All the elements are in place NOW for an attack against Afghanistan.

Carrier-based fighter jets are in position and on alert, heavy bomber

squadrons and airborne assault divisions have landed in north Pakistan.  The

attack may even take place tonight before President Bush takes the

extraordinary step of addressing both houses of Congress at 9pm.

 

What is going on?  Since the government is tightly controlling all

information, without challenge from the mainstream media, we can only make

educated guesses about the nature of the attack and its potential

consequences.

 

Afghanistan’s mountainous eastern border with Pakistan, especially around

the city of Kandahar, is the power base of both the Taliban’s supreme

leader, Mullah Omar, and Osama bin Ladin and his networks of “Afghan Arab”

fighters.  We can expect that US fighter jets will secure the airspace and

then heavy bombers will pound this region for a sustained period, followed

by airborne “search and destroy” missions against Taliban and bin Ladin

forces.

 

There are several immediate strategic problems with this approach:

 

1.      US officials have defined the primary objective as attacking and killing

specific human targets, the command elements in the Taliban and bin Ladin

networks.  But they are the most secure people in all of Afghanistan; they

alone have access to remote mountain bunkers and hideouts; their families

have already fled to Pakistan while everyone else is trapped at the border.

The only way to kill people who cannot be specifically located is to kill

everyone in the much larger region within which the targets are presumed to

be hiding.

 

2.      A second target is likely to be the Taliban’s military forces.  But this

is not a modern, centralized army as in Iraq.  They operate as small, mobile

units led by local commanders with intimate knowledge of the terrain.  It is

impossible to hit them with pinpoint strikes.  Carpet bombing may kill some

of them, but will certainly kill a far higher percentage of civilians and

families who lack the means to reach the safest places in the high

mountains.

 

3.      These strikes will be launched from Pakistan, as demanded by our

political and military leaders, and against the desires and best judgment of

every single political and military leader in that country.  Why are they

opposed?  Because Pakistan is already bitterly divided.  Very powerful

forces ­ not just Islamic parties and major elements of the intelligence

services and military command, but also a significant portion of the

population, especially Pathans in the semi-autonomous northwest region

bordering Afghanistan ­ have vowed to oppose the presence of US troops in

their land.  They are explicitly threatening civil war against a weak

government in a nuclear state already engaged in a low-intensity conflict

with nuclear India over the disputed territory or Kashmir.

 

4.      A number of other Arab and Muslim countries face a comparable (though

less dramatic) dilemma to Pakistan, notably Saudi Arabia and other Gulf

dictatorships, Egypt, Algeria, Indonesia, even Jordan.  The domestic

backlash against these fragile and repressive regimes could lead to

heightened internal conflict with regional and global consequences.

 

We can expect press briefings from Washington describing targeted attacks

against Taliban command and control centers and bin Ladin mountain

encampments.  We can expect canned footage of smart bombs striking their

targets ­ shot by the Pentagon, fed to the media, and beamed directly into

every American home.  We saw the same images during the Gulf War ten years

ago only to “learn” later that 88% of the bombs were dumb and inaccurate.

 

We can also expect that this is only the first strike of a long war, a mere

prelude of the rising crescendo to come.  The Times of London today

described “Operation Noble Eagle,” a ten-year American-British plan to

eradicate global terrorism.  Are the flashes of light becoming visible on

our collective horizon merely the blazing of bombs or do they herald the

dawn of a new Cold War?  Have we discovered another Evil Empire to sustain

the circle of violence, fear and hatred that has plagued this bloodiest of

centuries?  Is there no other way to bring security other than the familiar,

rigid and deathly embrace of us versus them?

 

We are living in sad times, dangerous times.  We have not finished mourning

our victims, but soon there will be new victims to mourn.  Talk of justice

is on everyone’s lips today.  But we must recognize that justice is

contested terrain.  Do we mean the justice at the heart of every enduring

religious, ethical and legal tradition, the justice born of love, courage

and understanding that sees connections between all humanity and seeks the

root causes of violence, the justice whose universal principles extend

universally to us all.  Or the justice born of vengeance and the need to

exorcise grief and fear by striking out at ill-defined enemies, the justice

that seduces us with easy answers and simple formulas like us good and them

bad, the justice that divides humanity and turns the wheel of endless

violence and revenge.

 

No nation, no culture, no religion is all good or all bad.  This single

world of ours is home to six billion people, each of us capable of love,

hate, hope and fear.  A few of us are also capable of unimaginable horrors ­

raping and killing little children, plowing hijacked airplanes into crowded

skyscrapers, or ordering the carpet bombing of civilian areas.  But most of

us, given the chance and the information, will do whatever we can to resist

and prevent these horrors.

 

It is during moments of crisis that all people of conscience must stand

together and raise our voices for sanity and hope.  With political leaders

in Washington advocating restricted civil liberties at home and

indiscriminate violence abroad, with media outlets failing to pose any real

questions about this promised global war, with people of Arab, Muslim and

South Asian descent facing a sharp increase in physical violence, we have NO

CHOICE but to take our message to the streets.  Only respectful, non-violent

but determined protest throughout this country will convince our leaders

that Americans are good and decent people who desperately want security ­ as

do all human beings on this earth ­ but who will not tolerate manipulation

of our tragic losses, our innocent blood, to justify spilling innocent blood

of other human beings, whose mothers and children will weep for them as ours

do.

 

Our message must be firmly grounded in international law and human rights ­

the very values embedded in our Constitution.  Respect for life.  Equality

and non-discrimination.  Freedom of speech and expression.  Protect the

innocent and punish the guilty based on convincing evidence and lawful

procedure.  Above all, we must squarely confront the issue of national and

individual security by insisting that respect for civil liberties and human

rights ­ at home and abroad ­ is the only path to security, for us and all

peoples on this small interconnected planet.

 

The rule of law or the law of vengeance.  The choice is ours, every one of

us.