HI all....received this from a friend in MI in Washington(he was supposed to be in a meeting in the destroyed part of the Pentagon) I will post the article, the his thoughts on the situation.
I have not seen these ideas posted here so I will share them with you all. I am flying to Florida tomorrow so wish me luck. Arlady...glad tidings and congratulations

The following is an article by Tamim Ansary.  Tamim is an
>>> Afghani-American writer. Here is his take on Afghanistan and the
>>> whole mess we are in.
>>>
>>> ----------------
>>>
>>> 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.

PART 2
>>> 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

To All: The attached article is a different view that gives some sober
reflection to the task ahead. My take on this - the Spetsnaz were the
only
Soviet troops that had any successes against the Taliban during the
Afghan
war. US Special Forces with superior air power are only a good start,
for
this will probably be a protracted ground war, without even addressing
other
places in the world where we might be forced to go. There are a lot of
"if's" - if we can obtain ground truth from the Northern Alliance (eyes,
ears  and troops on the ground - (this is actually a good bet)) and if
the
Pakistani's can hold it together without imploding from within, and if
we
get some assistance from the Russian military beyond intelligence
support
(to include assistance from their vets who fought there and know the
terrain), and if our allies and all countries bordering Afghanistan can
sufficiently isolate it via economic stranglehold where no goods of any
kind
can move into the country, then maybe our Special Forces will have a
chance
in the coming ground war there to do the job in a reasonable time while
minimizing losses. Make no mistake, they will do the job. Unfortunately,
acceptable losses I fear will take on a new meaning to this generation.
My
real worries are the wildcards outside of Afghanistan who just might
give us
the opportunity to exercise the two simultaneous major regional conflict
scenario. I am also reminded of the old Israeli dictum "the enemy of my
enemy is my friend". It's logic makes for very strange bedfellows and I
shudder to think of what monsters we may create in the future as the
result
of our righteous cause. The issues are by no means simple, there are
shades
of grey unimagined, and all this will tax our decisionmakers to the
limits
of their abilities. Anyway, some food for thought. Pray for our leaders,
America and the World.

Just received a e-mail from the Major and he was curious about how this was received......47 views and no comments...strange

I'm going to be really curious to see how the US manages to do what needs to be done in the region without inflaming the entire Islam world against us.

He's right, there is really nothing there worth bombing.  Nobody is going to be sitting under the most obvious targets.  So that means we have to use native intelligence and build alliances with the opposition.  

What is the state of the Taliban's opposition?  Do they embrace the fanatical anti-Western sentiments?  Will it be possible to act with them in mutual interest?  If we're going to eliminate the tyrants and guerillas, we are going to have to get down in the dirt and do it rat hole by rat hole.

I will also be interested to see what happens when Americans start dying over there.  I'd like to think that we will stand firm but I just don't think so.  The soccer moms have had their voices listened to a little too long.

btt....the major inquires again....I responded that at the time there were a lot of hotly debated threads....so maybe someone will comment
now that we have cooled off somewhat....

Someone else posted (in another thread) what I feel would be the only truly effective way to combat these people.

Use conventional ground forces (Marines, Rangers, 82d) where applicable to destroy the rank and file. Hearts and Minds will never win them over (the truly fanatical ones as seen in Somalia).

Use assassination teams to make their leaders disappear, die suddenly and painfully while eating with their friends, die from a jab of an umbrella tip. Cut their throats in the middle of the night, and pose their bodies like Hannibal Lechter did to the guard in Silence of the Lambs. The lone bullet from nowhere.

Kill enough this way, and no-one will have the balls to step up and replace them.  

Like it or not, whether we continue support for Israel or not, they truly wish to detroy anything Western. They have been killing indiscriminantly for decades throughout Europe and their own countries, have been waging this type of Terror War against those of their own people who want a middle class and a modern way of life.

Airborne!
Don Out

That letter was e-mailed around at the beginning of this thing.  And it really doesn't matter anymore. We ARE going through Pakistan, we are not bombing afghan cities, and we understand the type of war this will be, as well as the possibility of another world war if it goes bad.  Most people who don't want to bomb or go into Afghanistan have no other answers.  That is because there aren't any other answers.  We have to go into the countries and take out these terrorists, their supporters, and their war-teaching schools that educate the young to continue their philosophy.  We also have to remove the current governments of these nations.  If we do this, they will attack us, if we do not do this, they will attack us.  So our only hope is to take them all out and prevent it in the future.  Anyone starting up after this war is over(many years from now) will have to recruit and obtain sponsors. This time we will have spies in position to stop/track these groups as they are being created.

There really is no other answer.  I see people saying we should put in place sanctions, and have the UN put pressure on these nations to give up the terrorists, but we have been doing that for 20 years with no improvement of the situation.  When we give money, food, and other assistance to these nations to attempt to make them friendly, their governments just take the gifts for themselves, and let their people starve.  The stadium the UN biult to entertain afghan citizens with sports is now used to hold public executions.  Sometimes being nice does not prevent a fight.

We are not jumping to war.  The people of America, and the world have been through 20 years of terrorism and have tried every other possible method to deal with these nations and the violent Islamic fundamentalists, and the other political terror groups in this terrorist network.  We have only one course of action left.  The attacks have been getting more frequent, more organized, and more deadly over this period of time, and we know the next attack could very likely lead to 10 times the deaths and injuries of the WTC/Pentagon attacks.

Unfortunately, it's time for war.  We are planning smaller battles in stages, one nation at a time, eradicating each of its terrorists and supporting governments.  We know this easily could turn into World War 3 if these nations join together, and a few unstable countries change sides, but it is a risk we have to take.  We understand nuclear weapons could be in the hands of terrorists, or easily be obtained if Pakistan falls, but we must not let this stop us.

It all comes down to two facts.  If we do not take out these terrorists, a lot more Americans will die.  If we do not take out these governments, they will only get stronger and more difficult to stop.

War is Necessary.