THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED - TOWARDS PEACE, AND AWAY FROM WAR

Road through Karakoram Mountains, Northern Pakistan, Hindu Kush area

The Pakistani villagers say the road is nice but they still don’t like America, because American drones bomb their houses and fields. Our strategists tell them, “We’ll just weed out your bad guy neighbors.” But as in the Bible, uprooting them destroys the chance of any good harvest. Potential friend dies with enemy. We must all abide the final harvest, and the separation of bad from good, determined by the peoples of these poor remote areas, and in God’s providential time.



















Contribute some good seed and irrigation if asked, but they are the landholders, and are the only ones accountable or capable as stewards. Our acting as remote control God, raining down hellfire from the heavens in the midseason of an undeveloped country, only helps cultivate the weeds of war. The road-to-war’s hell, is paved with these double-edged sword intentions.

From a 1-21-21 WSJ article, “Setbacks Plague U.S. Aid to Pakistan” –

A road project in South Waziristan, a tribal region that has been a base for Taliban militants and a focus of the CIA's drone campaign, shows how difficult it is to use aid to change public sentiment.
Predator drone shooting a hellfire missile

A year ago, the U.S. signed an agreement to pump $55 million through a local government body into roads, water and electricity in South Waziristan, where anti-Americanism is rampant. Six months ago, to improve access to markets, schools and health facilities, workers began transforming a winding, potholed mountain road between the towns of Tank and Makin into a wide, paved road. Because of militant attacks, the Pakistani army's public-works division is leading construction.

Road through the Kyber pass from Pakistan to Kabul Afghanistan—a major supply route for U.S. war effort—not far from Tank to Makin Rd.

Habibullah Khan, a senior government official in the region, said the move to fund bigger infrastructure projects in South Waziristan has gained local support. But he said it's too dangerous for now to put any USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] logos on the road because of possible reprisals against workers. He said the government plans to do so once the road is finished.
War driven foreign aid.

Haji Mursalin, a tribal elder from the region, says locals support the road, but don't like America any more as a result. "The construction of roads won't work because our whole social structure has been destroyed," Mr. Mursalin said. "Most of the common people are against drone strikes because most of the time there are civilian casualties and collateral damage." *

hile we try to nation build a road into mountain passes, and across these remote river gorges {a road unlikely to survive or win friends, as it comes wrapped in a drone bombing campaign} our own infrastructure projects in flat St. Clair County don’t have two dimes to rub together. The Port Huron Times Herald, announced on 1-19-11, “Bridge projects delayed indefinitely for funding.” These are CNN railroad overpasses 15 years in the planning stage. The fate of indefinite delay probably awaits the I-94 Bridge over the Black River as well. We’ve undercut our future with a decade of war economy, spent in faraway places, and on over-designed Homeland Security projects. The road to peace is a road less traveled. It takes every bit as much discipline and strength as war, and demands more creativity. At home and abroad it is the narrow path, gives courage and possibility along its course, and is the only way that leads to true resolution of conflict, and hope for the generations to come.

Next week we’ll examine our country’s small “Peace Corps,” attempt to move in this direction, and its legacy—a real challenge for the 21st century.

---Illustrations in body of WSJ article are my own insertions.

---Illumination by Kathy Brahney

*http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703583404576080113980804354.html

Sobering thought for all, of both right and left persuasion, on day of the national Right to Life march.
“But how narrow is the gate that leads to life, how rough the road, and how few there are who find it.”
Mt 7:14


Another road less traveled---

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

1. The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


AND ANOTHER…