Habiba Surabi, Bamiyan's provincial governor warned the United States that the actions of their military today were an act of unspeakable destructiveness. Two, 20 story high sandstone statues of the Buddha were disintegrated as members of the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division took target practice early this morning with their Abrams tanks.
It was reported that the statues were well over 1,500 years old and had been the interest of both the Bamiyan government and archeologists world-wide.
"This is an outrage!" said Georgios Toubekis, a German architect and professor. "The American callousness demonstrated this morning was of enormous proportions and would probably secure the American people a place in Sansara for the next 1,000 years, if not eternity."
After the incident, the Bamiyan governor sent a team of Afghan workers to pick up the pieces of the Buddha, so that engineers and architects would be able to reconstruct the giant statues.
A second team of Italian engineers would also be sent in to help said Toubekis. That team would be sent by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The price tag for fixing the two statues was estimated at $30 million.
"That's not small, chump change for the Afghani people," said Surabi, "who must rely on tourism and the poppy trade to get by."
U.S. troops were sent into Afghanistan in October 2001 after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in September, a month earlier. The U.S.government was hoping to find insurgents connected to the Taliban and al-Qadea, but instead found Buddha and blew him up.
"We were just following orders," said Lt. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz head of Afghani command. "If you see the Buddha on the side of the road, kill him!"
But critics say that the army took too literally a statement made by a Chinese philosopher who intended it to be purely figurative.
"One thing that Americans have not mastered, is the art of symbolic interpretation," said mythology professor, Dr. Joseph Cannibal before leaving for Nirvana. And always pay heed to the famous words from Melville--"Tis better to sleep with a sober cannibal than with a drinking Christian."
Cannibal didn't say as to whether he thought the military had been drinking when they shot the statues, but did say that there was a great chance.
Today's attack on the giant statues was not the first in history according to Toubekis. Genghis Khan was the first to take a shot at the giant Buddha's. Then, near the turn of the 20th century, the Emir Abdur Rahman turned his artillery on the Buddha's when he came to conquer the rebellious Bamiyan.
No one can say for sure how long the project is going to take to restore the giant Buddha's, but experts are hopeful that the money will be raised by the selling of opium to the western world and that they will be able to begin reconstruction in the spring after heavy snows disappear from the Bamiyan valley.
In other news today, a search for the "Sleeping Buddha," another gigantic sandstone statue, has resumed outside of Kabul after heavy winds caused an expedition to have to turn around. Archeologists, fearful of the wrath of Buddha, are hopeful that the "Sleeping Buddha" is still asleep and will not awake for the next 1,000 years.
U.S. Army officials were not available to comment.
