Joshua Foust follows up on my “Afghanistan as Gated Community” remarks with a detailed post worth reading. Essentially, this time my literary deconstruction — typos and all — got closer to the mark.
I’d like to take this opportunity to note that I’m aware of the limitations of what I can actually “know” about Afghanistan from reading open-source news and analysis from a distance. So there’s a real value of having someone in Foust’s position, there on the ground, who’s willing to weigh in on how close my impressions come to describing his experiences. Keeping in mind, too, that Foust’s experiences are limited in their own way.
None of us can ever really “know” all that much. My role, as I understand it, is to try to read as much as I can from a variety of pespectives, weigh things for credibility and balance, and then piece it all together into a coherent picture, knowing that the final result will inevitably be colored by my own lens.
I know everyone who reads this blog already knows that. I just wanted to make it clear that I do, too.