Keywords

WarRug

Politics

Before I was going to write about it, Boingboing.net had already linked to a site devoted to selling Afghan War Rugs, and unfortunately the traffic overload has knocked the site offline. What they don’t mention is that this site came to the public’s attention via this NPR story on Morning Edition.

What troubles me is the language Mark Frauenfelder chose to describe the carpet photographed in the Boingboing.net entry:

Get your hand-made rugs depicting the Twin Towers being hit by planes here.

There is nothing inaccurate in this description, as it does indeed depict that, but what Mark’s comments overlook is the rest of the rug’s narrative. At the bottom is a US Aircraft carrier shooting missiles, and in the middle are the Afghan and US flags, connected by a peace dove. This is important because it must be understood that these rugs depict the entire narrative of Afghan liberation” by the Americans, and are not a commemoration of a Terrorist attack, as many might think upon first glance. In fact, (as the radio program points out) these rugs are made primarily to sell to foreign aid workers! Unlike Iraq, there was initially a lot of good will towards America by the Afghans. Unfortunately, we aren’t doing much to live up to it.

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