This week, I read an article about General Eikenberry’s plans to get Afghanistan on track. He wants money, not men.

Eikenberry is in charge of the occupation of Afghanistan, and he has to figure out a way to do that. His proposal is to build a highway system. As I recal from the WSJ article, he says “where the roads end, the Taliban begin.” He believes that having a roads to the different Afghan cities will make it easier to get to them, and therefore eaiser to rout the Taliban from them.

ALSO: the roads would be built by Afghani people. That means that instead of taking up arms to fight americans troops, the young men could be building a better afghanistan by making roads that will allow communication and commerce. They could have some money in their pocket and the satisfaction of a hard day’s work.

This is GENIUS.

Remember the movie A Bridge on the River Kwai ? I’ll never forget the part where the guy in charge say, “If there wasn’t a bridge we’d have to invent one.” He was saying that the troops needed something to DO, to keep up their morale and stay sharp.

Unemployement for young men…for anybody, really…is a terrible thing. People were meant to have something to do. And we are happiest when we are doing something we are proud of.

The ideological call (in the form of religious extremism) toward war and destruction will be a lot quieter if there is another voice in the room. The voice that says ‘Get up and get to work!’

I don’t know that much about Islam, but I’ve spent a little time thinking about destructive ideological extremism. Do you know that about a hundred years ago, the Western world was terrified about terrorist extremists too? They were suicidal too.

At that time they were known as Anarchists, and eventually Communists. And they were no joke! One of them even assasinated President McKinley.

Think about that. What would be the reaction in America if our President were killed by the current brand of terrorist? In my way of thinking, it is comparable to the 9/11 attack.

so…what was the response to the terrorist threat of the anarchists? Reading Marx and the people who were revolutionized by the message of anarchy, I see that they weren’t kidding about attacking the foundations of power. In fact, they were ruthless in their assesment of who was evil and deserved to die.

They had their eye on King Humbert of Italy.

Humbert was a nice guy. He was a decent king. In them minds of the left-wing Anarchists of the time, he was all the more dangerous for that very reason. They felt that any kind of monarchy was evil, and the fact that he made monarchy look okay made him the more reprehensible.

They assasinated him.

[the reason I learned of Humbert is because he is obliquely referenced in Nabokov’s Lolita. Humbert Humbert is the main character. Nabokov being from Russia and active in leftist circles, he couldn’t resist this jab]

Well, back to the reaction of this extremely dangerous ideological movement. What should be done about them? What did America do in reaction to these murderous extremists?

History tells us. It’s been more than a hundred years. We lived through the Pinkerton oppresion of the unions (a leftist-anarchist movement!).

And then the McCarthyism HUAC: “Are you now and have you ever been a member of the communist party?”

and, most overarching…The cold war

Have we not already been living in an ideological war for decades and decades? Didn’t we use the methods of capitalist colonialism to further our ideology?

My parents tell me of living in Tanzania during the 60s…They saw the battle of american democracy vs. socialism on the ground.

Kingsolver tells the story so well in The Poisonwood Bible.

We did that. America did that, in some kind of tussle with the ideology that began with the anarchists. Ideology is not a light thing. The footprints of the steps taken seem to deepen as the history accumulates.

and there is a tendency towards overweening despair when I look at it.

But let’s not get too excited. We are where we are. We stand on the ground. What does our hand find to do?

Exactly. What can we do? What can everyone do?

get to work. Build a road.

I am quite familiar with the problems of thinking too hard. And the best remedy for that abyss is a project. Hard work.

Gives you something else to think about.

Go Eikenberry Go. That’s a brilliant Idea. I really hope that he gets to do it.