Saturday, August 15, 2009

Harvard prof blasts neocons’ ‘extremist counterculture’

Author Rory Stewart is a star at Harvard’s Kennedy School, mentioned as a future Foreign Secretary in the UK. Here he is in the Kashmir Observer, putting the lie to the George Packer-Charles Ferguson claim that the Iraq invasion, which Stewart supported, would have succeeded if we just hadn’t disbanded the army.
Mondoweiss
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5 comments:

  1. vzaAugust 15, 2009 at 7:23 AM

    "His first book, 2003's The Places in Between , which won several major book awards including the Royal Society's Ondaatje Prize, details the difficulties and dangers of the Herat to Kabul leg of his epic stroll and paints a picture of a desolate post-Taliban Afghanistan torn between war and peace. Released last year, The Prince of the Marshes recounts his eleven months as the deputy governor of two impoverished southern Iraqi provinces, offering rare on-the-ground insights and revealing the hazards, frustrations, and foibles of trying to establish a stable and functioning democracy."

    These are two really great books. No romanticising, but  unforgettable.
    Also, go to the Turquoise Mountain Foundation website and see the beautiful work the Afghans are crafting. The Connaught Hotel in London recently bought an entire carved wooden room.

    http://www.turquoisemountainarts.af/home_en/home.sxw.html

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  2. vzaAugust 15, 2009 at 7:25 AM

    <span>"His first book, 2003's The Places in Between , which won several major book awards including the Royal Society's Ondaatje Prize, details the difficulties and dangers of the Herat to Kabul leg of his epic stroll and paints a picture of a desolate post-Taliban Afghanistan torn between war and peace. Released last year, The Prince of the Marshes recounts his eleven months as the deputy governor of two impoverished southern Iraqi provinces, offering rare on-the-ground insights and revealing the hazards, frustrations, and foibles of trying to establish a stable and functioning democracy."  
     
    These are two really great books. No romanticising, but  unforgettable.  
    Also, go to the Turquoise Mountain Foundation website and see the beautiful work the Afghans are crafting. The Connaught Hotel in London recently bought an entire carved wooden room.  
     </span>
    http://www.turquoisemountain.org/

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  3. vzaAugust 15, 2009 at 7:30 AM

    <span style="color: #274f76; ">Rebuilding Afghanistan Pot by Pot: The Turquoise Mountain Foundation and the Potters of Istalif</span>
    by Noah Coburn and Ester Svensson

    http://www.ceramicstoday.com/articles/istalif_potters.htm

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  4. anandAugust 15, 2009 at 11:35 AM

    Thanks for the books VZA.They seem very interesting.

    Here is what I don't get; I think the Iraqi resistance against Saddam were the good guys. They deserved to win because justice was on their side.

    Iraq wouldn't have gone crazy "IF" Saddamists didn't implement their scorched earth to take their revenge on the Iraqi people they so hated; and if Iraq's neighbors didn't send thousands of Al Qaeda suicide bombers to mass murder Iraqis.

    The Shia and Kurds showed amazing restraint even as their Arab neighbors cheered the mass murder of Iraqis. The Iraqis should get a medal for their restraint. Likely any of the Arab neighbors would have done much worse in the same situation.

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  5. vAugust 15, 2009 at 2:52 PM

    We are so pleased that this "genius" finally said something after the fact, hindsight is always better than foresight.  In the meantime Harvard grovels at the feet of power, just like almost all of these insitutions do - they have their lights, but they are rare.



    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrWJmU2DzDQ

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