Stardate 20011025.0626 (On Screen): One of the most important things that the US has done in the war with Afghanistan has been to drop large amounts of food to Afghan refugees even as it was bombing Taliban military targets. The quantity of food involved has not been sufficient to alleviate the entire starvation threat, but it was never really intended to be. It was a frankly political act, whose purpose was to undermine claims made by the Taliban that we were trying to fight against the Afghan people and Islam overall. (If that were true, why would we spend huge amounts of money and risk our planes and men to try to feed them?) The Pentagon now says that the Taliban may be planning to poison food, give it to Afghans to eat so that they sicken and die, and then blame it on us.
It's possible that this is a fabrication by our side to try to make the Taliban look worse, but I don't think so. The Taliban already look sufficiently evil that they are getting little sympathy in the West, and this story won't make any difference in the Arab nations. I think it more likely that this is an attempt to forestall such acts by the Taliban. If it happens now, our leaders will be able to say "See? We warned you!" Ideally, this would prevent the Taliban from carrying out any such plans, but even if they do the result would be to turn the resulting publicity against them. The only positive outcome it might have in the West would be to convince the residue that the Taliban truly are evil and that there is no moral equivalence between the sides in this war. (discuss)
Probably not, though; the people who still cling to that notion of moral equivalence are more likely to believe that the US really was responsible for the poisoning.
