"He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool, shun him; He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a child, teach him. He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep, wake him. He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise, follow him." -- Persian Proverb
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One of the more consequential moments in John F. Kennedy's life was an impromptu event in the early morning hours of October 14, 1960. The Democratic candidate for President was exhausted at the end of a long day of campaigning when he gave an unscripted speech.
He had intended to go to bed upon arriving in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but when he found out that 10,000 students had been waiting patiently for hours to hear him, he decided instead to go to the campus of the University of Michigan and deliver what became one of the most effective speeches of his campaign.
In it he proposed creating a new national service option for students, and the young crowd roared its approval. After he was elected, he made good on that proposal and formed the U.S. Peace Corps.
***
I was such a naive young man when I went to Afghanistan as a Peace Corps Volunteer in 1969, having never been out of the country before, let alone fly halfway around the world.
But by then, thousands of young people just like me were answering Kennedy's call to serve our country not by going to war but by spreading messages of peace.
We were idealistic and naive, yes, but we also were trying to avoid the draft, which would have sent us to Vietnam to fight a war we vehemently disagreed with.
So we were hardly heroes -- we were draft dodgers, and in many Americans' eyes, that made us traitors well.
But like millions of others in my generation, I was radicalized in college to the point I considered U.S. foreign policy the imperial arm of an evil empire bent on oppressing the hapless people of the Third World.
Living in Afghanistan proved to be a rude awakening about some of those assumptions. I saw up close how mean and brutal people could be to each other in a poor society, including tribal wars, murders, bribery and cruelty as in the "Lord of the Flies."
I also saw beauty, generosity and tenderness -- the whole range of human behavior was on display every day -- men squatting to excrete their wastes into the town's river, children carrying sick babies with flies crawling all over their faces, students whose faces were deformed by smallpox, and widespread illiteracy and ignorance.
But also the poorest people on the planet were welcoming me into their homes and sharing the one good meal their extended family would have that entire week. Strangers went out of their way to help me when I got lost. And countless other acts of generosity and kindness.
When I taught high school in Taloqan, many of my students spouted political beliefs shaped by the five booming radio signals that reached our remote town -- Radio Moscow, Radio Peking, and to a much lesser degree, Radio Kabul, the BBC and the Voice of America.
The brightest kids seemed attracted by socialist and communist ideas similar to the Marxist-Leninist thinking I was familiar with on campuses back home. At first I agreed with their ideas about how U.S. imperialism was oppressing people in poor countries, but eventually, like any committed teacher, I began to challenge their assumptions, if only for the sake of argument.
It was easy to see how Soviet and Chinese propaganda was distorting these young minds, whereas their view of America seemed shaped by the worst of Hollywood. The stories they believed about U.S. barbarism were overblown and simplistic.
Yes, U.S. troops had slaughtered innocents at My Lai but so did other armies. Meanwhile, there were many Americans opposed to the military who were dispensing aid, food, clothes, medicine and education.
Some were people like me, who more or less agreed with their political analysis and wanted no part of the dark sides of U.S. policy, but wanted to share the better parts of our culture -- freedom, equality, and universal literacy.
Fewer than ten percent of the local population could read or write.
I thought these youths needed a counterweight to balance what they were hearing over the airwaves, but the irony was not lost on me that here I was, an anti-war American rebel, defending my country against propagandists from other imperialistic empires.
Ultimately those years in Taloqan changed me profoundly, most notably, by essentially converting me into a sort of lifelong ex-pat, a stranger in my own land.
In the end I knew I didn't agree with *any* expansionist power (including the U.S.) imposing its will on the Afghan people. They needed and deserved to make their own decisions, even if some of them seemed awful to us.
I also against war of any kind. Within a few years of my leaving Afghanistan, the Russians invaded, bombing and strafing the country into submission, or so they thought, but that ended badly for the Soviets.
Once they lost the Afghan war their entire empire crumbled.
This week the Americans learned the same bitter lesson the Russians learned: Afghans will never accept foreign domination and that is what our presence amounted to in many people's eyes.
