Hello Folks,

I’ve been reading and thinking about my view of the situation in
Afghanistan and I’ve consolidated my opinion, I think. First off, I
continue to believe we have to make the price high to attack us. We have
to destroy something material that the Taliban values highly. What that
is, is hard to say. I think there is enough awareness in the
Administration that a large loss of civilian life is not only
counter-productive but inhumane.

If they bomb what remains of Kabul, and/or other cities, I expect they
will do so with lots of public warnings to the population of that city
to vacate. Perhaps there are public buildings to be destroyed, I hope
lots of them, and perhaps it can be done at night when they are
unoccupied. The American public wants retribution, we have promised it,
and it is consistent with the deterrent need to make the reprisal for
killing our people hurt plenty. The deterrant goes not only to the
Taliban but to Iraq and the other rogue states, to warn them of the
consequences of taking in, shielding and supporting terrorist groups.

But that in itself accomplishes little that is positive, in fact though
I think it is necessary it is at the same time counter-productive. The
main effort has to be, I think, “winning the hearts and minds” of the
people. That, from what I read, was working well in Viet Nam, in spite
of military disinterest, and may have “won that war” if we had hung in
there. People were glad to escape from a harsh tyrannical regime to a
protected area where they were treated with respect and put in charge of
their own affairs. That is what those who were there organizing it,
report.

So my thought is a landing in some part of Afghanistan – perhaps up in
the north where the little pocket of resistance still remains, or near
the Pakistan border, where there are two million Afghani refugees, or
both – and setting up a protected area. There we build housing, schools,
hospitals, mosques, infra-structure (water, sanitation, roads, electric
power) and bring in some light industry, like needlework shops to make
clothes for export, sneakers, ceramics (plenty of sand). Teach people
job skills and pay them. And treat them with decency. Put them in
charge. But guarantee that we will stay there and protect them and keep
channels open for refugees from the Taliban to come in. We and they can
set up a democratic counter government and siphon off an oppressed
population into a Muslim, but free, modern world.

A Marshall Plan for a free Afghanistan!

I think we have a life here far better than they have there. There are
1.3 billion Moslems in the world. I imagine that most of them are
apolitical, would like to have a better standard of living, and to live
in a free and democratic society. We must induce the sea of decent
Moslems themselves to eject and expose that minority of Islamic
fundamentalist, terrorist fish who swim in their sea.

We can “win” this the right, decent way, by helping.