Ruminations at World Trade Center Plaza
Saturday, May 6, 2000

Sitting here at the scene of monster movies, terrorist bomb threats, Simpsons episodes and love stories. One of the greatest of humanity's architectural achievements. Gawking up at the immense Twin Towers like a tourist and not caring. Stretching to the sky, my mind can't comprehend their sheer magnitude and the moment becomes surreal, out of a painting.

Humanity in all its diversity passes my stone bench. The rebellious tough-guy biker speeding away from shouting, overweight security guards. "No riding in the courtyard!" Two young kids (boyfriend and girlfriend?) laying on their backs looking up at the Towers like I suddenly long to do. The couple necking by the water sculpture. The punk rock woman smoking a cigarette, walking purposefully towards Tower #2. Each drifting unconsciously towards me rather than walking through the open, agoraphobic courtyard, then repelled by a New Yawker's fear of encroaching on personal space.

As I write this I remember that my name "Torres" means "towers" in my native tongue that I do not speak. Sitting here in the midst of people, yet separate from them, feeling as one yet apart.

The lights go on as dusk descends and strains of instrumental "La Bamba" drift from who-knows-where. Rain starts to fall and I seek shelter in the Tower.

I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that 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. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."

And I thought about the issues being raised 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 going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.

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 agree that something must be done about those monsters.

But the Taliban and Bin Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a 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 exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.

Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, and suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan — a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. 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? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.

New bombs would only stir 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. 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 only be making common cause with the Taliban-by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time.

So what else is there? What 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. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. 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. Because 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. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West. And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. 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 those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the West would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?

I'm still numb — but now I'm also becoming reflective: I'm glad to see all the American Flags sprouting EVERYWHERE, but (for fear of sounding like a bleeding-heart liberal) where were the flags when we destroyed the entire Native American culture in our country or when millions of slaves died in bondage and on slave ships. O, some waved their flags about the slaves — and that became a civil war. But the Native peoples? Not much. Remember your history? Andrew Johnson stood before the Congress and said, "With the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other, we have no choice but to wipe out the savages." (ie. the Natives who were trying to defend their lands)

I think what happened last week was a horror beyond measure. But in the larger view of history, it's part of what's been going on since the beginning of recorded history: People (including we Americans) claim the "right" — often on religious grounds — to justify slaughter (recall the Crusades? — now there's a highlight of enlightened thinking!) What happened was awful, but there are NO innocent hands here — every culture, religion and political group, including Americans, has committed its equivalent of the WTC slaughter. Ask any Armenian about the Turkish, any Jew about the Nazis, any Bosnian, any Israeli, any Palestinian, any Sioux, any Northern Irish... they'll gladly tell you the price of being "right" and being "wrong."

Last week was unspeakable. But it wasn't the first time in human history and it won't be the last. I just hope that when this happens again in another nation that we will wave our flags in the same show of support that's being shown us.