Need lobbying tools:
* International Peace & Conflict Links <
http://www.wheaton.edu/polsci/amstutz/conflict.html >, including "Virtual
Diplomacy" for the Global Communications Revolution and International
Conflict Resolution < http://www.usip.org/oc/virtual_dipl.html >
* International Affairs < http://www.web-reyting.net/3DunyaPolitika.htm >
* Contacting the Congress - is a very up-to-date database of congressional
contact information for the 107th Congress. As of September 6, 2001 there
are 507 email addresses (of which 201 are Web-based email homepages), and
535 WWW homepages known for the 540 members of the 107th Congress. More
traditional ground mail addresses are available for all Congressmembers. <
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ >
* The Peace Agreements Digital Collection (project proposal) - is part of the
U.S. Institute of Peace's Virtual Diplomacy project. This project is
designed to explore how information and communications technologies are
transforming international relations, and to demonstrate
how these technologies can assist in international conflict prevention,
management and resolution. <
http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/envis/doc97html/infodigital925.html>
Henry K van Eyken wrote:
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> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject: Very thought provoking (and damned scary!)
> Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 21:05:53 -0400
> From: "Douglas Burns" <dfburns@colba.net>
> To: "Andrew & Pierrette Balfour" <andrew_balfour@hotmail.com>,
> "Monty Berger" <monjean@webtv.net>,
> "Stephen Burns" <steve.burns@sympatico.ca>,
> "Angela Burns" <angelaian@sympatico.ca>,
> "Craig Chaplin" <cccl@videotron.ca>,
> "Donald J. Davignon" <dondavig@aol.com>,
> "Michael & Lynn Hallows" <perryhallows@aol.com>,
> "Stuart Lucas" <nslucas@classicfm.net>,
> "Guy Mitchell" <jeanguymitchell@aol.com>,
> "Gerry O'Connor" <oconnorg@westelcom.com>,
> "Dave & Elaine Owen" <dlo1@cyberus.ca>,
> "Ross Smyth" <rsmyth@videotron.ca>,
> "Howard&Rosemary(Pope) Thomas" <howard.thomas@hasluck.freeserve.co.uk>,
> "Gordon & Elizabeth Tulloch" <macrae13@home.com>,
> "Henry & Elizabeth Van Eyken" <vaneyken@sympatico.ca>,
> "Elizabeth & Peter Wildman" <wildthings@tiscalinet.it>,
> "Heinz Zierl" <heinz.zierl@weyerhaeuser.com>,
> "Albert Zierl" <azierl@accglobal.net>,
> "Michael & Patricia Andersson" <micpat@net2000.com.au>,
> "Paul & Ann Andersson" <paul@pandersson.freeserve.co.uk>
>
> Forwarded by a friend of mine.. This is very thought provoking.
>
> Dear Friends,
>
> The following was sent to me by my friend Tamim Ansary. Tamim is
> an Afghani-American writer. He is also one of the most brilliant people
> I know in this life. When he writes, I read. When he talks, I listen.
> Here is his take on Afghanistan and the whole mess we are in.
> * Gary T.
>
> Dear Gary and whoever else is on this email thread:
>
> 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?
>
> Tamim Ansary
>
> >PEACE,
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0.0 : Tue Sep 18 2001 - 22:55:51 PDT