Bomb them with love - its the last thing they'll be expecting.

Right now an unprecendented humanitarian crisis is unfolding on the borders of Afghanistan. There has been a drought which is now in its third year - all the fields are dust.

The Afghan people don’t particularly support the Taleban. They are all getting the Hell out of Kabul and heading for Pakistan and Iran to avoid the expected US onslaught.

But both Pakistan and Iran have closed their borders. The Afghan people have relied on Pakistani food convoys for a number of years now but these convoys have stopped.

My Humble Suggestion

The US should go into Afghanistan and retrieve Bin Laden and also remove the Taleban government from power.

However the US planes should not only be carrying bombs but also large amounts of food parcels and water to ease the suffering of the ordinary Afghan people on the borders.

This will win America a LOT of friends in the muslim and Arab worlds.

It will show the world that America’s first consideration is civilised human rights not death, destruction, revenge and retribution.

It will give the new fledgling Afghan government a better chance of getting the support of the people.

All the above will reduce the chances of Afghanistan once again becoming a safe haven for terrorist groups.

We should root out the evil elements in that country but we should also bomb them with love.

I don’t expect this to happen. I expect the voices of hate to drown out voices such as mine but I can only try.

Damn. I was ready to come in here both guns blazing over some neo-60’s flower-power-all-we-need-is-love nonsense you’d be spouting, and…I’m actually impressed!
It’s clear our foreign policy is directly responsible for anti-American sentiment around the world, although it’s been years of mistakes, not just recent actions. I think your attitude has a lot going for it. Yes, we need to eliminate the ObL organization and the Taliban as well, but puting in place another wolf in sheep’s clothing gains us nothing. A helping hand to the Afghan people will go much further. I hereby second the motion!

the gentleman who wrote this is afghan-american. read it, please.

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 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 peopl! e 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

Thanks essvee for that post.

It made sobering reading but I think we can outfox Bin Laden and frustrate his plans.

How? By bombing them with love.

The Pakistani government is (at the moment) supportive of US action. So all thats needed is to ensure the support of the majority of the Pakistani people.

The people in the north of Pakistan are all related to, and from the same tribes as, the people who live in southern Afghanistan. So if the US makes a deliberate point of helping those people in southern Afghanistan then the people in north Pakistan will have much less of a complaint.

And the people in most of Pakistan don’t particularly support the Taliban anyway, its only those in the north.

Iran is most definitely no friend of the Taliban.

In fact the Taliban have very few friends amongst the muslim world so a war between Islam and the West would not materialise.

Provided the US makes it absolutely clear that we in the west are not fighting Islam, we are fighting the Taliban and Bin Laden.

This whole thing has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam as most muslims understand it.

Large scale ground forces are not necessary to wipe out Bin Laden or even the Taliban.

What will do the job is proper use of smart bombs, special forces and a lot of American money to rebuild the infrastructure of Afghanistan so that the people are put in a position where they can help with the resistance to the Taliban forces.

Once this has started to take shape then the Pakistani people may start to look more favourably on the idea of western forces going into Afghanistan (temporarily) in order to defeat whatever remnants of the Taliban force remain after the initial onslaught.

Im not muslim myself although I know a lot of muslims. They dont want a war with the west or anyone if they can avoid it.

Nobody is trying to stop Afghanistan from being an Islamic government if they want to be one. What people object to is if they intend to be the kind of Islamic government that flies planes into buildings killing thousands of people.

I dont think thats too unreasonable a request, do you?

Wow. I am impressed as well, xanakis. That is probably the only solution to the current problem that I wholeheartedly agree with. Good show old boy, I am duely impressed.

Bomb them with love, hmmm…

I agree with this completely.

This should be the modus operandi of the US - go in and remove facist, authoritarian governments and then follow up with massive amounts of aid, education, and just plain help without any strings.

This was supposed to be the way we were going to help the poor sections of Miami after the riots a few years ago. Does anyone have a follow up on whether that worked? Or if it was implemented?

This may be worth an e-mail to the President, although, with all his saber rattling, I doubt it will do any good. He’s already staked out his position.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our government took this concept as its Mission Statement?

Hell, for that matter, it would be pretty cool if we each took the spirit of this as our PERSONAL mission statement.

I must say I am impressed. I have to adnit after it happened I was one of those thinking…nuke them all, let make Afghanistan glow. But after reading this my heart has softened. This is the the most poignant post I have ever read on this board. Let us hope that the powers that be understand that this is the way to go.

