Spinningwheel LLC

Description

President Obama is in Oslo, and I have two distant connections to the evens that I thought I’d share. First, my Norwegian knitting fairy godmother Annemor Sundbø emailed me yesterday - she saw an interview on television with a woman who had met a younger Obama, when she lost her airline ticket. He bought her a replacement. She has knit five pair of Selbu mittens for the entire family, as a belated thank you. She even mentioned my book in the interview. Second, the beautiful Oslo Radhus where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, was designed by the uncle of my other favorite Norwegian knitter, Annichen Sibbern Bohn . Annichen worked as a designer for her uncle’s firm, so her art and aesthetic live on in one of the most celebrated buildings in Europe. And I get to republish her most important book. Like I said, the connections are distant, but they’re real. I feel honored. In the spirit of the day, and in a rare break with the history of this blog, I’m going to take an opportunity to talk a little politics. The state of world peace demands the best ideas of all of the world’s citizens. If I can contribute in any way, even remotely, then it’s worth it. It is unrealistic, always was unrealistic, to think that any modern country could bring troops into Afghanistan and receive anything other than resistance. And fierce resistance. Afghanistan has not been successfully taken over by a foreign power since Alexander the Great. That’s two thousand years these people have protected their land from whom they consider invaders. They don’t want us there, they don’t want anyone there. In modern history, they defeated Great Britain, Russia, and now the U.S. We were naive to think we could walk in and take control. We have set up and maintain a puppet government that is largely ignored outside the capital city. The Taliban have reestablished leadership in much of the country, running shadow governments along side the “official” one. These are not opinions. These are facts. The war in Afghanistan is a nightmare. The United States may have had the best of intentions in invading the country, but it was done poorly, it was then ignored, and the country is in worse condition now than it was before we went there. We promised roads and hospitals and schools and peace, and instead we have given them bombs at midnight. President Obama inherited a mess, and sadly, he’s going to have to clean it up. The questions to answer are: It’s simple yet difficult. We clean up the mess by supporting a stable form of organization, a form of the Afghan people’s choosing, and when we keep the promises we made, we will demonstrate our honor and begin to earn their trust. We cannot impose a twenty-first century western style democracy on Afghanistan. Just like Russia could not impose a twentieth century socialist system, and Great Britain could not impose colonialism. Any peaceful solution has to come from within. I think it’s going to look a lot like feudalism. There are leaders of small communities who command respect, if only through fear, and we have to work with them instead of fighting them, because we will lose.

Products & services

Similar companies nearby