Greg Mortenson has dedicated yet another school, and last week Admiral Mullen took time to go along and pass out notebooks, etc, to the students!
It's heartening to see that Adm. Mullen is consulting Mortenson on his knowledge of the area & its people.
Blackhawk helicopters carrying some high-ranking visitors landed in Afghanistan’s remote Panjshir Valley on a hot summer day last week to join Greg Mortenson, his Central Asia Institute staff and local village leaders for the dedication of a girls’ elementary school.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, other military commanders and international media, including New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, flew in for the official opening of the Pushgur Girls School. Friedman is expected to write about the visit in his column in today’s New York Times.
Mullen took time to greet the students individually, talk with them and give them gifts of notebooks, pens and accessories from his wife Deb, Mortenson, of Bozeman, said via e-mail. The top U.S. military commander also presented each student with a golden Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman’s medallion, which is usually reserved for dignitaries, heads of state and other VIPs.
Mortenson, who has spent 16 years building schools and promoting education in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, said he has met with Mullen several times, at Mullen’s invitation, “to consult on new approaches to strategic policy for Afghanistan,” and last year invited him to visit a CAI girls’ school.
Mortenson has changed his opinion of the US military efforts in Afghanistan since writing Three Cups of Tea:
In the first years of U.S. war in Afghanistan, Mortenson was fairly critical of the military. He called Pentagon leaders “laptop warriors” in his book, “Three Cups of Tea,” referring to the lack of “boots on the ground,” he said Saturday. He was “mostly deeply disturbed about (then Secretary of Defense) Donald Rumsfeld’s rapid exit out of Afghanistan” and the shift to the war in Iraq.
“But today that has changed significantly,” he said. “There has been a significant shift and huge learning curve in the U.S. military the last two to three years. The military is deploying more of what I call ‘brain-power,’ or trainers, instead of firepower, infantry or artillery, and puts a big effort into to helping the people get back on their feet.
“Many of our senior officers and NCO enlisted have been in Afghanistan two, three or four times and really get it -
See
http://www.threecupsoftea.com/2009/07/1 ... jul-19-09/ for the whole article.