—2— President’s Message LARRY SAWYER Thanks to all of you who responded to my informal question on a lunch or dinner for the December holiday party. Although there were several different reasons given for your preference, the major ones for the lunch centered around driving at night and the lateness of the event. The RAPS Board considered these comments and moved the starting time up by one hour. We are also asking anyone who would like a ride to the party to contact MiMi Bernal-Graves in the RAPS office at 503-725-3447, and she will try to find a ride for you. She is a grad student and works mostly on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but you can leave a voice mail. The phone message states her current office hours. Anyone willing to give a colleague a ride may also let MiMi know. This is typically the only evening event of the year. At the last report, the RAPS scholarship fund was at $200. I urge you to consider a contribution. As soon as there are sufficient funds, scholarship(s) will be offered. Presently, the fund is money-in and money-out, not an endowment fund. We will need to ask you again next year. Make your check payable to the PSU Foundation and send it to the RAPS Office, Portland State University, PO Box 751, Portland, OR 97207. To be sure it is credited to the correct account, write the account number and name, 3511302—Retirement Association of Portland State Scholarship, on your check. Thank you! Afghanistan’s president. “They’re organized into very bellicose tribes—warlike tribal confederacies,” Farr said, explaining the Pashtuns’ knack for taking charge. “The other people, Uzbeks and Tajiks, are farmers and much more peaceful people.” Such tribal tradition—coupled with poverty, illiteracy, and dismal health care—makes building a constitutional democracy very tough sledding. “Our constitution is based on the idea that each person independently has a vote or say in an issue,” Farr said. “Afghans never work that way. Your family, your tribe, is a group, and your tribe makes a decision as a tribe. This notion of individual voting has never worked. We found that out in the last election (Karzai’s re-election)—it was corrupt, but what did we expect?” And corruption doesn’t stop with the election process. “In Afghanistan, your family will take care of you,” Farr said. “The other side of that is that you are obligated to take care of your brothers and cousins. So if you’re made a minister of an important ministry, who are you going to hire? Your brothers and cousins, and they bring in their brothers and cousins.” Which results in the ministry grinding to a halt under the weight of bureaucrats who often don’t bother to show up for work, let alone are competent at their jobs. That’s why, in Kabul, electricity cuts out, garbage isn’t picked up, sewers overflow, and roads aren’t built. Adding more troops—President Obama announced on Dec. 1 that he ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan—is not an answer, said Farr. “I don’t see it,” he said. “I think we learned a couple of things with Vietnam, with Iraq, and one of the things we learned is that there is no military solution.” In Afghanistan, that’s the lesson the Russians learned 20 years ago and the British learned 100 years ago. Farr respects the U.S. military. “It’s not that I think they’re duplicitous or dummies and don’t get it,” he said. “They get it. They’re really smart. But they’re military people, and if you ask military people what they need to solve a problem, (they’ll respond that) they need more military.” So what’s the solution? Farr recently attended a meeting on Afghanistan that included military experts, intelligence experts, academics, and the Afghan emissary to the United States. “We were universally gloomy,” he said. If the U.S. leaves, Afghanistan will likely tumble into civil war. “What do we do? People really didn’t know.” One thing is certain: the issue is more than just Afghanistan; it’s a regional issue that involves both Pakistan and Iran. “I hope (Obama) is smart enough to know that there has to be a larger issue, a larger strategy, a way to think about this in a different way than just more troops.” No nice, neat solution in Afghanistan . . . continued from page 1
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