Not so, says Kristoff, as he describes the work done by Greg Mortenson. Mortenson, co-founder of
the nonprofit Central Asia Institute, has dedicated his life to promoting community-based education and literacy programs, especially for girls, in remote mountain regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Author of the best-seller, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School At A Time, and of: Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.He has now built 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan, and not a single one has been destroyed or closed -- because he makes the school an indigenous project involving the people. In addition CARE has 209 schools educating 50,000 girls in Afghanistan, none of which has been closed or burned by the Taliban. One of our supposed motives in trying to liberate the Afghans was the Taliban's draconian restrictions on the rights of women and their refusal to let girls be educated.
Kristoff describes the difference between Pakistan and Bangladesh: Since 9/11, we've given Pakistan more than $15 billion, mostly for military support; and today it's more unstable than even. In contrast, Bangladesh has focused on education and now has an educated women's labor force, which has led to a spiral of economic development.
But here's Kristoff's zinger:
"For the cost of a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there."And he adds:
"For roughly the same cost as stationing 40,000 troops in Afghanistan for one year, we could educate the great majority of the 75 million children worldwide who, according to Unicef, are not getting even a primary education . . . . Such a vast global education campaign would reduce poverty, cut birth rates, improve America's image in the world, promote stability and chip away at extremism."Wow !!! That sounds worth doing. Even Republicans would be hard put to oppose that.
But what about all those defense contractors? Can't let them down, can we? I guess refitting their factories to make desks and chalk boards just wouldn't be as lucrative as B-22's and Predator drones. There's not as much profit in books as in bombs.
Oh, well . . . never mind.
Ralph
A letter in today's NYT magazine is worth repeating here:
ReplyDelete"What is missing from Dexter Filkin's article (and General McChrystal's thinking) about Afghanistan is analysis of the ultimate question: What is the point? The answer is, I suppose, that we must deny Muslim terrorists a base from which to attack us. But America does not have the resources or the political will to go nation-building in every failed Muslim state in the world.
This is Vietnam all over again. Once again we are at war in a small, distant country whose people and customs we do not understand. Once again we are told by the experts that we must send more blood and money to "win the war," whatever winning means -- to define it would demonstrate its impossibility. Once again we are told that we can "win the war" if we just send enough young Americans to be maimed and killed and spend enough dollars in the faraway battlefield. It was all wrong then, and it is all wrong now."
--Robert L. Dunn Corte, Madera, CA.
What a beautiful book - Three Cups of Tea! If only...
ReplyDeleteGreat idea. Here's another one.
ReplyDeleteAfghanistan's opium trade is $64 a year. We spend $44 billion to keep our troops there, and it will cost an additional $1 billion per 1,000 troops added.
Why don't we just buy the opium, become their main market? We can destroy it afterwards, or refine it for medical use. But if the US is their main market for opium it removes that fromt he drug trade, and will force the Taliban to treat us as partners.
richard krawiec
The reason they don't ask us three (Mickey, Richard, and me) to plan our Afghan strategy is that we would shut out the defense contractors and ignore the conservatives' blood-thirst in favor of sensible, peaceable methods that might get the job done without so much shedding of blood and money.
ReplyDeleteThey would call us wimps and say we were leaving America vulnerable to Islamic terrorists who hate our way of life and want to destroy us.
For once, shouldn't we "give peace a chance?" It's not just a bumper sticker. It could be for real.