It's good to be reminded, sometimes...

I read this article today and thought it would be nice to spread it... It is, indeed, a lot of times - actually most often- that it happens to forget why we do something in the first place. And the entire struggles becomes about winning a race or a war rather than actually changing something and achieving goals. 

So here it is the article from NYT that made me think of this...

Teacher, Can We Leave Now? No.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: July 18, 2009

Pushghar, Afghanistan

I confess, I find it hard to come to Afghanistan and not ask: Why are we here? Who cares about the Taliban? Al Qaeda is gone. And if its leaders come back, well, that’s why God created cruise missiles.

But every time I start writing that column, something stills my hand. This week it was something very powerful. I watched Greg Mortenson, the famed author of “Three Cups of Tea,” open one of his schools for girls in this remote Afghan village in the Hindu Kush mountains. I must say, after witnessing the delight in the faces of those little Afghan girls crowded three to a desk waiting to learn, I found it very hard to write, “Let’s just get out of here.”

Indeed, Mortenson’s efforts remind us what the essence of the “war on terrorism” is about. It’s about the war of ideas within Islam — a war between religious zealots who glorify martyrdom and want to keep Islam untouched by modernity and isolated from other faiths, with its women disempowered, and those who want to embrace modernity, open Islam to new ideas and empower Muslim women as much as men. America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were, in part, an effort to create the space for the Muslim progressives to fight and win so that the real engine of change, something that takes nine months and 21 years to produce — a new generation — can be educated and raised differently.

Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/opinion/19friedman.html?th&emc=th

And if anyone was wondering... yeah, we sometimes think in this house too...