Schools and Snitches

Oh what am I going to do when Bill Moyers goes off the air? I cannot think of another journalist who has such a variety of guests and such creativity in topic choices. Hopefully, PBS has started to groom a replacement for him, or at least start to produce an analagous program that can capture the attention and imagination the way Moyers does. There isn't a better journalist to watch on Sunday morning with a cup of coffee than him.

Moyers' guest two Friday's ago was a man named George Mortenson, a humanitarian who, for the past 20 years, has worked to build schools in rural Afghanistan and Pakistan, primarily for the education of women. It was pretty fascinating learning about the success he's had in his endeavors, even with all of the setbacks, even with (or perhaps because of) the attention deficit disorder our country has when it comes to that region of the world. My roommate and I were up late last night talking about the merits of optimism when it comes to large scale, decades long projects and about having a collective sense of what is possible given the constraints people we describe as humanitarians operate under. Watching people like George Mortenson makes that sense of optimism I'm always trying to harbor a worthwhile endeavor.

I've been thinking alot lately about Afghanistan, because I was anxious to see what kind of strategy President Obama would persue in the country, to see whether or not he'd deploy troops in great numbers and whether he'd fear being painted as soft on national security, something Democrats are always scared of (Moyers piece on the deliberation of President Lyndon Johnson as being analagous to President Obama's is a must see by the way). Initially, I was very much against an increase in troop deployment, which is why President Obama's ultimate decision was very disappointing. However, after listening to Mortenson and thinking about the various alternatives, deployment of troops, if, and only if they understand that they are there for protection, and not for a true military victory, which isn't really possible anyway. Instead, our primary mechanisms for combating terrorism and making sure the country is not a safe harbor should be a two-pronged strategy I'd like to title "Operation SNS," or Operation Schools and Snitches.

John Kerry was blasted during the 2004 election because he said that the "War on Terrorism" should be fought primarily through police action rather than military action, but I think he was on to something. The Taliban should be treated primarily like organized crime rather than a true military. The best way to combat organized crime then, is to get in good with the populace, train police officers who are part of the population. People know a lot more than they let on and citizens on some level must be willing to talk to the people who are charged with their protection. We tend to make fun of people who talk to the police, what with "Stop Snitchin," and depictions of police as pigs, and we certainly have problems with the police today (that's for another discussion though) but a functioning civil society needs a relatively trustworthy force capable of both respecting rights and imposing some knid of order. Of course, because of the weaponry that the Taliban possesses, there will always have to be a military component to our efforts in Afghanistan, but it's just so much easier for a police officer to blend in than a vested up, semi-automatic rifle touting soldier and it's easier to talk to them also.
As for the second prong, it's a bit more self-explanatory. Education is the cornerstone of a vibrant civic life and although it takes a lot of time in order for it to bear fruit, it tends to build a foundation that lasts. The closer Afghanistan can get to universal education, the better that foundation will be and less tolerance people will have for a group that cannot deliver on anything real.
One final point. Mortenson said that although he would have preferred no new troop deployments over anything else, he was glad that the ultimate decision was not pulling out troops with more targeted bombings, which would only exacerbate the problem. With heightened casualties though, there's a lot of political pressure to garrison our troops instead of having them out in the populace. That may also make things worse, just some food for thought.