Karen G. gave me a provocative article from the “Guest Opinion” section of the Northern Express Weekly 9/27/01. It was written by an Afghan who has been living as a citizen in the States for over 30 years. Hope you can appreciate this portion of his letter:
 “We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that’s been done. The Soviet 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 (i.e. 9-11). Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban by raping once again the people they’ve been raping all the time.”
 This same writer agrees that something must be done about the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and other terrorists. He calls them “monsters.” He continues,
 “But the Taliban and bin 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, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.”
 Meanwhile, why don’t the Afghans themselves 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…”
 God, give us wisdom...and eyes to see what we do not wish to see.
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T-shirt Wisdom:
God promises a safe landing, not a calm passage.
Having truth decay? Brush up on your Bible.
He who is good at making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
He who kneels before God can stand before anyone!
Kindness is difficult to give away because it keeps coming back.
 

     Love in Him,
     Fr. Jim
  

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