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Life Arts    H2'ed 1/10/10

Part Two: Veteran Journalists Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould Give OpEdNews the Lowdown on Afghanistan

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As summarized by Gerald J. Schmitz, Principal Analyst, International Affairs, at the Parliamentary Information and Research Service in Ottawa, Canada in 2009:



"The historical record plainly shows that Afghan efforts to build a modern liberal democracy were resisted and later fatally undermined by great power and then Cold War political 'games', not that these efforts never took place or only did so in a intrinsically inhospitable societal environment. Of course they were championed by urban elites . But the key point is that for decades the principle external actors did more to hurt than to help secular democratic aspirations in Afghanistan. No wonder they never lasted. They were never given much of a chance."


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Without a more complete and honest set of assumptions about the secular democratic aspirations of Afghanistan's people, there is little chance that any policy acceptable to the Afghan people can ever be achieved. If the American leadership cannot transform its approach to meet the genuine needs of the Afghan people, America's self-proclaimed exceptionalism from the rule of law will bury it in the graveyard of empires.


Well,
I'd feel a lot better if I knew that our leadership had read or were planning to read your book. In the meantime, I highly recommend it to our readers. I've expanded my understanding of Afghanistan one hundred-fold. Thank you very much for talking with me, Paul and Liz.

Part One of my interview with Paul and Liz

Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story

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Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of (more...)
 

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