I second xanakis: essvee’s (or Tamim Ansary’s) post is one of the most worthwhile I’ve read. Someone should initiate a thread called “Straight Dope Afghanistan: Required Reading” and include it in a top ten list.

I think this is a good idea and plausible, but by no means a sure success. The first problem is hitting the Taliban without hurting the rest of the country. Getting bin Laden I can see since he might be in his camps in remote areas, but taking out government leaders means hitting cities, which is frought with risk.

The second problem is the control the Taliban currently holds on the population. Without access to outside information, the regular populace is probably not very well informed. The Taliban might simply be able to tell their people that the Great Satan is coming to destroy them, and that might be enough for them to choose to resist. It might not. I can’t claim to know enough about the average Afghani and the information they recieve to know if we could convince them of our intentions before it spiraled out of control.

But yes, you can get a whole lot of relief supplies on an Air Force transport, as they demonstrate regularly with little fanfair when natural disasters strike around the globe. And civil engineering units can build things like tent cities in the blink of an eye. The trick is getting the acceptance.

Yeah, what-ever Moonchild!

(Or so I was ready to say)

I have to agree with the rest here. This sounds like the first sane idea I’ve heard yet. Likely to happen? Probably not. The country’s too blood thirsty. We want vengence. Eye for an eye. You blow up our buildings we blow up your city/country.
When George Bush declared “war” I had to laugh. On WHO? One man? A group of men? On the act of terrorism itself?

One can’t help but think of Buggs Bunny when he would become frustrated with Elmer Fudd and state: “Of course you know, this means WAR!”
What happens next?
Well, if we’ve learned anything from cartoons, first Buggs storms off camera and gets a gun. Then Elmer storms off screen and brings back a bigger one. This comedically goes back and forth progressing to cannons and bigger cannons until they blow one another up.

Let’s just hope our elected officials have the sense to avoid a disaster of Warner Brothers proportions.

We seem to have a consensue going- even amoung the “let’s nuke um”'s. I’m wondering, is there any constitutional way we can get xanakis appointed President for the duration of this crisis (essvee can be Presidential advisor)?

What a great and refreshing exchange. I’ve just sent the discussion in progress to Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who I’ve always found to be pretty rational in his positions. If I hear a response, I’ll post it.

It just might work!

After the suggestions of Dopers on how to deal with my sister when she became really nasty, I started hugging her. IT doesn’t make her nicer, but it annoys the SHIT out of her, so she runs away when I try it, and won’t bother me.

And if that doesn’t work, I threaten to give her a huge smooch, so she really freaks out.

Reverse psychology!

And hmmm…it worked when SAAN fought against Something Awful and the Off Topic Forums-Hello Kitty, Care Bears and {{{{HuGgLeZ!!!}}}} did the job!

Okay, everyone, let’s grab Bin Laden and squeeze him to death-aw, what a kewt lil terrorist-yes, you’re so pwecious! Aren’t joo? Aren’t joo!!!

{{{{{{{{{{XANAKIS}}}}}}}}}}

Yes. Yes. YES!!!
You hit a serious home run there. Thank goodness your head at least is in the real world. I love you.

I’m sending your OP verbatim to the White House, my senators, and my congressman at once.

I was prepared to come into this thread and see some wacko tin-foil hat crackpot notion - and was pleasantly surprised to see a logical, simple idea! Go xanakis!

This is my idea too! I’ve been saying for a couple days now that we ought to go in with ground forces and plenty of food. We did it, sorta, in Germany, and it helped a lot. The Afghanis are wretched enough already–we should go after the Taliban/terrorist camps only, and that will take special forces. Bombing will do nothing to the government; they have great bunkers.

It would put the Afghanis, most likely, firmly on our side, and poke big holes in the Taliban’s stance that this is a jihad. Bombing will do the opposite.

I sent your message to the State Department too. :slight_smile:
Thanks, xanakis, you rock!

Just a small correction. It’s my understanding that Pakistan has allowed food shipments to continue.

I agree with the idea–since I heard it, it now seems to be the obvious course of action. However, Pakistan is not allowing us to use it as a staging area, though it has granted us use of its airspace. Now, if our plan was like this, they might allow the ground troops. If not, we’ll have to look to other border countries, or establish a base just inside the Afghanistan border.

Here’s a URL for the border situation:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,34465,00.html