March 14, 2002
Focus
Page 13
How is tiie U.S. government going to end the war in Afghanistan?
Photo courtesy of KRT Campus
Northern Alliance fighters prepare for upcoming battle during Operation Enduring Freedom.
Jennifer Maxa
Columnist
“War was ugly and evil but it
was still the way things got done
on most of the planet. Here in the
raw Third World, people hadn’t
learned to back down, at least not
until after a lot of blood flowed.
Victory was for those willing to
fight and die. Intellectuals could
theorize until they sucked their
thumbs right off their hands, but in
the real world, power still flowed
from the barrel of a gun.” Although
this quote from the novel
“Blackhawk Down” is referring to
thoughts on United States’ involve
ment in Somalia, it describes per
fectly why war will continue to ex
ist in our world.
Civilization has not yet learned
how to live without war, and as long
as some are willing to kill to pur
sue their selfish demands, societies
need to be able to defend them
selves.
The war in Afghanistan is meant
to prevent and limit further terror
ist attacks. There is overwhelming “
evidence that al Qaeda and other
terrorists groups were involved in
the planning and execution of the
attacks. The plans for the World
Trade Center attacks began with the
1993 truck bombing by Ramsi
Youseff killed six people in that at
tack and considered it a failure. The
planning began shortly thereafter to
use multiple hijacked airliners to
complete the attack. Youseff was a
bomb-making instructor for al
Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. While
al Qaeda’s ability to acquire a
nuclear warhead is unlikely, they
were trying vigorously to obtain
nuclear fuel or waste and construct
a dirty bomb. In Manhattan, it
would kill tens of thousands and
contaminate a 200 square mile area
with nuclear waste that would re
quire 24 years to clean up. Ignor
ing the Taliban and al Qaeda would
be asking for even more disaster
than we experienced on Sept. 11.
Though the United States gov
ernment feels that this is enough
justification to turn to war, people
often forget to stop and think about
what the war will involve. If our
goal in the war on terrorism is to
dismantle the Taliban and al Qaeda,
it means we must destroy any ter
rorist cell similar to it. This will
certainly mean troops will have to
get involved in other countries
where terrorism is a threat.
Additionally, by destroying the
Taliban, Afghanistan is left with no
rulers or government. In December,
the United States appointed Hamid
Karzai as the head of Afghanistan’s
interim government. While Wash
ington hails him as a symbol for a
new Afghanistan, his country is still
defined by violence and tribal en
mities. His power to rule is strictly
confined to his reliance on U.S.
military support. Recently, Abdul
Rahman, Karzai’s head of airtrans
port in the new government,
boarded a flight to India and found
his aircraft surrounded by a mob.
Rahman offered to resign, but
someone disguised as a pilgrim
stabbed him and threw him down
the steps. Karzai announced the
next day that Rahman had been as
sassinated in an apparent plot by
some of his own government min
isters. If the interim government
members are plotting assassinations
against one another, how will they
restore order in Afghanistan?
Reconstruction of Afghanistan
requires tremendous economic aid
from the global community. Mark
Brown, head of the U.N. Develop
ment Program, has said the likely
cost of Afghanistan reconstruction
is $7-10 billion over five years. He
estimated that it will take $500 mil
lion alone just to remove land mines
planted during 20 years of warfare.
It’s easy to understand the com
plexity of rebuilding Afghanistan
simply by looking at the country’s
infrastructure. Developing Afghani
stan is difficult because they lack
adequate transportation. Water and
electrical utilities are extreamly
limited. Large segments of the
population have little or no educa
tion, and during the Taliban rule,
there was no education for women.
A successful reconstruction re
quires massive transportation and
education reforms. Health care and
hospitals are another necessity for
a smoothly operating country.
Afghanistan’s long history of tribal
conflict and lawlessness continues
to complicate pacification efforts.
In Afghanistan, you don’t get in a
car and drive to Charlotte or Atlanta
and watch a football game.
When considering all that will
have to take place after the fighting
in Afghanistan ends, it may be dif
ficult to see how billions of dollars
and the loss of innocent lives is
worth the end result. If you believe
or accept the idea that it is not O.K.
for bad people to kill innocents in
order to achieve a selfish goal, then
defending the innocents is a neces
sity. Sometimes, the only way to
stop a madman who is killing thou
sands is to kill his ability to inflict
murder. Unfortunately Adolf Hitler,
Joesef Stalin, Mohamed Fararah
Aidid, Slobadon Milosevic, and
Osama bin Laden are examples of
this. Until we find a way to stop
these murderers without force, war
in some form will remain necessary.
The best chance to avoid it is to be
the strongest and use that strength
to discourage future madmen from
killing in the first place.
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