January 5, 2002

SEEING AMERICA THROUGH AFGHAN EYES

Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai will visit the United States next month, the first visit by an Afghan head of state in almost 40 years. For Karzai personally the visit will hardly be a novelty; he has family in America and has spent considerable time here, to the benefit of both sides in this new alliance.

But not every member of the new government has had the same opportunity, and the United States would be making an excellent investment if it were to sponsor getting-to-know-us tours for those new Afghan leaders who are interested. It would, let us say, reduce the risk of miscalculation on their part. They are no doubt aware that their present position is the direct result of just such a miscalculation on the part of the previous government of Afghanistan, but it wouldn't hurt to reinforce the point.

What would we want them to see, and what would we hope they would learn?

First, the military. Afghan leaders of course have seen American military power in action, and I trust it is even more impressive close-up than it was from here. But they may not all understand how small a part of American military power was devoted to their concerns. Their trip could start with a visit to one of the carrier groups operating in the Arabian Sea, and then proceed to Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Historically, Afghanistan has tended to be prickly about a foreign presence on its territory, so observing firsthand that German sovereignty is unthreatened by having American military there should be useful.

Coming from a place where war has been the only occupation for longer than most Afghanis have been alive, the new leaders may also not realize how small a part the military is of American society.

The aim is not to impress them with how rich and powerful America is, a practice as likely to evoke resentment as respect. Rather, it is to enable a realistic assessment of the resources we have available if our interests are threatened. A difficult distinction, to be sure.

Where to begin the tour of America? Where other than at Ground Zero in Manhattan? Sixteen acres may not seem like much to people who are used to miles of rubble, but it launched a war with which they are intimately familiar.

Then draw back to see the scale of the World Trade Center site within Manhattan. New York is a splendid place to contemplate a modern urban infrastructure. The visitors will have arrived at Kennedy airport, but they should ride the subways too -- tiny Manhattan has several times as many miles of railroad track as all of Afghanistan. Driving in New York is an experience not to be missed, nor a spin on the 16-lane part of the New Jersey Turnpike, returning across the George Washington Bridge at rush hour.

And outside Manhattan?

To understand where all those cars come from, see the Iron Range in Minnesota, a 100-car coal train in the West, a steel mill in Pittsburgh, any automated car-assembly plant. Boeing's plant outside Seattle is impressive, too. I liked the plane out front with its wings being flexed up and down by a hydraulic press. I stopped worrying that the wings would fall off when I traveled by plane.

It is characteristically American that public tours to most such places of interest are already laid on; only the interpreters would need to be arranged for.

Food production? California's Central Valley. Center-pivot irrigation.

Feedlots and poultry farms. Corn in Iowa.

Consumption? A brand-new supermarket and a neighborhood deli. Upscale restaurants, food courts, soup kitchens for the poor. The Mall of America and a Goodwill store. Flea markets and garage sales (Chinese friends have told me they were amazed by garage sales; lots of Americans, people unimaginably rich by their standards, like to spend their weekends buying and selling each other's used stuff).

A Home Depot store -- not only for the astonishing variety of its inventory, but for the implicit message that millions of Americans have and value practical skills such as plumbing and carpentry. We're not only a can-do people, we're a do-it-yourself people.

Your list of must-see places would be different from mine, even for a nuts-and-bolts tour that scants the things tourists normally want to see, such as natural wonders, history and the arts. I've found it intriguing to go about my daily routine thinking, "What am I seeing that I never think about, but that would be striking to a visitor from another world?"

It helps me see my world more clearly.

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