Village men carrying lumber for their school when roads were blocked with landslides.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin is an amazing account of how one person can make a difference in the world. Greg, a mountaineer, was saved by a Pakistan village in the Karakoram mountains after he failed to reach the summit of K2. He promised to return and build a school for the children. This is the story of his struggles to build fifty-five schools in the area. The title says it all- One Man's Mission to promote Peace... One School at a Time.

Greg should win a Nobel Peace Prize. His efforts are so much more productive than fighting terrorists by going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Reading the book made me more aware of the fact that ordinary people pay the price of arm chair warriors.

I came across these remarks from Brigadier General Bashir Baz, a close confidant of Musharraf, who helped Greg fly into the many hard to reach villages.

Bashir is watching CNN from Baghdad showing bombed buildings and wailing Iraqi women. He says," Your President Bush has done a wonderful job of uniting one billion Muslims against America for the next two hundred years." Mortenson says, "Osama had something to do with it, too." Bashir roars," Osama, bah! Osama is not a product of Pakistan or Afghanistan. He is a creation of America. Thanks to America, Osama is in every home. As a military man, I know you can never fight and win against someone who can shoot at you once and then run off and hide while you have to remain eternally on guard. You have to attack the source of your enemy's strength. In America's case, that's not Osama or Saddam or anyone else. The enemy is ignorance. The only way to defeat it is to build relationships with these people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business. Otherwise the fight will go on forever."

Chew on those ideas for a while. That's what stands out in this book!