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Engage other countries constructively. Three Cups of Tea.
Here’s the irony: We came to believe in the concepts of freedom, egalitarianism, justice, tolerance and democracy without being forced to do so, and yet we repeatedly try and force that on others. Our military budget today is larger than that of every other country in the world – combined. Since World War II, we’ve been stuck in a rut that two of our Presidents – Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy – explicitly warned us about, of relying on our military to help make the world safe for its democracies.
The saner and smarter alternative, the higher road we need to be taking, is best demonstrated by the work of a man named Greg Mortenson. After an accident climbing in northern Pakistan, he ended up in a small village, where people took him in and for months – despite a poverty so severe they couldn’t even afford to have a school in their little community – cared for his wounds, fed him, and housed him until he could return to America.
Mortenson set out to repay the debt of hospitality he’d incurred in Pakistan by building the community a school. It took some time and rather herculean efforts, but he did it, and has now raised enough money to build over 130 such small schools in remote areas of northwestern Pakistan and, most recently, Afghanistan.
These areas, with their hospitality- and obligation-based cultures, are the epicenter of the Taliban. Yet in the places where Mortenson has built schools, people are friendly to Americans and reject the virulent anti-Americanism the Taliban is promoting; five of his teachers are former Taliban members. By helping provide education, especially to girls who previously were not allowed to study, Mortenson has both elevated the quality of life (along with the status of women) and created a debt of obligation from them to us.
Mortenson wrote two bestselling books about his experiences, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace One School At A Time (2007) and a sequel, Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan (2009). In both, with vivid prose and a compelling story, he illustrates the wisdom of what can be achieved through civic, not military, engagement. Mortenson’s schools are, in fact, “promoting peace with books, not bombs.”
That is the face of America we want the world to see, the face of enlightened change for the better.
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