by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould
In the six months since the publication of our book, Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, we’ve had the opportunity to address dozens of forums about Afghanistan. It has been a revealing exercise, not so much in terms of what Americans understand about Afghanistan (which unfortunately isn’t very much) but by the way it reveals how Americans are struggling to catch up with a world that seems to have left them behind.
One well informed brave soul who admitted to being involved in politics since Adlai Stevenson’s day, went so far as to admit last February at the Cambridge forum, “I realize tonight how totally ignorant I am of the Afghan history, of the role of our country there. Nothing you told me tonight surprised me except how ignorant I was of all of this…”
The very next soul at the microphone, former cold war practitioner and region chief for South Asia and the Near East for the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, Charles Cogan took the opportunity to dispel some of that ignorance, “In the interest of full disclosure,” by admitting that our analysis of “the Soviet invasion and afterwards,” was “quite authentic.” full story
