Masopher's Mind

I found this blog and it was funny and intelligent (and therefore effective).

Blogger is: Christian his blog is Ghosts of Alexander

http://easterncampaign.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/29-tips-for-bad-writing-on-afghanistan/

and in-case it ever goes missing:

When writing about Afghanistan – whether an op-ed, a simple newspaper article, a long form magazine article or an analytical report- there are some simple things to keep in mind in order to keep standards as low as they currently are. The same applies for lectures, presentations, seminars and radio or TV reporting. Here goes:

1. Offer simple explanations for everything, no matter how complex. Nobody wants to hear that there is no sound answer or that “it’s extremely complicated.”
2. Make a gross generalizations about Afghans based on a single Afghan you met (a far too small sample size will also suffice).
3. Ignore dissenting opinion on the ground if it contradicts your set of biases.
4. Mistake your English-speaking Kabuli contacts as representative of all Afghans.
5. Mistake the Kandahari guys you speak to through an interpreter as representative of all Afghans.
6. Repeat some false historical cliché about Afghanistan. Only the historians will be able to call your BS in a convincing manner.
7. Hold out the offer of a solution to all the problems with yourself and your ideas at the center (i.e., the Snake Oil approach).
8. Use exoticisms that make you sound really informed. Something like “Pashtunwali,” “Deobandi,” “badal,” “arbakai,” “jirga,” “shura,” etc… You don’t understand these terms in their social context. But no worries, neither does your reader.
9. Place yourself as a central character in your article. You are Lawrence of Arabia, or perhaps Tintin. You are the intrepid hero of your hopefully non-fictional adventure. Just go with it. People love a good story.
10. Create a “Pet Afghan.” Basically you need to cheer for some Afghan power figure like he’s your favorite sports team.
11. Power Point is a great way to cover up for your inability to communicate effectively. Use it.
12. Plagiarise a blogger. Or at least just don’t cite them, backlink or offer a hat tip. They occasionally have original ideas or analysis worth passing off as your own.
13. Use moral outrage or righteous indignation. It shows you to be an empathetic person. If someone disagrees with what you write then you can call them insensitive and callous.
14. Name drop. When I was having tea with General McChrystal and Minister Atmar they told me to name drop early and often.
15. Mention a name from Afghan history (i.e., Dost Muhammad, Abdul Rahman or Amanullah). You saw their name in a bad book that was copy & pasted in an unskilled manner from Dupree or Gregorian and you really have incredibly little knowledge about their system of rule. But the chance that Noelle-Karimi, Kakar or Poullada will be nearby to laugh at you is low, low and nil.
16. Claim to care deeply about the suffering of Afghans. You didn’t care before 9-11, you probably didn’t care until about one or two years ago and you won’t care after the US and foreign forces are gone. But nobody can prove that. You need that moral high ground to support your weak writing.
17. Selectively quote an expert. You could (and this is totally, totally fictional) interview a professor who specializes in some aspect of Afghanistan for 45 minutes and then use a sub-10 second clip that confirms your pre-set agenda even though they said about a dozen other things in the same interview that contradict your agenda. Don’t worry, professors are not media- or internet-savvy enough to find a way to publicly shame you in justified retaliation.
18. Use an amputee or severely injured person (Afghan civilian or coalition forces member) as a prop in your argument.
19. Insert a photo of yourself into your article/presentation, or better yet make yourself a major part of the video reportage. John D McHugh doesn’t insert himself, but he will never become the next Anderson Cooper with an old-school pro attitude like that, will he?
20. Take intellectual credit after the fact for something: i.e., “I accurately predicted blah blah blah” (even if the correct prediction was in the broadest 50/50 generalization of “it will get better/worse”). Even better, take intellectual credit for the reduction of violence in Iraq. Or at the very least don’t refute people who say so. This should help when passing yourself off as an expert on Afghanistan.
21. Use charm, wit, humor, counter-accusation, whataboutism and deflection or provide a question as a reply to a question in order to avoid answering hard questions that will harm your argument.
22. Report from a one week embed that consists of a trip by Blackhawk helicopter to a secure FOB and then talk about what it’s “really like” in a combat zone.
23. Coin a neologism using “-stan.” Sorry, “Vietraqistan” and “Jihadistan” are taken.
24. Say something about tribes that would cause even a 3rd year anthro undergrad to burst out laughing.
25. Say “Why does nobody ask/mention/do…[whatever] in/about Afghanistan?” when even just a google search will tell you that someone has.
26. And finally, use bullet points. But not too many bullet points. Switch to numbered points.
27. Totally ignore all of the literature on Afghanistan and then complain that nobody knows anything about something that is actually somewhat well researched. This allows you to fill an imaginary void with your bad analysis and then claim that it’s original and important.
28. Aim for an unorthodox number so that people may remember your advice better (i.e., “the 17 points for totally winning this war in 3 easy steps over 11 years. AKA the 17-3-11 plan by Douche B. McInstantexpert.”)
29. Don’t go back and retroactively scold yourself for violating your own advice. Only bloggers will report the fact that your advice contradicts your past actions.

