|
|||||||||
Posted November 23, 2001
'Peace, Not War' Idea
As a patriotic American, I find it difficult to buy this "peace, not war" idea, especially considering who we are up against. While I agree that peace is better than war, it only works when both sides believe this. Bin Laden and associates are not reasonable people. They cannot be trusted. They are blinded by some perverted religious nonsense, and would just as well die for their cause. I have heard about people protesting the war, but I have not heard about alternatives to war. Sometimes I think people just protest for the sake of protesting (it helps their tie-dye image). Here's the $64,000 question: If we stop bombing will they stop terrorizing?
Eric Garris replies:
The problem is that the people we are bombing are not terrorists. In fact, every single one of the terrorists came from two US allies, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and the plots were hatched in Britain, Germany, and Spain.
A few months ago, in May, when the US gave the Taliban $43 million for drug eradication, they were certified terrorist-free. The recent news stories about the Al-Qaeda terror lab found in Kabul turned out to be a plot by the Times of London to sell newspapers. The documents turned out to be from a parody website.
I agree that we should retaliate against the perpetrators. But to kill innocent people just so that we can feel like we are doing "something" is going to do nothing but breed a new generation of terrorists. By killing innocents to get to Bin Laden, we are doing precisely what Bin Laden is doing by killing innocents to get to the US government.
Quagmire
[Regarding "Get Our Boys Out Now," the column of November 19, by "Emmanuel Goldstein":]
Have you read last week's newspapers, which all ran stories about the Taliban literally sh*tting their tunics and running like mama's boys from the Northern Alliance and US bombing? "Quagmire"? Your article was moot before it ran.
Get
a grip on human reality -- only the strong survive, the
emotionally strong, the morally strong, and, last but
not least, the physically strong.
Emmanuel Goldstein replies:
The Soviets got in far faster than the West did. It's getting out that's the hard bit in Afghanistan. Just like in Somalia.
Mazar
Just wondering why you now have the usual stories about civilian casualties (a massive total of 7 killed in one town says the Telegraph) but not a single article up there now about how the Taliban has reportedly killed hundreds of their own guys in Kanduz.
According to refugee accounts, foreign Taliban fighters (some from al-Qaida) have executed many civilians and up to 470 Afghan Taliban who wanted to surrender. Unlike the Mazar stories of 520 Taliban killed, here we have actual witnesses to the alleged carnage as opposed to information that all points to combat. Shouldn't these reported atrocities in Kanduz receive the same attention (if not more!) than the unsubstantiated reports out of Mazar?
Eric Garris replies:
We ran the story about Al-Qaeda killing the Taliban forces at the top of our page two days ago, and we have run stories about the Arab and Afghan Taliban forces killing each other. Today we have a story about the Taliban selling out the foreign forces.
By the way, the Northern Alliance leaders admitted to the 520 killed, it was only in dispute whether they were shot or crushed with tanks.
We are interested in focusing on killing by both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, since both are doing so with weapons bought with US tax dollars.
Potato Famine
[Regarding "Get Our Boys Out Now," the column of November 19, by "Emmanuel Goldstein":]
I can't speak for education for New York, but in the state of Indiana, USA, we weren't taught as you said, "In New York schools, they teach that the British government launched genocide on the Irish, when hundreds of thousands died due to the predictable failure of the state to feed a starving population."
We were taught the potato famine was caused by crop failures. I believe it was weather and insects both (but I'm not certain about the insects). Please be advised that your belief in "misinformation" may be misinformed.
This coming from the descendant of an Irish immigrant because of the famine.
~ "Rusty" K.
"Emmanuel Goldstein" replies:
Glad to hear it. I was, however, careful in my choice of words, being mindful that education in the US is largely a local affair.
Scenario
I have been reading ... [Nebojsa Malic's] columns on Antiwar.com since they began and I have found them well written and highly informative.
I have also been following the breakup of the old Yugoslavia since the late 1980s and I've tried to collect as much historical and background data on this as I can. However, I have never been satisfied with many of the explanations as to why the West would suddenly do an about face and move to destabilize and carve-up what had in fact been a de-facto NATO ally, or why it would continue to largely ignore blatantly anti-Western Islamic fundamentalist groups in Bosnia and Kosovo, not to mention known drug smugglers, white slavers and out-and-out criminals. ...I'm deeply skeptical about the usual explanations that have been floated, about oil or natural gas pipelines. Such projects are just too expensive to build through areas where they would be subject to sabotage and extortion.
I strongly suspect that the Bush (Senior) Administration, as well as the US's allies in Europe, cut a deal with the Saudi's in 1991 or 1992 that if we could conduct military operations against Saddam from Saudi soil, we would allow Muslim-dominated countries to be created out of Bosnia and Kosovo. ...When the events that have transpired in Bosnia and Kosovo are viewed in relation to the events surrounding the Persian Gulf War, the ongoing isolation of Iraq, Saudi support for Islamic fundamentalism, and the West's dependence upon oil from the Middle East, such a scenario I believe seems possible.
~ George V.