NPR has done a really wonderful job of reporting on the trees, but they just don’t get the forest.
Mandelit Del Barco has heroically chronicled the struggles of L.A. gangland. Sylvia Poggioli, just today, has bravely told us of the struggles of Italy against the Neapolitan mafia. Countless reports about the influence of Hezbollah in Lebanon are delivered by myriad reporters. Tales of Columbian and Mexican drug cartels are easy to find. Then there are the reports about the lawless border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
And yet, somehow, the connection is never made.
” I’m missing the war
Till beads of sunlight hit me in the morning
So much time so little to say “
Don’t let Ben Folds’ lyrics be our cultural epitaph.
Read your William Lind.
These are all the same thing, and have been since World War I. But nobody talks about it.
