Nick Taylor wrote...

>This post came from another list ... and has been pretty effective in
>making me rethink my position concerning carpet bombing.
>
>Regards,
>  -Nick T.

That was a REALLY excellent post.  Superb.

Regarding such nonsense as "carpet bombing" or "bombing Afghanistan
back into the Stone Age" or "punishment" or "revenge" or "retribution"
or "wiping out Islam", my opinion is that the main reason we hear talk
of such things right now is that people are just so damned pissed off.
I know, I sure am.  Give it time, though, and folks will settle down
to think more calmly about the problem at hand.  Right now, they're
too angry to think.

But the people we have in charge are already focussed on the problem,
and that problem is ***NOT*** being defined as "punishing the Afghan
people".  Our leaders are acutely aware that the Afghan people are not
the cause of our travail and are indeed victims of the Taliban just as
we became last Tuesday.  Only three governments in the world recognise
Taliban as the legitimate government of the Afghan people, and the US
is not one of them.

They are also acutely aware that we ourselves bear a great burden of
responsibility for our own condition as well as the plight of the
Afghan people, because it was we who armed these monsters in the first
place back during the Soviet incursion, allowing them ultimately to
take control.

I expect our leaders are quite determined to remedy that mistake now.

The remedy will consist of four key components.

=46or the Afghan people, there will be full bellies, religious freedom,
and a new government which respects their rights as human beings, both
men and women.

=46or the Taliban, there will be death.  You don't sponsor the
cold-blooded murder of 5,500 American men, women and children and live
to gloat about it for very long.

=46or nations which choose to help us or at least stay out of the way,
there will be appropriate consideration.

=46or nations which choose to interfere with our efforts, there will be
slots on our "TO DO NEXT" list should one prove necessary.  I believe
that was made abundantly clear to Pakistan last night.

I'm no seer, and I'm not privy to any inside information; but I
believe that time will bear out the above prediction quite nicely.

DD

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