I have read your posting, and I am obviously shocked and alarmed at the possibilties of enourmous suffering to be brought upon the Afghan people by the coming US military reaction.

But what disturbs me the most is the feeing that if it is indeed Osama Bin Laden who is at the root of the global terrorist network that attacked the USA then he is using the long-suffering Afghan population as a massive human shield.

You talk of the immorality, but surely it is Bin Laen who is the most immoral. And if he is not totally crushed how can we protect the rest of the world from more and even worse terrorist attacks, possibly involving "suitcase nukes"? Would it not be immoral to stand aside and fail to eradicate this evident source of danger to whole populations?

I respectfully submit that if you start talking about morality in the context of this alarming situation that the whole question is a lot more complex than the understandable but nonetheless simplistic view you have posted.

peace
steveh
I

'You talk of the immorality, but surely it is Bin Laen who is the most immoral.'

If we're going to start judging morality against Osama Bin Laden from now on, we might as well give up. Of course the mass murder on tuesday was hugely immoral, but that does not give us a license to lower our moral standards when we decide what to do about it.

Bin Laden appears to want to create a war between Islam and the US. Should we, or the west, help him to do this by killing innocent Afgans? How can that ever be justified? And what good would it do?

'Protect the rest of the world'
US - backed terrorism in afganistan would not protect the rest of the world, only further the cycle of violence, making a 'suitcase nuke' more likely. Even if it was possible to get to Bin Laden, he would become a Martyr while the loose organisation around him could continue to operate.

It is not possible to eradicate the danger of terrorism. Punishing those who were not involved, and mostly hadn't hered of the World Trade Centre or the Pentagon, wouldn't help.

Practically, increasing security on vulnerable targets and arresting terrorists seems to the only option, although the permanent ending of state violence might help a bit.

Thankyou for your comment, most of which I agree with.

The reason I suggest that Bin Laden is the "most immoral" in the context of Afghanistan is that a situation is developing where he might be using that country's be-smitten population as a human shield. Using human shields, including hijacked airplane passengers, is a prima facie war crime. Using a whole nation as such is an extreme war crime.

Who are the USA's human shields?

With regard to the crucial point that any gung-ho US military reaction might be itself the factor that provokes the "suitcase nuke" nightmare, I don't think you have fully realised the agonising dilemma that faces us.

The sheer audacity of the US attacks surely indicates that it is quite likely that the "suitcase nukes" are coming anyway! The US and allied governments know this. Surely if they know this and yet do nothing to try to eliminate the threat they are failing in their essential purpose of protecting their citizens.

And supposing the governments decide, as you seem to wish, to "sit this out" and not act militarily for fear of provoking further nightmares. And then another massive attack occurs. Who would have won then?

Do you think that any responsible government could permit this possibility?

peace
steveh

The USA doesn't care about 'human shields', it will simply destroy them. What is the biggest crime? Hiding behind someone, or killing the people in front to get to the person behind. I would put it to you that a rich Amerikkkan life is worth about 100 Afghan lives (judging by media attention and public interest) so we need to see that sort of retaliation, do we? Lets not forget that the people who did this didn't see it as an attack. Just as westerners will see the attack on Afghanistan as 'retaliation', that is how they view it, retaliation for years of abuse, torture and death. You Americans need to get your head out of the sand and take an active interest in what happens abroad in your name, which has resulted in your civilians dying. If you now inspire a Jihad, you will know suffering on a big scale, I suspect. The world can not sit back and see another Iraq-style butchering with no threat to US soldiers/civilian life, this time I think they will fight back the only way they can. Get ready for war, if you want it! Fight for peace if you don't.

Unconfirmed source but here goes anyway.....

>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?