Offshore Accounts
…slow start to a new chapter.
“Afghanistan’s
Dangerous Bet”
A relatively random travel log of Hitchens’ trip to Afghanistan.
I thought it was going to be about women struggling to come into a position of
political influence on the eve of the first presidential election, but Hitchens
wanders off that topic into war lords, drug crops and random criticisms of the
US. Not his best.
He does try to bring it together at the end, “Afghanistan is
not in our past: Its astonishing inhabitants
are our formerly abandoned and now half-adopted relations. And one can so easily fall for a place where everybody thinks about sex, where bombing has blasted a society out of the Stone Age, and where opium is the religion of the people.”
are our formerly abandoned and now half-adopted relations. And one can so easily fall for a place where everybody thinks about sex, where bombing has blasted a society out of the Stone Age, and where opium is the religion of the people.”
New Learning: “Zahir Shah, the returned king [of Afghanistan]…is
recognized not quite as monarch of the country but as ‘father of his people. ‘”
New Word: en brosse = very short hair that sticks up
Karzai en brosse?
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