[lit-ideas] Re: Amis Antithesis
- From: "Simon Ward" <sedward@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 23:21:16 +0100
Since Lawrence has gone a bit shy on this thread, here's an extended quote from
Jon Lee Anderson taken from an article in the New Yorker.
QUOTE
I'd like to leap in here and add something that has become dear to my heart in
the course of observing on the ground the conflicts engendered since 9/11:
first Afghanistan, then Iraq, and, most recently, Lebanon. I'll begin with an
anecdote. Immediately following the ceasefire, after four weeks of bombing,
Hezbollah announced that it would pay for the reconstruction of homes for the
tens of thousands of people whose homes had been destroyed in the Israeli
bombardment-for the homes, a year's worth of rent, and new furniture-and would
itself rebuild, with funds from Iran, no doubt. Hezbollah effectively captured
people's loyalties and took away that role of the state from the Lebanese
government, and, for that matter, from the larger actors in the
conflict-including America. This was just the latest example; it goes back to
Iraq and it goes back to Afghanistan. Following the American police action in
Afghanistan, to chase the Taliban into the hills, almost nothing was done to
rebuild the country. It took-I forget, exactly-a year and a half or two years
before the first efforts were made to pave the Kabul-Kandahar road, which was
passable for about a year but no longer is today, because the Taliban have
returned and are likely to attack if you are a Westerner. Very little was done
in the political arena. This problem of Islamic extremism, which George was
referring to and which is very real, is a problem of perception. America is
seen to act with all of its might and resources when it comes to military
adventurism or military involvement. In Iraq, the amount of money expended
there on nothing very visible, for the sake of pursuing the war, is
astronomical. But what have we done to rebuild? I believe this sort of military
action has to go hand in hand with a radical political decision to actually
reform these countries. For Afghanistan, that could have meant a kind of
mini-Marshall plan, which could have shown both the Afghans and the Muslim
world that we had no vested interest in controlling that country but bore some
responsibility for what had happened there. It would have been a very
cost-effective investment. Once again, we do not truly compete for hearts and
minds, because we're not willing to pony up to invest, to show that America
isn't only about war, or being crusading Christians, or whatever it is.
UNQUOTE
http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/articles/060911on_onlineonly02
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