A Tale of Two Cities = A Tale of One Country??!!

Over many years, "A Tale of Two Cities", written in 1859 by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris, poignantly depicts the plight of the French peasantry, demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, as well as many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same period. My history teachers in Canada and the United States pointed out that history always repeats itself, since our human race is too foolish to learn the important lessons of past historical mistakes. At four in the morning on New Year's Day 2011, a group of young Afghan peace makers and their much older US colleagues huddled around a laptop computer in Kabul, to begin a 24-hour conversation with people from all over the world. They called the project: "Dear Afghanistan", and their important work may well be the first of a kind. The effort consisted of an entire day of Skyped-in phone calls, emails, Facebook and Twitter posts, with the goals of providing an opportunity for world citizens to learn about Afghanistan first-hand from experts - people trying to live their lives in a war zone; provide moral support for the members of Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), and begin linking conversations among a global, below-the-radar network of veteran peace activists, determined that the war in this country can, and MUST be ended absent of military force.