In retrospect our efforts as young Peace Corps workers were indeed naive. We tried our best to spread peace but ultimately our effort was overwhelmed on all sides by the masters of war.
***
THE HEADLINES:
* Roblox, Facebook See the ‘Metaverse’ as Key to the Internet’s Next Phase --The battle over the “metaverse”—a nascent online world where people exist in shared virtual spaces through avatars—is heating up. (WSJ)
* For Afghan Women, Taliban Stir Fears of Return to a Repressive Past (NYT)
* Three killed as Afghan protests test Taliban's promise of peaceful rule (Reuters)
* Taliban Promise Peace, but Doubt and Fear Persist (NYT)
* Female Newscaster Interviews Taliban Spokesman -- A female news anchor interviewed a Taliban official on an Afghan television station. The group’s takeover has raised fears of a return to repressive policies and human rights violations for women and girls. (Storyful)
* Allies, rivals reconsider America’s global role in wake of Afghanistan exit (WP)
* For America, and Afghanistan, the Post-9/11 Era Ends Painfully (NYT)
* A once-defeated insurgent returns to Afghanistan as its likely next leader (WP)
* Malala: I Fear for My Afghan Sisters -- In the last two decades, millions of Afghan women and girls received an education. Now the future they were promised is in imminent danger. (Guest Essay/NYT)
* The Taliban insists it has changed. Afghanistan’s future hinges on whether that’s true. (WP)
* Watch Afghan Women Hold Momentous Protest Under Taliban Rule (Vice News Video)
* Covid-19 Boosters to Be Offered to Pfizer, Moderna Recipients --The Biden administration called for a third shot for Americans who were fully vaccinated with the two-shot regimen, citing the threat from the Delta variant. (WSJ)
* American Hospitals Buckle Under Delta, With I.C.U.s Filling Up (NYT)
* Delta surging in areas of low COVID-19 vaccine coverage - WHO (Reuters)
* If GOP governors want schools open, they'ill walk back reckless anti-mask mandates (Editorial Board/WP)
* Overwhelmed by Coronavirus, Cuba’s Vaunted Health System Is Reeling (NYT)
* College Move-In Was Supposed To Mark A Return To Normal. Then Came The Delta Variant (NPR)
* Australia Vaccinates Thousands of High-School Students to Stop Delta (WSJ)
* In a Handful of States, Early Data Hint at a Rise in Breakthrough Infections (NYT)
* Power in seeds: Urban gardening gains momentum in pandemic (AP)
* Texas Gov. Abbott, who has sought to ban mask mandates in schools, tests positive for coronavirus (WP)
* A Texas School Made Masks Part Of Its Dress Code To Get Around Gov. Abbott's Ban (NPR)
* Dixie Fire Threatens More Settlements in California (AP)
* Wildfires explode again in the West, fanned by turbulent winds (WP)
* Lots of prayers’ in Susanville, the largest town to be threatened by the Dixie fire. (NYT)
* Red flag warning includes parts of Bay Area as fire danger escalates in Northern California. (SF Chronicle)
* Wildfire near French resort of Saint-Tropez kills two people (Reuters)
* Carbon Offset Deal Helps Michigan Cash In on Its Trees (WSJ)
* Can Gov. Newsom Keep His Job? A Recall Effort in California Shows a Dead Heat. (NYT)
* Abortion-rights advocates filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn a new Arizona law that would ban abortions because of Down syndrome or other genetic abnormalities. The lawsuit also challenges a “personhood” provision that confers all the rights of people on fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses. The law is set to take effect Sept. 29 if it’s not blocked by a judge. [AP]
* The rightwing U.S. textbooks that teach slavery as ‘black immigration’ (The Guardian)
* U.S. Officials in Germany Hit by Havana Syndrome (WSJ)
* The U.S. could be on the verge of a productivity boom, a game-changer for the economy (WP)
* EPA bans ALL food uses of chlorpyrifos (Pesticide Action Network)
* Teachers nationwide will once again be asking themselves why they chose this line of work... (The Onion)
***
No music or lyrics today but a link to JFK's speech that was the founding moment of the Peace Corps.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydTaoZ9JSGk>
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