OxBlog

Sunday, December 08, 2002

# Posted 10:11 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

BLEEDING HEART CONSERVATIVES?: Christina Lamb, a correspondent for Britain's Daily Telegraph, has a column on Afghanistan in the NYT. The combination of the Telegraph's right-of-center perspective with Lamb's personal experience in Afghanistan results in a unique point of view that might be described as bleeding heart conservatism. While Lamb indignantly describes how, "in the general ward of Kabul's main children's hospital sick children lie three to a bed...[and] have died on the operating table because the oxygen failed when the power went out," she doesn't hold the tight-fisted Bush administration responsible. Rather, it's the UN officials and aid workers whose illogical spending habits direct foreign cash away from those that need it most.

For a brief moment, Lamb sounds like a correspondent for the Guardian (for those unfamiliar with the British press, imagine a daily edition of the Nation) when she declares that "after the overthrow of the Taliban and imposition of a Western-backed government, there has been little improvement in the lives of most Afghans...[who] spend their days struggling to feed their children on an average annual income of $75." But she also recognizes how desperate most Afghans are to strenghten the Western presence in their nation. As one man said to her, "Throughout history we Afghans have always fought outsiders. Now we are frightened they will leave us."

If there is one point Lamb drives home, it's that warlord domination of Afghanistan is the single greatest barrier to its recovery, both politically and economically. What the Karzai government needs isn't more butter, but more guns. Now did somebody say that NATO was looking for a job?
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