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.”
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