Too Little Kipling? Too Much T.E. Lawrence? 4/23/2010

 I belong to that group seeing our Middle Eastern problems as a laggard from World War I. Post-1945, we gave no attention to local concerns so long as we got our oil, and then by who bought our weapons, and did not support the USSR. Now we reap the seeds sown by our disinterest, our inarticulation.

More reading of Kipling would have given us more insight into the Afghan and Indian cultures. For what are our Pakistanis but Kipling's Muslim Indians? For all of Kipling's imperialistic, racist background, he was too good of an artist to miss the abilities of his Afghans and Indians. I recommend his "Plain Tales from the Hills" as my source for this thought, as well as the poem from came his phrase "East is East and West is West." I do not see any difference between what Kipling wrote and what I read about modern Afghanis.

Have we seen more of "Lawrence of Arabia" than we have read The Seven Pillars of Wisdom? Take yourself to the library and read him. We might have had a better idea of why the Arabs have been as contentious as they have been. It might have saved us some trouble in Lebanon and Syria and Iraq.

Americans are lousy imperialists, because we ignore or maltreat our own history. I heard one of the other detainees saying that civil rights history did not affect him. Other countries, other peoples, keep their history much closer to themselves. Take the Iranians as an example of that.

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