Top 5: On poetry
Plus: a couple more Afghanistan perspectives
The Top 5 articles for your week:
“As Told To: The Flight From Kabul”(The New Yorker)
Because this is a short, first-person essay on what it’s been like to leave Afghanistan behind as a woman.
My cousin showed up in a black American pickup to take us to the airport. Twelve people, eight suitcases: two colleagues, my brother’s family. Five children, all girls—twenty, fourteen, eleven, seven, and two. I told them, “You are going on a very interesting journey. You should be very strong.” I was crying.
“The United States Keeps Doing What It Can’t” (Foreign Policy Magazine)
Because in addition to the most pressing humanitarian needs and policy decisions, we’re also asking big questions about America’s role in the world. James Traub believes Afghanistan should teach us about the limitations of American power:
The lesson of Afghanistan is thus not that the United States is uniquely maladroit, much less malevolent. Rather, it is that the United States keeps insisting that it must do that which it cannot do. Because Americans say that they must do it, they persuade themselves that they can do it, whether it is rolling back communism in Southeast Asia or conquering sectarian hatred in Iraq or installing good government in Afghanistan. Forethought, to use Malkasian’s term, should mean recognizing that the United States does not, in fact, have to do that which cannot be done. It can bend circumstances to its advantage, but it cannot remake the circumstances themselves.
And so, yes, no more forever wars. In its long wars, where the exit strategy requires leaving behind a legitimate and self-sustaining government, the United States only protracts its own suffering and, far more, that of the host people. But what else? Will American policymakers draw from Afghanistan the lesson that they should stick to great-power competition, a game they have been playing for much of the last century, and stop meddling in weak, troublesome countries, a preoccupation of the post-Cold War era?
“‘When My Satire Becomes Popular, I Must Ask, What Is the Problem?’” (The Atlantic)
Because this is a great interview with novelist Elnathan John on how “U.S. hegemony” influences culture, activism and politics around the world, and the way social media enables this influence further.
So many more people, especially young people, exercise power in controlling these public conversations. With their savvy and their numbers, they can demand consequences for certain kinds of speech. But their code is always changing, often very quickly and unpredictably, so many people feel that until they understand the new equilibrium, they must be circumspect observers and cannot talk freely.
“The School Kids Are Not Alright” (New York Times)
Because the Editorial Board of the NYT is concerned about the other negative externalities (besides illness, long illness, and death) of the COVID pandemic in light of virtual schooling over the last year: learning setbacks, mental health, social development, and more.
“From imagination to incarnation” (Comment Magazine)
Because this interview with Malcolm Guite explores the power of poetry to restore meaning to language that has been lost, and the fact that language will never be able to convey all that we want to communicate.