Re: Marshall Plan?

["John S. Quarterman" <jsq@quarterman.org>]

>If Afghanistan is the culprit how does a 'Marshall plan' help these 25
>Million people?  Corn flakes and television. The Shaw fell in Iran with
>westernising reforms. These reforms bred a terror in Iran that has been
>exported.  There was no 'Marshall plan' for Japan.

No, what we did for Japan was (to oversimplify):
 decisively end the war
 provide a constitution
 build up the economy by supplying the Korean War largely from Japan

That last one provided the kind of economic assistance that the Marshall
Plan did in Europe, without having to directly subsidize it.  I use the
Marshall Plan merely as an example.  History indicates other methods
that might work.

History also indicates that trying to apply methods that worked in one
country to another unchanged often doesn't work, as when the U.S. discovered
that Vietnam (with its thousand year tradition of historic resistance
to foreign invaders) was not the Philippines (with its 500 year history
of colonialism).

So I used the Marshall Plan only as an example.  An example that was
creative and controversial in its time.  Can we who think in generations
and centuries worldwide think of anything that might work this time?

>  John's statements are reasonable, if you are dealing with reasonable men.

I'm sure many people said that about the Japanese just after Pearl Harbor, too.

For those who want to think about what to do, I suggest two things to read:

 http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Alley/5443/afopen.htm
 The First Anglo-Afghan War - Disastrous start to the Great Game and
 massacre on the retreat from Kabul, Afghanistan, 1842

 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/19/fighting_terror/index1.html
 Lessons on how to fight terror | 1, 2

The situation we face is unprecedented only in scale.  Others have been
here before.  These two articles indicate some things they learned.

Were there any Sinclairs in the first Anglo-Afghan War?
Or the second?
Or advising the Afghans or the Soviets?
If so, what did they do, and what did they learn?

>Sinclair

John S. Quarterman <jsq@quarterman.org>

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