Knowledge Worker

by digby

Grayson has been all over the TV today saying a lot of typically smart quotable things about the Nobel Prize and health care. But I think his statement on Afghanistan from a couple of days ago was exceptional, mostly because it showcased his personal familiarity with the country, which is so rare among our leaders you wonder if they can even find it on a map. (In fact, Alan Grayson has been just about everywhere on the planet and can evidently speak in great detail about nearly any country you can mention.)

Howie Klein is another world traveler of epic proportions has also spent time in Afghanistan and writes this:


In 1969 I drove to Afghanistan. Between then and 1972 I spent over half a year there, and never spent one single day in a hotel. Traveling from London, through then still-Communist nations like Hungary and Bulgaria, then through Turkey and Iran and into Herat, the most important component doesn't feel like mileage, but time. Sure, I traveled in space; but what seemed far more profound was a trip back in time. Afghanistan was like being in the 11th Century, not the turn of the 20th. And I noticed immediately that the people there don't recognize a country called "Afghanistan." In Herat and Kandahar, respectively the 3rd and 2nd biggest towns, there was resentment towards the "central government" as a pretension-- backed by foreign military equipment-- of Kabul, the biggest town and what foreigners insist is the capital of "the country."

The only part of the discussion of Afghan policy more awkwardly missing from the calculations that there is no Afghanistan, is that all the men there-- yes, all of them-- are stoned all day, every day on the strongest hash (much of it opiated) on God's earth. I know West Point was just named the best college in America by Fortune but do they teach them that stuff there?


I doubt it. I'm sure they get a whole lot of drivel about hearts and minds and Lone Superpower and the like.

Anyway, Grayson's comments, which were made during a panel on Afghanistan at a screening of Brave New Films' Rethinking Afghanistan were along those very same lines and are well worth thinking about as we begin to debate how to go forward (or backward) on the war. You can see the Youtube and read the transcript of his remarks at DownWithTyranny.

As dday noted earlier today, David Obey, at least, seems to be thinking along these same lines. Let's hope the rest of the leadership is as well.


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