By Muhammad Aquil, Huntington Beach, CA
The September 11 terrorist attacks were a truly despicable act because they resulted in the death of innocent civilians and non-combatants. But if it was wrong to kill thousands of innocent Americans in an effort to force a change in US foreign policy, it is equally wrong to bomb innocent civilians in an effort to force the Taliban to mend their ways or to oust them totally.
Like the innocent workers at the WTC, the Afghans too are innocent beings. They should not be treated as “collateral damage”. That they are in a wrong place, at a wrong time, and under a wrong government, and become “collateral damage” is despicable logic.
What is left in Afghanistan to be bombed? There aren’t even large pieces of rubble which remain to be pounded into small pieces. Bombing the already desolate country makes any worthwhile goal self-defeating. All the high-tech firepower and smart bombs will only add to the Afghan body count. Bombing the innocent population does not solve the problem; rather it aggravates it. To the poor Afghans, the Taliban are just another group of ruthless rulers in a country that has been blighted by headstrong leaders.
The bombing will lead to famine-like conditions. It will add to the agonizing human problems in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. It will only make a bad situation worse. As it is, the average life-span of these deprived people is just about 45 years. The majority of the Afghans are too young, too old, or too sick to traverse long distances. They would most likely starve to death, if not bombed to death. Those who are able to make it to Pakistan would also be confronted with problems of sorts. Pakistan already hosts over two million Afghans and has closed her borders as it cannot bear the burden of more refugees. The UN estimates that about 8 million Afghans will need help to survive the coming winter. This mass flight of refugees may turn out to be one of the great calamities of our time.
Barbara Kingsolver, a commentator, said it aptly: “The World Court and the entire Muslim world stand ready to judge Osama bin Laden and his accessories. If we were to put a few billion dollars into food, health care and education instead of bombs, you can bet we’d win over enough friends to find out where he’s hiding. And I’d like to point out, since no one else has, the Taleban is an alleged accessory, not the perpetrator -- a legal point quickly cast aside in the rush to find a sovereign target to bomb”.
The choice is to stop the bombing and the famine or watch as tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of innocent Afghans die. And when we take innocent human lives, our case of “smoking-out” terrorism appears nothing more than a smoke-screen. It would be unconscionable to tolerate starvation and bombing of innocent human beings, just as it is wicked to tolerate terrorism.