Greenbuilding Archive for January 2002

Ralph wrote:
>   
> Please lets not distort the reasons for our current effort in Afghanistan.
> On Sept 11 terrorists supported and sponsored by the government of
> Afghanistan committed an act of war and murdered thousands of innocent
> civilians (from numerous countries) on American soil.  They hijacked 4
> civilian aircraft, occupied by civilians and crashed 2 into the World Trade
> Center in an attempt to murder over 40,000 civilians, crashed one into the
> countries symbolic if not actual center of our military power, would have
> probably crashed it into the White House had they been able to, and brave
> and now dead citizens foiled the attempt to crash the fourth into who knows
> where. We have learned a very hard and bitter lesson terrorism must not
> continue virtually unchecked.
>   
> Do not insult us by saying we are fighting these murderous acts because of
> this country's thirst for oil (no matter how flawed our energy policy might
> otherwise be).

Actually, by and large the terrorists who committed the attrocities on Sept.
11th were mostly from Saudi Arabia, not from Afghanistan, and were supported
by Saudi (not Afghani) money and resources.  One needs to ask how come
the Saudis have not been bombed.
However, even if it was the Afghani govt. who supported the terrorists, to conclude that
this gives our govt. the right to murder innocent Afghani civilians is a 
long stretch.  For those who don't know, our bombs killed more Afghani
civilians than the number of people who died on Sept. 11th (and this is without
looking at the numbers of people dead or dying from starvation).

I haven't followed the thread closely, so maybe I'm mentioning something which
was already discussed - but I think that it's crucial for people to ask *why*
the terrorists chose the economic and military centers of this country as
their targets, and how this reflects widely shared feelings and views regarding
this country's economic, military, and other policies around the globe.
(eg: military presence in Saudi Arabia; bombing and sanctions against Iraq;
propping up the Israeli occupation; economic trade agreements, etc. etc.).

R.

R.



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