I’ll be totally honest with you. (For once!)<No Im kidding I’m almost always honest>{but then again…} I am feeling quite demotivated at work and I don’t know enough about webpages or SEO to make this site cool or attractive enough to get lots of viewers which might encourage me to write more.

I have a few stalkers and a few family members saying “hrmm good writing” but aside from the web statistics I dont get any feedback. So with afore mentioned negative feedback and work and no feedback here, I dont have the “umph!” to do that which I love, which is to do some real research and write poetic opinions on the world as it develops.

But I got sick of not writing or half writing something and decided to say something, which is better than nothing.

20 years ago, the Berlin wall came down. Socialism/communism failed mightily. And yet I encounter some very intelligent people blowing the trumpet of socialism, communism or both. Idealism aside, the proof of history surely can show that centralized control cannot work?

Its a great idea, a system that redistributes wealth to where it is needed most, a system where great masses of people are not locked into generations of poverty and ignorance for the sake of the enlightenment and enjoyment of the few.  An egalitarian system where each to his own according to his desires and talents and mankind goes forth with only progress competition and exploration as drivers…

But even that is idealistic. People will always take competition too far and it will result in conflict. and then again, the victor of conflict is in the long-run the one that can survive future conflicts and is that not progress and self exploration of dynamic systems. Nature is run by the survival of the fittest. Bodies with large mass pull bodies with small  mass harder that the other way around, the faster, smarter, fitter, more attractive animals survive and mate while the slower, dumber, unfit, less attractive ones die off.

The entire expanse of Russia, China, South Asia along with socialism minded sundry of the earth went up against the hardened capitalists of Western Europe and America and ultimately failed. The system that expanded over the world, fought fascism, monarchies kinships and dictatorships faced off against communism and won. It is not perfect, it is not fair, it is not gentle but because of it, 7 billion people now live to perhaps invent its worthy successor.

Capitalism is king of the hill, for now, and I will not mourn it when it is usurped. But props where props is due. It does well and it did a lot better for the people living under it than the alternatives we have seen through history. And when capitalism fails to the bright new challenger there will be some that will still study it and say how great it was and how with the right conditions it would have worked perfectly but that will just be history repeating itself.

Beauty and tragedy are never more intimately combined when surveying the Afghan landscape.

Afghanistan is like a ghetto trapped between two suburbs. Geographically stuck between the arrogant former empire of the Persians and the no less arrogant Pakistanis, inheritors of the Muslim section of the British Empire in the subcontinent. The poverty is blinding, even for one who knows third world conditions. These people live a small step away from hovels. Their “cities” are very large sprawls of mud houses that start next to a craggy mountain and stretch into the horizon.

There are no Taliban here. Those men are in the hills laying traps and for Americans. These here are people. Some are angry, some are militant, some are power hungry, some are involved in war, many are uneducated, but most are just people. These people long for a normal life, they hope for better for themselves.

But do not get it wrong. In the blink of an eye these people can act in the most irrational way. Steeped in the fear which both drives and feeds superstition, poverty and violence the psyche of the people can move from man to beast with alarming speed.  And like beasts they are easily driven by the ones that prey upon them.

These people are flawed and undeveloped, but one does not beat a child to make him grow.  War only creates warriors and for long have the women of Afghanistan given birth to children of strife. Too long? The human condition defies those words. There is no umbrage that is too long, no pain that the human spirit cannot learn to endure. Afghan will lurch on into an uncertain future. The empires of past and present swirl around it, like vultures, flies even, caught in the irresistible twin gravities that are torment and opportunity.

The air is chilly, and the sun is setting, faint laughter is heard as a family gathers.