Happy Valentine’s Day

Boy, nothing beats spending Valentine’s Day curled up on the sofa in front of a nice toasty fire, sipping hot coco, reading an infuriating account of failed foreign policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

(I can see some of you warming up your pity machines. Please, cease and desist. I was a Political Science major. I do this sort of thing for fun. And anyway, my sweetheart sent me a lovely care package. Life is good.)

I’m on a mission. That mission is to understand – at least nominally – just what in the dickens is going on with us in the Middle East and South Asia. I’m actually quite ashamed that I haven’t started this learning process before. What excuse do I have for not understanding why our government is killing people in Afghanistan and Iraq? It’s not like I’m too busy working, that’s for sure.

Anyway, today I wrapped up the first part of that mission when I finished Ghost Wars, the Pulitzer Prize winning book by Steve Coll. Ghost Wars is thick, complex, and absolutely mind-blowing. It’s the sort of book that will give you an ice-cream headache if you read it too fast. Or, in a more positive light, it’s the sort of book that, if you actually comprehend even a portion of what you’re reading, will cause you to react much like Neo did in the original Matrix after he received a digital injection of martial arts expertise directly into his cerebral cortex.

You’ll say, “whoa,” and then you’ll want learn more. A lot more.

What did I learn? Without doing any justice to the book or the complexity of the situation, I essentially learned two things. First, during the 1980’s our government played no small part in building the Islamic fundamentalist movement that is now trying to destroy us. Second, after the fundamentalists began to turn against us, we failed to contain the threat because, “...Indifference, lassitude, blindness, paralysis, and commercial greed too often shaped American foreign policy in Afghanistan and South Asia…” (p.577)

Ghost Wars offers 600 pages of fascinating details and crisp storytelling on those two themes. Six hundred forehead-smacking, hair-pulling, garment-rendering pages.

So what am I reading next? I’m on to new books about American foreign policy, especially books that cover the decisions that were made right after 9/11. My uncle, a career Navy man, and other friends have strongly recommended Woodward’s trilogy on this topic, so I’ll probably be picking those up next. Wish me luck.