Education and the War on Terror
I thought Kristof's recent article about Greg Mortenson, a man who has been building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan whose primary aim is to educate women, was particularly insightful and revealing. The United States has basically stopped investing in education. Yes, we continue to spend a lot of money on it each year. But those dollar amounts pale in comparison with the amount of our military spending. As I lamented earlier today, even the tiniest fraction of the amount we've spent in Iraq--or even more insulting: if we spent only the amount of money the United States provided to Iraq that is currently unaccounted for, think of how much better off we'd be.
And before you start down the slope of, "Well how can you build schools in Iraq if it isn't safe?" The point is not Iraq. The point is that we shouldn't have gone into Iraq. We could have poured all of those resources into Afghanistan and into actually pursuing a war on Osama bin Laden and his followers, now safely tucked away in Pakistan (an "ally" who apparently is excluded from the "we'll invade any country that harbors those that would do us harm" Bush dogma).
Sometimes my brain hurts.
And before you start down the slope of, "Well how can you build schools in Iraq if it isn't safe?" The point is not Iraq. The point is that we shouldn't have gone into Iraq. We could have poured all of those resources into Afghanistan and into actually pursuing a war on Osama bin Laden and his followers, now safely tucked away in Pakistan (an "ally" who apparently is excluded from the "we'll invade any country that harbors those that would do us harm" Bush dogma).
Sometimes my brain hurts.