We hammer New York Times colummnists on a pretty regular basis so we have to give credit when credit is due...
I confess, I find it hard to come to Afghanistan and not ask: Why are we here? Who cares about the Taliban? Al Qaeda is gone. And if its leaders come back, well, that’s why God created cruise missiles.
But every time I start writing that column, something stills my hand. This week it was something very powerful. I watched Greg Mortenson, the famed author of “Three Cups of Tea,” open one of his schools for girls in this remote Afghan village in the Hindu Kush mountains. I must say, after witnessing the delight in the faces of those little Afghan girls crowded three to a desk waiting to learn, I found it very hard to write, “Let’s just get out of here.”
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Mortenson said he was originally critical of the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he’s changed his views: “The U.S. military has gone through a huge learning curve. They really get it. It’s all about building relationships from the ground up, listening more and serving the people of Afghanistan.”
Read Thomas Friedman's article here.
Don't let our troops over there do all the heavy lifting. You can get involved in the Play-doh offensive, yourself. Go here for the details.
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3 comments:
Where was Thomas Friedman when we were doing that in Iraq?
I think, KT, the thrust of the BwD post, and Mortenson, and the NY Times article, is basically to get off your rear end and do something -- not to snipe at Friedman.
If you've gone to the store and post office and shipped off your box of school supplies, etc, to Afghanistan (or similar) then you can feel free to snipe all you want. If not, your words carry no weight here, with the troops in the field, or really anywhere else.
Mongo taking someone to task for a non-sequitor comment? A sure sign of the apocalypse! ;)
Friedman does include praise for the lessons we learned and executed in Iraq and then carried to Afghanistan (the RB-relationships built vs. BC-body count paradigm shift is nothing short of astounding)... but, yeah, your point is taken. Would've been nice to see him in country back when... oh, never mind.
Actually, T-Free is probably the NYT columnist that I find least bothersome. He's a pretty standard Mark 1 Mod 6 liberal. No problems there. Krugman, however, preaches simply ruinous economic policy. Brooks is a mess right now. Completely adrift simultaneously backpedaling and rationalizing his vote for Obama. What we're seeing with Brooks is the actions of a man that never possessed any strong political convictions to begin with.
Cohen is an authoritarian apologist and just a plain loser and Dowd.... Dowd is from another planet. I don't have clue what she is writing about half the time. She and Huffington share this totally annoying habit of refusing to write a column without dropping at least one cultural reference that is forced and completely irrelevant to the rest of the column. Hey, look at me, I'm hip.
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