9-11 Part 5

By now you no doubt have received countless emails pertaining to last weeks terrorist attacks. Some are nothing more than a bunch of hooey perpetrated by someone who had too much time on their hands and put out faux Nostradamus predictions of the events. Some are allegedly from Islamic persons living in Afghanistan denouncing the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. While still others are from Americans predicting doom and gloom for the terrorists and Afghanistan. Email is a wonderful thing and a very useful tool of both work and pleasure. But let's not too carried away with messages and articles and what they are saying. I know in this time of grief and suffering it is easy to gravitate to anything positive about America and negative about our enemies, especially foreign.

Let's set some things straight though. First of all the Nostradamus email which seems to have died out over the past couple of days was a complete hoax as the man was dead more than 20 years before he “wrote” his prediction of the attacks. With so many pointing this fact out is probably why that particular email stopped making the rounds. Next is one I received today which was allegedly by a man living in Afghanistan. He pointed out that the Taliban was not the legal government and went on to compare them to the Nazi's. Regardless of who wrote that particular piece, they are correct in certain aspects. First, with the exception of Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, no other country currently recognizes the Taliban as the rightful government of Afghanistan. However, when they took power in 1998 it was after 20 years of war, both civil and against the Soviet Union. Gangs and warlords ran Afghanistan, and crime and corruption were the rule. The Taliban restored an order to the country and at the urging of the rest of the world and according to their Islamic tenets, completely eliminated the cultivation of the poppy plant and the production and sale of opium. Upon doing this, they honestly thought they would become the recognized government of Afghanistan. After all, what criminal activity has America been engaged in a war against the past several decades? Drugs. So for this man to claim the Taliban are Nazi's seems more like an American posing as an Afghan. Don't get me wrong. Having the power that the Taliban have in Afghanistan can have devastatingly corrupt ramifications. But if we are to believe them at their word, they are simply trying to create the world's purest Islamic state. As for bin Laden, why in the world would they give him to the US? We know they don't like the US and want us out of the Middle East. If we aren't going to leave, they simply will not turn him over.

Finally there is the article written by a columnist here in America. He talks of waking the sleeping giant and that America will have the stomach to lose many more lives to rid this country of terrorism. He waxes patriotically of winning a war and bringing our way of life to the world. For the love of God I hope he is right. But as I have stated on previously, I'm not sure we do. There is a lot of singing and flag-waving going on right now that is both positive and therapeutic. But there are also beatings of Middle Eastern and other foreign born or looking people going on. This lack of tolerance is nothing more than fascism and xenophobia and is enough to make me sick. These terrorist attacks were perpetrated by a complex network of people of which Americans had to be involved.

So read your emails and enjoy them and hopefully they will bring some sort of comfort to you. But please take them with a grain of salt as a real war is probably coming and the strong words from columnists, people of Islamic faith and other assorted but cases may soon be sad memories of a week when as a country we did rally together. Tomorrow, the conspiracy theories regarding bin Laden's stock portfolio and the US government perpetrating these heinous acts because W was spoiling for a fight.