AN OPEN LETTER TO THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Dear Mr. Thomas L. Friedman

RE: Your NYT article: Teacher, Can We Leave Now? No.

You write:

 "Indeed, Mortenson's efforts remind us what the essence of the "war on terrorism" is about. It's about the war of ideas within Islam — a war between religious zealots who glorify martyrdom and want to keep Islam untouched by modernity and isolated from other faiths, with its women disempowered, and those who want to embrace modernity, open Islam to new ideas and empower Muslim women as much as men. America's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were, in part, an effort to create the space for the Muslim progressives to fight and win so that the real engine of change, something that takes nine months and 21 years to produce — a new generation — can be educated and raised differently.

I hope you don't take your NYT readers to be so naive as to take your take on 'war of terror' as anything but a simple minded propaganda and an attempt to paper over the real reasons for US to devise and perpetrate its world encompassing strategies around 'war on terror'. Whoever has given the right to the US to take up the mission of reforming Islam? Now even the people of the USA. They are least interested in the half baked versions of your muddle headed objective to reform or police the world. It is the propaganda part that gives the whole illegal conspiracy a façade of a human face. Entire world is fully aware that US has targeted a small country, under false pretexts. And has been shedding blood of innocent people and disrupting their lives, in a manner that can only remind how in history, blood thirsty war-mongers like Genghis Khan and other Mongols had unleashed wanton brutality on defenseless people all around the world. The only difference this time around is that that US is employing the so-called state of art killer machines that have no match for its brutality on human beings. Otherwise, the objective of this murderous assault on other people's land and lives is just greed and hegemony. The US has no moral upper hand to claim that it is being kind and generous to either Afghan people or even Iraqis.

You must be kidding, Mr. Friedman, when you come out with Mortenson's school project as a shining example of American charity and generosity. Nobody is fool enough to believe that Thomas L. Friedman is so gullible as to believe in his own propaganda. This kind of writing is not inspiring and convincing. It leaves a bad taste when one reads it.

Reforming Islam is a big project. It cannot be achieved unless Muslims themselves will it. 

In fact, US is hindering the reforms, as its brutalities has been alienating rank and file Muslims across the globe and inspire sympathies for all those who are fighting America and its poodles. The more you kill people, the more the negative feelings of revenge is being promoted, not only among Afghans but among the vast multitude of Muslims whose psyche is hurt day in and day out. Good or bad, America does bring Muslims of the world together in a sense of victim-hood, if not martyrdom.

US President Obama has come out with a simple question and a simple answer that is more honest, as far as it goes. He asked why US is in Afghanistan. And replied, we want to secure our country from any threat coming from this anarchic land. However, he is not in command. The Pentagon is running the war, and presents fait accompli before him, to just Okay. A hammer's job is to hit the nail on the head. Except when the heads are that of humans, we don't need hammer. We need intellectual inputs and moral fortitude.

The oil lobby Presidents, Bush Sr. and Jr., wanted Afghanistan as a strategic piece of land which was a vital part of their pipeline projects to transport Central Asian energy supplies to rest of the world. British colonists did deal with Middle East countries like Kuwait, Bahrain and Emirates, with more finesse, more diplomacy and more goodwill. Oil flowed through the gulf emirates for decades now, without British having to fire a single shot, when they were in command in the area. Only when the then Iraqi President Abdul Karim Kasim, threatened Kuwait, British moved some destroyers overnight from Bahrain and that was the end of the affair. However, the perfidious Bush Presidents, both had vilest designs on the area and has been used by neo-cons to blend in their Israeli objectives in the Middle East, to trap Saddam into misjudging US Ambassador's real message and moving into Kuwait. For the US warmongers, that was the golden day. Saddam gave them the opportunity for them to move into the area with big propaganda machine ennobling their inhuman forays into foreign lands, where millions died. And to think, US has no sign of remorse. No sign of guilt feelings for those innocents who died for no fault of theirs.

Innocent girls are guilelessly asking: Teacher, can we leave? Friedman's answer is prophetic: No. Afghan cannot leave the clutches the leaches that have descended on their land.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/opinion/19friedman.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Teacher, Can We Leave Now? No.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: July 18, 2009

Pushghar, Afghanistan

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."

Indeed, Mortenson's efforts remind us what the essence of the "war on terrorism" is about. It's about the war of ideas within Islam — a war between religious zealots who glorify martyrdom and want to keep Islam untouched by modernity and isolated from other faiths, with its women disempowered, and those who want to embrace modernity, open Islam to new ideas and empower Muslim women as much as men. America's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were, in part, an effort to create the space for the Muslim progressives to fight and win so that the real engine of change, something that takes nine months and 21 years to produce — a new generation — can be educated and raised differently.

Which is why it was no accident that Adm. Mike Mullen, the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — spent half a day in order to reach Mortenson's newest school and cut the ribbon. Getting there was fun. Our Chinook helicopter threaded its way between mountain peaks, from Kabul up through the Panjshir Valley, before landing in a cloud of dust at the village of Pushghar. Imagine if someone put a new, one-story school on the moon, and you'll appreciate the rocky desolateness of this landscape.

But there, out front, was Mortenson, dressed in traditional Afghan garb. He was surrounded by bearded village elders and scores of young Afghan boys and girls, who were agog at the helicopter, and not quite believing that America's "warrior chief" — as Admiral Mullen's title was loosely translated into Urdu — was coming to open the new school.

While the admiral passed out notebooks, Mortenson told me why he has devoted his life to building 131 secular schools for girls in Pakistan and another 48 in Afghanistan: "The money is money well spent. These are secular schools that will bring a new generation of kids that will have a broader view of the world. We focus on areas where there is no education. Religious extremism flourishes in areas of isolation and conflict.

"When a girl gets educated here and then becomes a mother, she will be much less likely to let her son become a militant or insurgent," he added. "And she will have fewer children. When a girl learns how to read and write, one of the first things she does is teach her own mother. The girls will bring home meat and veggies, wrapped in newspapers, and the mother will ask the girl to read the newspaper to her and the mothers will learn about politics and about women who are exploited."

It is no accident, Mortenson noted, that since 2007, the Taliban and its allies have bombed, burned or shut down more than 640 schools in Afghanistan and 350 schools in Pakistan, of which about 80 percent are schools for girls. This valley, controlled by Tajik fighters, is secure, but down south in Helmand Province, where the worst fighting is today, the deputy minister of education said that Taliban extremists have shut 75 of the 228 schools in the last year. This is the real war of ideas. The Taliban want public mosques, not public schools. The Muslim militants recruit among the illiterate and impoverished in society, so the more of them the better, said Mortenson.

This new school teaches grades one through six. I asked some girls through an interpreter what they wanted to be when they grow up: "Teacher," shouted one. "Doctor," shouted another. Living here, those are the only two educated role models these girls encounter. Where were they going to school before Mortenson's Central Asia Institute and the U.S. State Department joined with the village elders to get this secular public school built? "The mosque," the girls said.

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."

So there you have it. In grand strategic terms, I still don't know if this Afghan war makes sense anymore. I was dubious before I arrived, and I still am. But when you see two little Afghan girls crouched on the front steps of their new school, clutching tightly with both arms the notebooks handed to them by a U.S. admiral — as if they were their first dolls — it's hard to say: "Let's just walk away." Not yet.

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