Bigoted attacks continue

[blueaguave]

some people are attacking and harassing people who look "foreign" or Arab. Two wrongs don't make a right

[lightning1966]

I agree!

[mccbridge]

I also agree. It is a shame some people do that.

[scooter22]

The only ones I'd attack are the ones celebrating in the streets.... of the USA

[bassmount]

Last night as I watched the "Starathon" I saw the most moving report that they included. It had the most beautiful Muslim children (OK, I think all children are beautiful ) on the verge of tears over what has happened. One little girl, with the biggest puppy dog looking brown eyes said she was afraid to go to school (at this point she was crying) and just wanted to be able to play again with the children in her neighborhood. She missed her friends. Why has it come to the abuse of other Americans? Why are children fearing to go to school or play because they are another religion? I think that most people are good decent people, regardless of their religious beliefs. These are innocent children who have harmed no one, have lost friends and relatives in the attack and are in fact as American as I am. As with any other religious or racial hate crime, I feel they need to prosecute anyone and I do mean anyone that takes there frustration or anger out on other innocent Americans. The people that commit these acts are no better than the cowardly B******* that committed this act of carnage to begin with. It makes me hurt so badly when children are in fear.

[blueaguave]

all the sensitivity training and candlelight vigils AFTER you're shot won't save your ***

[dlabrie708]

Unfortunately, Blue, there are ignorant people out there in America. We knew this before the attack....they are just redirecting their hate.

My brother works with a man who is an Indian [okay, I can't spell it....is it sikh?] His poor wife, brings her children to school and stays in the parking lot ALL day with the other mothers for they fear for the safety of their children. I don't know the exact name of the type of school they attend, but it is for Indian children. They have police protection right in the parking lot and also at 100 yards away. Well, a few stupid, ignorant men drove straight through the first police stop and right into the main parking lot and starting driving in circles and yelling all kinds of racial slurs....this is a school for SMALL CHILDREN! The cops surrounded them and after arresting them, said "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" and the morons said, "hey we're just pissed" and blah blah blah....who really cares what they had to say. Then the cop screamed at them...."THESE ARE LITTLE KIDS....WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!!!!"

Unfortunately, I wish that was the only story, but apparently on another day at this school, a plane flew so low over the school [at about tree level] that one of the mother's could see the pilot's face! The children were all crying and so afraid. She was too shaken to have noticed the numbers on the plane to report the guy, so I don't think they ever found him.

This man's sil was pumping gas at a station and a man at another tank kept staring at her. She was getting really nervous and then the man walk in to pay the cashier. When he came out, he started walking right towards her, and she started to cower as he approached her. She was so afraid! The man came right up to her and then extended his hand and said "I am so sorry for all that you and others of your faith have been going through in this country." She was so relieved she started crying and almost fell to her knees.

These stories just sicken me [except for the last one, of course]. Sorry to ramble on, but I just had to write what has been happening here locally.

Lori

[blueaguave]

Myself, and my good friends Mr Smith and Mr Wesson will take care of it real quick

[andee1]

I saw that too Bassmount. It was so sad, those poor little kids, so scared.....and really dont understand anything that is going on...just think of all of the others down through the years that have suffered the same disrespect (its the only word I could think of ) its a sad time for all of us.

Got this in a email from one of my best friends. I dont know if anyone has read or heard of this before, but we need to think of the innocent people in Afghanistan too.

A Different Perspective
written by someone who grew up in Afghanistan

As we reflect upon the tragic events of this week and an appropriate "response," I thought you might like to see this letter from my college roommate, Tamim Ansary, who grew up in Afghanistan. I think he offers an interesting perspective on Bin Laden, the Taliban, and Afghanistan.

Dear Friends,
Yesterday I heard a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." I heard a radio commentator say this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage," and he asked, "What else can we do? What is your suggestion?" Minutes later I heard a TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."

And I thought about these issues especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's been going on over there. So I want to share a few thoughts with anyone who will listen.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I fervently wish to see those monsters punished.

But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding the country in bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a master plan.

When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would love for someone to eliminate the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country. I guarantee it.

Some say, if that's the case, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, damaged, and incapacitated. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. Millions of Afghans are widows of the approximately two million men killed during the war with the Soviets. And the Taliban has been executing these women for being women and have buried some of their opponents alive in mass graves. The soil of Afghanistan is littered with land mines and almost all the farms have been destroyed . The Afghan people have tried to overthrow the Taliban. They haven't been able to.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble with that scheme is, it's already been done. The Soviets took care of it.

Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering.
Level their houses? Done.
Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done.
Eradicate their hospitals? Done.
Destroy their infrastructure? There is no infrastructure.
Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late.

Someone already did all that.

New bombs would only land in the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. (They have already, I hear.) Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time.

So what else can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. I think that when people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" many of them are thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. They are thinking about overcoming moral qualms about killing innocent people. But it's the belly to die not kill that's actually on the table. Americans will die in a land war to get Bin Laden.

And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that, folks. To get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first.

Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. The invasion approach is a flirtation with global war between Islam and the West.

And that is Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants and why he did this thing. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. At the moment, of course, "Islam" as such does not exist. There are Muslims and there are Muslim countries, but no such political entity as Islam. Bin Laden believes that if he can get a war started, he can constitute this entity and he'd be running it. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the West wreaks a holocaust in Muslim lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong about winning, in the end the west would probably overcome--whatever that would mean in such a war; but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden yes, but anyone else?

I don't have a solution. But I do believe that suffering and poverty are the soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his cohorts want to bait us into creating more such soil, so they and their kind can flourish. We can't let him do that.

That's my humble opinion.

Tamim Ansary

[sweetcindy]

Andee,
Thank you for posting that message.

[andee1]

Just wanted to clarify that my friend had heard this on the radio in California, Star 100.7 (?) and sent me a copy of the letter....I dont actually know the person who wrote it.....