Another tribute to P.J. O'Rourke

The Great P.J. ‘Rourke”. It’s a nice memoriam to one of our best humorist/essayist/reporters, dead of cancer last week at 74, but I’m particularly grateful to its author Matthew Continetti for linking to this article O’Rourke wrote in 2010 after a brief visit to Afghanistan. Written in 2010, it captures what I imagine Afghanistan still looked and felt like when we bugged out last August: The 72-hour Expert

You’d be cheating yourself if you didn’t read the whole thing, but here are two excerpts:

Both the Pashtun tribal leader and the Turkmen tribal leader were unenthusiastic about the word “tribal” and felt that “ethnic groups” is a better way to describe the differences among Afghans.

I held forth on American patriotism, how it had to do with our own ethnic groups and the attempt to give American immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries a sense of nationhood. The tribal leaders understood exactly what I meant, which is more than I can say for our NATO allies on the subject of American patriotism.

“Fifty years ago,” the Turkmen said, “things in Afghanistan were going in the same direction as the U.S. growth of patriotism. These systems were disturbed by the events of the last 30 years. Also, the geographical location of Afghanistan is not helpful to building national ideals. The focal points of the tribes are outside the country.”

But not far enough outside. The Turkmen have their heartland in Turkmenistan, the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan, the Tajiks in Tajikistan and Iran. Even the Pashtuns, who are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, comprising about 40 percent of the population, count Peshawar in the Northwest Territories of Pakistan as their cultural capital. And the language spoken by most educated Afghans, Dari, is a dialect of Persian.

It is as if, around the time Emma Lazarus was penning “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” Dublin and Naples and Warsaw and Minsk had been moved—complete with every palace, slum, monument, gutter, priest, princeling, bum, thug, and man-at-arms—to Ellis Island, and all of America’s schools had started teaching their lessons in French.

Nonetheless Afghan patriotism obtains. Maybe because, as the Turkmen tribal leader pointed out, every “old country” to which an Afghan ethnic might turn manages—somewhat extraordinarily—to be a worse place than Afghanistan.

And:

Afghans think Americans have sided with the wrong people. It’s not that Afghans think Americans have sided with the wrong people in a systematic, strategic, or calculated way. It’s just that we came to a place that we didn’t know much about, where there are a lot of sides to be on, and we started siding with this side and that side and the other side. We were bound to wind up on the wrong side sometimes.

We’re outsiders in Afghanistan, and this is Occam’s razor for explaining the Taliban. Imagine if America were a country beset with all sorts of intractable difficulties. Or don’t imagine it—America is a country beset with all sorts of intractable difficulties. Our government is out of control, wantonly interfering in every aspect of our private lives and heedlessly squandering our national treasure at a time when Americans are suffering grave economic woes. Meanwhile vicious tribal conflicts are being fought for control of America’s culture and way of life. (I’ve been watching Fox News.)

What if some friendly, well-meaning, but very foreign power, with incomprehensible lingo and outrageous clothes, were to arrive on our shores to set things right? What if it were Highland Scots? There they go marching around wearing skirts and purses and ugly plaids, playing their hideous bagpipe music, handing out haggis to our kiddies and offending our sensibilities with a lack of BVDs under their kilts. Maybe they do cut taxes, lower the federal deficit, eliminate the Department of Health and Human Services, and the EPA, give people jobs at their tartan factories and launch a manhunt for Harry Reid and the UC Berkeley faculty. We still wouldn’t like them.

The Pashtun tribal leader said, “I tell my own tribesmen to not support the Taliban, but they don’t listen. They see the Taliban as fighting invaders.”

The Radio Azadi journalist said, “When people felt they were dishonored, they needed revenge. The Taliban gave them revenge.”

To fully sympathize with the dishonor an Afghan might feel, foreign government, U.N. and NGO aid agencies must be considered. Myriad of them operate in Afghanistan, staffed by people from around the globe. So it’s not just that you’ve got Highland Scots marching in hairy-kneed formations up and down your cul-de-sac. Many of the most ordinary functions of your society have been taken over by weird strangers. When you need a flu shot or a dog license or a permit to burn leaves, you have to go see Bulgarians and Bolivians and Nigerians and Fiji Islanders.

Afghanistan’s minister of education, Farooq Wardak, is no friend of the Taliban, but he did sound like he might be a recruit for the Tea Party. “I am absolutely unhappy with the U.S. role in Afghan education,” he said. “Zero percent of U.S. aid to Afghan education is spent through the Afghan government.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because the Ministry of Education is not certified by USAID because no one from USAID has evaluated me or my ministry in the two years that I’ve held the job.” Without the evaluation he can’t get the certification.

He said that the U.S. government wanted to spend money on a program called “Community-Based Education.” But that was a program the ministry had developed when the Taliban was attacking girls’ schools across Afghanistan. It was a way to provide, he said, “covert education for girls. Now we need overt schools.”

The U.S. government also wants to spend money, he complained, on “accelerated teacher training” when what Afghanistan needs is just plain teacher training. “This accelerated training leaves no bricks and mortar behind. You are spending U.S. tax dollars building something taxpayers can’t see.” His pocket critique of U.S. aid: “Everything is air, nothing is on the ground.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him about No Child Left Behind.

 Bonus Read: Car & Driver, 1980. P.J. O’Rourke on Driving Cross-Country in a Ferrari 308GTS