I’m afraid my Neo Liberal roots are showing. Greg Mortenson is delivering a lecture at CC on January 15th and I hardly know how to object. I too believe that the fate of mankind depends on education.
However, where have I the right to hold such a belief system, mine, above others? You can call Islam a religion for uneducated poor people, and be mostly right, as indeed the same applies to all fundamentalist absolutists. But that is only to regard education in the liberal sense, with its belief that a secular utopia awaits man’s bettering himself through progress. Technology, medical advances, and the celebration of the individual lead mankind where exactly? To a healthier, more antiseptic life certainly, civil discourse often, but to chaos and nihilism so far, quickly.
Fundamentalist Luddite religious systems may not take man to the moon, but they do ensure spiritually grounded lives, full families, and the same for all foreseeable descendants. Which model is likely the more sustainable? If we posit that the greater percentage of mankind need such intellectual tethers, to whom do you entrust their guidance? Allah or Coca Cola?
The West may think it offers salvation to the women of Islam, but is it true? Are the middle class advocates of women’s rights prepared to take in their rescuees? A Muslim wife’s life is at the mercy of Muslim males, and we’ve been treated to horrific accounts. How do they compare to what capitalism has to offer? Those liberated from the Koran can look forward to the certainty of exploitation by globalization bosses be they man or woman, regulated by amoral corporations and corrupt officials, now without the comfort of leading lives of spiritual purpose.
Isn’t the jury still out on the West’s liberated women? They’re having fewer children, that’s for certain.
White knights like Mr. Mortenson offer a gift horse that indeed cannot deliver. Meanwhile of course our soldiers and free trade carpetbaggers quietly pile on inside. Mortenson’s book Three Cups of Tea has been requisitioned by the Defense Department and issued to our counter-insurgency forces, probably to teach the Hearts and Minds lingo, hopefully not worse.
Mortenson’s visit to Colorado Springs is being sponsored by a new department of UCCS, the Center for Homeland Security, I kid you not! It’s a major now offered by UCCS, established with funding from the Pentagon, staffed with retired military instructors, and chaired by career CIA officer Steve Recca. Look him up, his name is tied completely to CIA activities. As they say in the intelligence biz, he’s totally “mobbed up.”
The tag line to Mortenson’s book tour is to use education outreach as an alternative means to combat terrorism. While it is a refreshing change-up to our direct war making against terrorism, I can’t imagine behaving cavalierly toward Islam is going to endear us greatly. Osama didn’t want US feet on the ground in Saudi Arabia. Do Muslims in general want westerners building schools for their girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Could stealing their young women be seen as anything but a provocation for a terrorist response?
Greg Mortenson is basically a Christian evangelical type. He comes from the same (a well-to-do family running charity operations of different sorts), and his military ties have to be seen as being consistent with the conservative American Christian mindset. In short, he is an updated version of the ‘Guns and Bibles’ approach.
There is not a doubt in my mind that he is the cutting edge of a current CIA-Pentagon campaign to sell its ‘Global War on Terrorism’ to the people, the American people, and having very little to do with helping out the girls in the Islamic backwoods his Photo Ops feature. In short, he is part of a campaign to convince Americans that we are over there with our guns, bombs, and threats merely to be of benefit to the strange foreigner types over there. We’re there to help save their women and kids from their menfolk!
Doesn’t this all remind you of Black Slavery days in the US, where the little Black ones were looked on as kind of pets to be kind of separated away and protected some from the male Black ‘brutes’?
This ‘humanitarian’ sales pitch by the Pentagon is channeled through universities such as ones like Colorado College. To get a glimpse of the pitch in its own words, here is the one from the University of Montana, the state of Montana being the home plate of the Mortenson family.
http://www.lib.umt.edu/firstyear/author.htm
Have you read his book? His co-author put it in the third person, so “Mortenson” is named twice in every paragraph, and lionized at every turn for his physical stature and heroism. When it recounts a moment Mortenson alone experienced, you wonder if he really dictated it with such vanity. They’ll have to open both doors at Shove Chapel to let this guy in
On the other hand, Mortenson was self-effacing to have allowed such a poorly written tome to do his self-promotion. A lesser man would be embarrassed.
I think now that the US military’s advance purchase of so many copies of Three Cups of Tea was actually to boosts its ranking onto the Bestseller List. Their order serves also as perfect cover for subsidizing Mortenson’s CIA err CAI work.
I can’t wait to check if Poor Richards declined to sell this so transparent PR tripe like they did Mike Jone’s “poorly written” book.
And I can most assuredly plan to look around the audience on the 15th and wonder at their reading standards.
Here is an entry by a true liberal as he says, who can’t tell the difference between being attacked by a husband with no recourse and being attacked by capitalism in the mall. If he has been out of the country, he didn’t learn anything by the effort.
Call me innocent, but as a mother, I would be very happy to have to grapple with capitalism in order to have my babies expect to live healthy lives in clean, safe environments. Your essay is typical of a spoiled American who has never been hungry or watched your baby die as the result of an unsanitary delivery or the result of malnutrition. How about you go live in a third world country for a while (without going to your hotel at night) and then rewrite your essay.
think about the future… it’s like a child who has been abused while growing up. His (or her) chances of becoming an abuser (or entering an abusive relationship) are way higher and more likely than someone who has not been abused. It passes down the line thru the generations. If you stop the abuse (whatever means reasonable) and help, it doesn’t get passed down. So by the same rational… you educate, and the educated will educate thus gradually reducing the number of lost children being tempted into extremist schooling.
How can anybody look at Greg Mortenson with anything less than respect and admiration for what he does. What have YOU done to make the world a better place?
For both our parts, lets strive to make a better world where one doesn’t equate the religious beliefs of others with: abuse, lost children and extremist schooling.