COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CAROLINE MOOREHEAD IN THE
GUARDIAN
Memo to Trump and the
SAS – send the Afghans fewer bullets and more books
It was always stupid and brutal to send bullets, especially
since the people of this poor, hardscrabble society, a place which can only
barely be called a nation state, never in fact did anything against America.
But sending books to such an extremely poor and backward
place, despite sounding nice, largely would be futile.
Our civilization is built on a foundation of increasing
prosperity since the Middle ages.
Remember, in the Middle Ages, even many of the
"lords" were genuine illiterates, and no peasants could read.
Only rising prosperity yields all that we have in schools,
skills like reading, supplies of books, and almost everything you care to
mention in real civilization, to say nothing of the opportunities to even use a
skill like reading.
If you seriously study history, there is no other way to
look at it.
The United States, if it dropped anything on these poor people,
should have dropped dollar bills, not bombs.
But the truth is the US was never seriously interested in
advancing Afghanistan's poor people, nor is that the case now.
The invasion was about Captain Ahab seeking the "damned
white whale," and nothing else.
All the stuff about women and learning, while true enough,
simply never seriously mattered except as copy for the press and official
spokespeople for Washington.
You would have had no more luck in 14th century England
dropping books. Why would you think it is different in Afghanistan?
Sounds thoughtful and cute, but it is pretty much a
non-starter of an idea.
______________________
Response to another
comment:
Governance, just as with every other aspect of human culture,
advances with prosperity too.
Eventually, instead of absolute king in Europe, groups of
powerful nobles gained authority.
Then, as prosperity increased through changing technology -
roads, ships, etc. - a middle class arose, people at an early time in England
who were termed “the new men.” The “new men” did not own great estates or have
castles but they had know-how and increasingly they had wealth by applying
their know-how.
That is the key to modern society, the middle class.
Those are the people who eventually build parliaments and
congresses. Those are the people who say we don't need decisions made by kings
or lords. Those are the people who get real public education going.
You cannot do these things in a very poor and backward
place.
It's a little like talking about putting clothes on farm
animals.
