A Response to the October 7 Airstrikes from Two AAW Members

During a Sensitive Site Exploitation (SSE) mis...
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This morning, we awoke to the news that the U.S. military was bombing Afghanistan.

Our government announced that only “military installations” are being targeted by bombs and missles, yet essential components of the infrastructure of cities, such as power plants and water treatment facilities have in the past been considered “military” targets, and civilians may live among and around these as well as the military installations and “terrorist training” grounds.

There are also well-founded concerns that mistakes might be made. When the U.S. bombed similar “military targets” in response to Osama bin Laden’s embassy bombings a few years ago, a factory producing harmless vaccinations in the Sudan was destroyed based on intelligence information of the sort that informs today’s attacks, depriving millions of much needed medical supplies.

As we watch this conflict unfold into catastrophic proportions, we will continue to be an alternative information source in hopes of providing a more balanced perspective than that of the corporate media. It is of vital importance that we share a compassionate and logical perspective on the downward spiralling futility of violence, even as our families, friends and neighbors are stirred into a war frenzy by selectively presented or false information and nationalist rhetoric issued under the guise of “news.”

A crucial part of our role as a source of information is to portray the activities of our military and intelligence agencies truthfully, even when their tactics are underhanded, and that we explore possible ways in which the underlying agenda of our government might be directed by economic interests to the exclusion of human values.

It has been reported that there is a “100%” chance of another terrorist attack in the United States. The U.S. military’s hostile invasion of a country of starving peasants can only serve to perpetuate this cycle of retribution. Is the possibility that forces behind the September 11th attack might be punished through these actions worth the risk of starting another World War?

There are global stakes on the table here, and important reasons for concern, especially given the prevailing climate of stifling dialogue on this issue. There are several factions competing for control of Afghanistan, and some are known to possess nuclear weapons. Contrary to what is being reported widely, several groups that oppose the Taliban have stated that they will support the Taliban in the interest of national unity in the event of a U.S. invasion.

While the president assures us that the U.S. has the support of the “nations of the world,” we know from past experience that many of our alliances in the Mid-East are tenuous, and contingent upon factors that are not necessarily under our control. While the governments of Britain, Canada, and France dedicate their military support, we know this is not necessarily representative of the sentiments of people living in those nations.

In response, international solidarity among peace movements is growing, and a global anti-war movement is being established that must be reckoned with by the power structures that dictate our participation in this conflict.

Filed Under: Casualties, Operations, Weapons Tagged With: , ,

From an Afghan American

From an Afghan American

Tamim Ansary, a writer and columnist in San Francisco who is a native of Afghanistan

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 Bin 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 rat’s 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

Filed Under: Geography, News, Operations Tagged With: , ,

US ‘Planned Attack on Taliban’

A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week’s attacks.

Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.

Russian troops were on standby
Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin.

Mr Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar.

The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taleban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place – possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah.

Mr Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place.

Bin Laden would have been “killed or captured”
He was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby.

Mr Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.

He said that he was in no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks.

And he said it was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taleban.

Filed Under: Casualties, News, Operations, Weapons Tagged With: , ,