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George, I would like to respond to Will Lyster's November 1 letter, which I assume was written in reference to the anti-war demonstrations that have been held at the downtown Federal Building, at 5 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon since Sept. 18. I have participated in most of those demonstrations and have helped to organize some of them. I can't by a long shot speak for everyone at the demonstrations - we've had people out there from all walks of life, with all kinds of opinions about the world, men and women, ages perhaps 14 through 70, not counting children under someone else's care. We all have agreed on one thing, though: bombing Afghanistan is the wrong thing to do. I would like to briefly give one set of reasons why. Are these bombs making Americans safer? In the short term, the answer is clearly no: everyone on both sides of the issue was pointing out, in the three weeks after September 11, that the risk of reprisals against Americans would soar as soon as we started military action. And the risk has, unfortunately, increased, as we see from the FBI's two general warnings of likely imminent attack. The first warning came on October 11, four days after the bombing started, and the second just last week. There were no such warnings before we started bombing. In that hopeful period, we were still hearing calls for restraint from the lips of even such relatively hawkish figures as Nathaniel Howell (U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait during the first Bush Administration). Speaking as part of a U.Va. panel on October 4, Howell praised the restraint of Bush Jr., noting that the terrorists would be kept somewhat off balance as long as we pursued a policy of "patient waiting" and coalition-building rather than brute-force bombing. Why, then, did we begin bombing three days later? Since we have increased the short-term danger to ourselves, we must think that bombing Afghanistan will make us safer in the long run. We should think again. On October 7, the evening our bombing began, Richard Holbrooke (former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.) gave a generally pro-bombing interview on National Public Radio, starting off by calling the bombing "inevitable." But the sentence that caught my ear came a few minutes later: We have to realize, said Holbrooke, that Al-Quaida is a large and very diffuse network spread through countries around the world, and therefore that whatever the result of the military operation in Afghanistan, the threat against Americans will continue. So we are not only making things worse for ourselves in the short run, but we are extremely unlikely to accomplish anything useful in the long run. Even if we manage to kill or capture bin Laden (and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has had to admit that we may well fail), his network will go on doing what it does. Analysts of bin Laden's post-bombing videotaped statement suggested that the man is quite happy with the thought of being "martyred to the cause," as his criminally warped version of Islam - or rather exploitation of Islam - allows him to say (e.g. Washington Post, 10/8). It is rather clear that our bombing actually risks making things worse for ourselves, because it is not only bin Laden himself who can be packaged as a martyr by future generations of anti-American extremists. Every innocent Afghani civilian who dies at our hands increases anti-American sentiment around the world, particularly among impoverished populations who already, rightly or wrongly, see themselves as the victims of American policies. Bombing one of the world's poorest countries will be perceived as another extension of the same big-stick foreign policy that got us here in the first place, got us to a world where much of the population hates us. It will only make matters worse. For civilians in Afghanistan are being killed by our bombs; there is no longer any doubt about that. Tragically, the U.S. strikes have hit not only Taliban encampments but also numerous residential areas (see for example the picture on the front of yesterday's Washington Post), Red Cross warehouses (twice: see any major paper for 10/27), and at least two hospitals (on 10/23 and 10/31 - see Guardian of those dates). Can we pause for a moment, put aside our hawkish or dovish prejudices for a moment, and think about what this means? Simply try to understand what this feels like? These civilians were innocent people, people who had nothing at all to do with the attacks on September 11, people who were just trying to go about their ordinary lives. People who had families, and friends, and lovers. People who get scared, or angry, or killed, just like we do. They could be citizens of Charlottesville rather than Kabul. Perhaps we can understand what it feels like, because we already saw five or six thousand innocent people killed on the morning of September 11. These were also people with families, and friends, and lovers, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a horrible, brutal, criminal attack, and should be punished to the extent possible. But it does not justify killing thousands more innocent people along the way. And we have to realize that the number of innocent people that this campaign
kills may be much greater than the hundreds or thousands whom our bombs
have already killed directly. Even before the bombing started, the UN estimated
that 7.5 million Afghanis would need food aid to survive (Economist, 10/12).
Aid agencies like the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and Oxfam - as
well as the UN itself - have been in the country for a long time, but many
either withdrew or were thrown out when the bombing started. It is now
very difficult to get aid convoys back in. Humanitarian groups around the
world have called for at least a pause in the bombing to allow convoys to
restock food warehouses before winter makes travel impossible, but so far
we have denied even that request. Instead, for a while we dropped from
airplanes 37,500 meals per day - that's exactly one for every 200 people
in need of aid, dropped into a country that aid workers have described as
"the world's biggest minefield." I can hear people saying, "Very well, this is a mistake, but then what shall we do? We cannot simply pretend that terrorists didn't kill thousands of people eight weeks ago." No, we cannot. Here is where Mr. Lyster's analogy is useful: what do you do if someone attacks your family and then calls up and tells you he will attack again? Why, you call the police, of course. Fine, but let's push the analogy a little further. What do the police do in this situation? Well, they have many options. What they will not do is go over and burn down the apartment complex where the attacker lives, on the rather iffy chance of "taking him out," even though it means burning to death hundreds of innocent people who just happen to live there. They will also not make it so dangerous to be in the neighborhood that the food supply lines are cut off, thus starving thousands more. I am afraid that the U.S. is currently doing both, however unintentionally, in Afghanistan. What should we police do? Stop this bombing - the beginning of Ramadan on November 16 gives us a face-saving reason to do so, though stopping earlier would be better - and resume the "patient waiting" and "coalition building" that everyone was calling for until October 7. And let's do what the real-life police do: present our evidence in courts, like the World Court and the U.N. Let's continue working our other avenues, like seizing the assets of terrorist networks and working for greater access through nearby governments that have been hostile to us in the past. And, yes, when necessary let's use the military: for, Mr. Lyster, not all of us anti-war demonstrators are "peace freaks." I am not a pacifist, and there are others like me in front of the Federal Building twice a week. It is just that this use of the military is wrong. If bin Laden can be captured in a quick raid that doesn't kill hundreds or thousands of bystanders, and if we can prove his involvement, let's go do it. But let's do whatever we do under the rule of law, showing real concern in our actions for the innocent and oppressed people of Afghanistan. That might lessen worldwide resentment against America, and begin the long, slow process of defusing international terrorism. John Bugbee (electronic mail, September 3, 2001). (Readers may be interested in further information at these websites:)
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