Tuesday, September 18, 2001

No peace without instilling compassion in Afghanistan
Commentary by Meredith B. Osborn

Everywhere you can see we are preparing for war. We have given blood for the wounded. We have begun signing up at army recruitment offices. We have declared the attacks acts of war and Congress has written the president a $40 billion blank check to fight World War III.

Right now the finger seems to point to Osama bin Laden harbored in Afghanistan by the Taliban government. Bin Laden has long been a worthy target for arrest, capture and trial for planning and carrying out terrorist attacks. Afghanistan has long been a Cold War battleground upon which America and the Soviet Union maneuvered.

Bush spoke Wednesday about punishing not just those involved in the attacks, but also the countries who tolerated the presence of terrorists on their soil. The unstated reference was to Afghanistan.

Already the voices in Congress have been retributive and angry. Rep. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) said Wednesday that the United States should simply, “bomb the hell out of [Afghanistan].”

Afghanistan is not a photogenic country. Four years of famine, 22 years of war and a repressive, uneducated, fundamentalist regime has not improved its face to the world. It has no oil, and its strategic value was mostly lost after the end of the Cold War.

The Taliban has allowed bin Laden to seek shelter in Afghanistan most likely because he has provided military support against opposition leaders who, during the Cold War, were supported by America against the Soviet-installed regime. The same day as the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the main opposition leader, Ahmed Shah Masood (now covertly supported by Russia, India and Iran), was assassinated, some say by bin Laden and company.

It is a complicated, bloody and tragic national story if there ever was one. One dominated by the interference and mindless meddling of other nations, and the failure and poverty of the people caught in the midst of the struggle. If there is a national antithesis to the American story of success and growth, Afghanistan is it.

So, the question is, assuming bin Laden is behind the attacks, what is the proper response? Should we, as Bush has suggested we will, launch a full-on assault on Afghanistan? It is hard to see what this would accomplish.

Afghanistan already knows that America’s military might far exceeds its own. It is already banking on the hope that America couldn’t possibly do anything worse to the country than has already been done. It is also hoping that its feebleness, abject misery and pleading will spare it more damage. Afghanistan knew that harboring bin Laden would earn them the wrath of America, but figured that the 2,000 or 3,000 men that bin Laden could supply to protect them from the immediate threat of opposition invasion was worth it.

If we let Afghanistan off the hook, we let other nations harboring terrorists think they can get away with it, too. If we bomb Afghanistan to oblivion, we will make other small, impoverished countries fear and hate us even more strongly. We already know the retributive policy pursued in Israel has only increased the terrorists’ resolve and undermined the power of the only people who can curb terrorism — the governments of the countries who harbor them.

This is why it is so important that we stand with our allies worldwide to combat terrorism. That this battle doesn’t pit the largest and most powerful nation in the world against one of the poorest and most miserable. That we do not allow ourselves to stoop to the level of revenge, revenge which could never be commensurate to our loss because our loss is incalculable. This is not war in the traditional sense.

Our enemy is not a nation, but rather the poverty, ignorance and fear that exist in nations like Afghanistan, countries where terrorists are welcomed. Our best defense is to eliminate these conditions in countries like Afghanistan, so that the incentives for harboring terrorists like bin Laden are minuscule compared to the advantages of having America as a friend and ally. And we cannot be simply a military ally, exacting promises of peace at the point of a sword.

In the 21st century we do not frighten our enemies more than they are already frightened, we cannot punish them more than they have already been punished.

They know about war, famine and death — indeed, they know nothing else. So we must teach them compassion, peace and prosperity. Or we will have no lasting peace.

Meredith B. Osborn is a columnist for the Harvard Crimson at Harvard University. This column was distributed by U-Wire.