Afghanistan (April)

One wonders how many American Presidents have read ‘The Road to Oxiana’. America’s global propaganda stunts this April, in which Syria and then Afghanistan are targeted and struck with superior weapons, brought to mind Robert Byron’s travel book of 1937. There he recounts his quixotic meanderings from the Mediterranean, across Syria and Iraq and Iran, before arriving at what the Persians call Amu Darya (Latin: Oxus) River. He describes mosques, everything, with wonder, saying, “Somebody must trespass on the taboos of modern nationalism, in the interests of human reason. Business can't. Diplomacy won't. It has to be people like us.”