While the publishing industry waited to see whether it faced the embarrassment of yet another partly fabricated memoir, Greg Mortenson, the co-author of the best-selling “Three Cups of Tea,” a book popular with the Pentagon for its inspirational lessons on Afghanistan and Pakistan, forcefully countered a CBS News report on Sunday that questioned the facts of his book and the management of his charitable organization.An unofficial reponse:
“We continue to believe in the logic of what Greg is trying to accomplish in Afghanistan and Pakistan because we know the powerful effects that education can have on eroding the root causes of extremism,” said a military official, who asked not to be named under ground rules imposed by the Pentagon.As Mara Naselli observes:
The debate between truth and fact in personal essay and memoir is an old one, and the test of authenticity has rarely been, “Did it really happen that way?” Many argue that memory is just too slippery to be held to that kind of standard, and that the discernment of fact itself isn’t obvious.The question, then, is whether the US military should use such slippery accounts as a staple in COIN training.
Read the NYT article here.
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