[Peace-discuss] More great stuff from Alan Grayson, wow!!

[Jenifer Cartwright]

>From Howie Klein on Huffington Post re Alan Grayson. The full entry is at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howie-klein/alan-grayson-on-afghanist_b_315087.html

This week Robert Greenwald debuted his intense new documentary, Rethink Afghanistan in Washington, DC. Rep. Grayson was on a panel and made some remarks worth taking a look at:I think that the aid program is a fig leaf trying to make Congress and the American people feel better about the war and about killing.  I think that diplomacy in the areas of fig leaf to try to make the American people think that there is some constructive alternative to the war when the war itself is destructive and not constructive.   
I think that the basic premise that we can alter afghan society is greatly flawed.  Afghanistan is simply the part of Asia that was never occupied by the Russians or the English in the Great Game.  It's not a country; it's not even a place. It's just an empty place on the map.  It's terra incognita.  People who live there are a welter of different tribes, different language groups, different religious beliefs.   All over the country you find different people who have nothing to do with each other except for the fact that we call them Afghans, and they don't even call themselves Afghans.  They're Tajiks or they're Pashtuns, or they're Hazzaras or someone else.  The things that hold them together are simply the things that we try to create artificially.   And the idea that we could transform that society or any other society through aid I think is entirely questionable.  I've never seen it happen; probably never will happen.  If you go to the
 Stan countries north of Afghanistan, and I've been to all of them; what you find is that the way that the Russians altered that society was by crushing it.  Stalin killed half a million Muslims in Kazakhstan, in Turkmenistan, in Kyrgyzstan, in Uzbekistan.   He simply sliced off the head of that society in order to remake it in the image that he wanted.  And I think that we would have to do no less if we wanted to remake Afghanistan in our image. We'd have to destroy it in order to save it, and I don't think the American people are ever going to do that to anybody.  So I think that the underlining premise is simply wrong.   I've been to 175 countries all around the world including Afghanistan, including every country in that region, and what I've seen everywhere I go is that there are some commonalities everywhere you go. Everywhere you go people want to fall in love.  It's an interesting thing.  Everywhere you go, people love children. 
 Everywhere, they love children.  Everywhere you go, there's a taboo against violence.  Every single place you go.  And everywhere you go, people want to be left alone.  And that's the best foreign policy of all.  Just to leave people alone.Grayson was one of the 32 members of Congress who stood up on June 16 and said "NO!" to more war funding. It's more than a promise; it's something he did. Blue America is hosting a page, No Means No! seeking to encourage members of Congress to put their feet down and help end the occupation of Afghanistan. Please visit the page and consider making a contribution to Grayson or any of the other courageous members of Congress on the list. Is your own congresscritter there?


      
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