half full. Introducing
quantum theory into the problem introduces another set of
difficulties, as measurements tend to destroy all previous
information. As for the hyphens...one either carries an American
passport or not. There is no Irish-American passport or Hindu-
American. One flies the American flag or not. One does not fly a
Scottish-American flag (some mix of the stars and stripes and St.
Andrews cross?) or a Franco-American flag. An occasional use of a
hyphen is all well and good, but this widespread use of it has led to
such nonsense as "protected classes," and has furthered the divide
between people.

s/RBJ

In a message dated Wed, 19 Sep 2001  1:23:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
"Miriam L. Mueller" <xxxxxxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx> writes:
Cecilia Stolzer Grote

Cecilia Stolzer Grote

Sept. 20, 2001, 8:44 a.m. (Message 27476, in reply to message 27409)

Message text written by INTERNET:xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx
>
Nothing bigotted about that. We're either American or we're not, regardless
of national origin. If this "Afghan-American" is from Afghanistan but now
American, he's American.

s/RBJ
<

I'm just wondering... who is s/RBJ and why doesn't he write his full name?

Cecillia Stolzer-Grote
RSCDS SF Branch
Anselm Lingnau

Anselm Lingnau

Sept. 20, 2001, 9:04 a.m. (Message 27477, in reply to message 27409)

Cecilia Stolzer Grote <xxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx> writes:

[...]

Can we please close this correspondence NOW and go back to the topic
that this list is supposed to be about?

Anselm
-- 
Anselm Lingnau (Frankfurt, Germany)     Strathspey SCD mailing list maintainer
Send mail to  <xxxxxxxxxx-xxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx>  for information about the list
Check out  http://www.strathspey.org  for lots of interesting stuff about SCD!
RuddBaron

RuddBaron

Sept. 20, 2001, 12:35 p.m. (Message 27478, in reply to message 27409)

In a message dated 9/20/01 2:45:56 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
xxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx writes:

<< I'm just wondering... who is s/RBJ and why doesn't he write his full name?
  >>
--- "RBJ" is The Mt. Hon. Sir Rutherford B. Johnson, KBY, CCS, MCS, SC, BSc, 
NESA, OA, Chancellor of the Sword.

s/RBJ

***************************************************************
Slàinte mhath, h-uile latha, na chì 'snach fhaic. Slàinte mhòr.
An Ridir Radtherfòrd Beurach MacIain, MacSiamas
Carfuffle

Carfuffle

Sept. 23, 2001, 8:37 p.m. (Message 27483, in reply to message 27409)

I like that approach. I've always thought of myself as an AMERICAN with 
SCOTTISH heritage, BOTH of which I am proud!

Nadene B. Hunter
Dansville, NY
Alan Harrison

Alan Harrison

Sept. 24, 2001, 1:25 p.m. (Message 27487, in reply to message 27409)

"that man to man the world o'er shall Brothers be for a' that"

Best regards,
Alan.

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