Imperial Grunts by Robert Kaplan
NOTE: I try not to swear on this blog, but in order to quote someone else accurately, I had to because he did. Hey, it happens.We know about our soldiers battling Islamic terror groups in Afghanistan and Iraq, but Robert Kaplan travels around the globe to interview members of the American Military in other trouble spots. He profiles the guys on the ground, grunts mostly, but some higher ranking officers too. After reading the book I'm thankful we have the military that we do, and I'm even more thankful for the men we have fighting on our side.
The soldiers and marines Kaplan describes and travels with are truly the best and the brightest that the Unites States has to offer. We can sit at our computers and complain about everything that we think is wrong. We can debate endlessly on how to make the world a better place, and get into pissing contests with the lefty bloggers. Big deal. These guys are out there, living in really nasty, dangerous places, actually working with muscle and brains to make the world a better place, battling terrorists and drug dealers, and offering hope to the regular folk who were unfortunate enough to be born and live in poverty-stricken villages in Columbia, Mongolia, or Yemen. Most of the time they have to figure out what works and what doesn't on the job. They're regularly placing themselves in situations that most of us will never have to deal with and where some of us would soil our pants if we did have to.
These are the guys who are going to win the wars if our spinal-challenged Congress and bureaucrats at the Pentagon let them. (Not all generals are bureaucrats, Kaplan profiles some great American generals, but these guys are in the field, not in an office in Washington D. C.)
What kind of guys are fighting for us, so we can sit at our computers and pound out commentary like this, safely go to our jobs in the morning, safely come home at night to be with our families; a right most of us haven't earned, but were given because we were born in the right country? Guys like this in Iraq:
While I was lying in my sleeping bag, one of the Renegades, Cpl. Michael Pinckney of South Kingstown, Rhode Island, came up to me and began to talk: "I'm twenty-three. My generation sucks. They're all soft. They don't care about their identity as Americans. We live in some bad-ass country, and they're not even proud of it. My family flies the flag, but other families don't. Nobody knows what it means to be American anymore, to be tough. I like being home and yet I don't. People at home are not proud of us being in Iraq, because they've lost the meaning of sacrifice. They expect things to be perfect and easy. They don't know that when things go wrong you persevere; you don't second-guess. During OIF-I (Operation Iraqi Freedom), we all slept in the rain and got dysentery in Ad-Diwaniyah. But back home, everyone is going to shrinks and suing each other. That's why I like the Marine Corps. If you fuck up, your sergeant makes you suck it up. I don't want to be anywhere else but Iraq. OIF-i and OIF-II, this is what manhood is all about. And I dont mean macho shit either I mean moral character."
Despite news reports of low morale in the armed services because of overdeployment, with Army Special Forces and the Marines I had met only two kinds of troops: those who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those who were jealous of those who were.
There are a lot of other soldiers like that in this book. Obviously this is not a book for the America-as-evil-imperialist-power crowd. And some reviewers were unhappy with some of Kaplan's beliefs and conclusions. This book did give me an appreciation for the good that the U. S. armed forces are doing as they fight on our behalf. It also made me think about the shallow way I was living back in my late teens and twenties. But that's the subject of another post.
Labels: Afghanistan, books, Imperial Grunts, Iraq, Robert Kaplan
For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!
Please read this entire
interview with Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati from DER SPIEGEL. My first impulse was to copy the entire interview.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...
Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.
SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.
Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.
SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?
Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.
SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them.
Shikwati: But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program -- which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated. It's only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help. And it's not uncommon that they demand a little more money than the respective African government originally requested. They then forward that request to their headquarters, and before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa ...
He makes excellent points about the African AIDS crisis too. Rather than copy the whole thing though, I will be emailing the link to family and friends.
I'm sure that even if they read it, none of this would make an impression on the misguided folk demanding MORE aid for Africa. Their heads are messed up.
Part of the problem, of course, is that most of us have no understanding of basic Economics. I've been trying to catch up by reading Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman. I almost bought Adam Smith's WEALTH OF NATIONS, but I'm not quite ready for that monster.
You should also read
Surrender or Starve, Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea by Robert Kaplan. It was originally published in 1988. I have the updated, reprinted 2003 edition. The same problems with corrupt governments causing famines and unneeded aid increasing the disasters are detailed in this book.
According to the Jewish sage Moses Maimonides there are eight degrees of charity, the highest being one which enables the recipient to gain self-sufficiency. In the case of Africa, this means, according to the interview, "just leave them alone". They can solve their problems if we stop treating Africa as a continent of invalids, and start treating them like fellow human beings.
Labels: Africa, Der Spiegel. charity, James Shikwati, Kenya, Robert Kaplan
Robert D. Kaplan
Robert Kaplan, writer for Atlantic Monthly, and one of my favorite non-fiction authors was on BookTV today. The did an in-depth interview with him. I turned it on in the middle and watched about an hour of it. It made me want to reread all of his books along with Herodotus, Tacitus, Gibbon, and Runciman. If you are interested in the current political situation, read WARRIOR POLITICS and THE COMING ANARCHY. THE COMING ANARCHY was the first of his that I read, and I've picked up all of his books since then. Many of them are travel books, but they delve into the politics and history of the area he's visiting. He's a fascinating writer, and shrewd in his analysis. Stop staring at the screen, go to your local independent book store and buy some Robert D. Kaplan.
Labels: books, Robert Kaplan
War's legitimate object is more perfect peace. Flavius Vegitius Renatus
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