NCIS, from March, was prescient (spoiler, last appearance by Sloan)

[question everything]

We just watched it last week. Before recent events in Afghanistan.

Sloan and Gibbs flew to Afghanistan to save several abducted girls.

They found out that the girls were going to be auctioned off as "wives." The woman who was transferring the girls before the abduction was killed and Sloan decided to stay there. "Someone has to take care of the girls," she said.

But they also found out that their guide was the one who was providing the attackers with their location.

We want to live our lives, he said, where women know their place.

And as I was watching this I was wondering whether this was coming. It came. Too soon.

[captain queeg]

1. I'm trying not to watch much news about Afghanistan but I used to watch NCIS all the time

I don’t even know who Sloan is. Kind of lost interest in the show quite awhile ago but I’ve thought of the situation there often. I spent 6 months there working for the army corps of engineers. Lived a in a military compound in the green zone. I think of a few things.

My roommate was an air force reservist called back for his surveying skills. He was trying to accumulate enough active duty time for retirement. One time we were talking and I made some comment about the US military that somewhat critical, don’t remember what the conversation was. He told me the US military was the most powerful by far on the planet. I had to agree, but when they are forced into a political position they don’t fare so well. It’s really not fair to them that politicians do that to them. They are designed and extremely good at accomplishing a mission. That’s when and how they should be used.

As far as the people of Afghanistan they are just like us except for a different culture. The army is not going to change their culture. I could spell out a few efforts we made to westernize them that were so obviously doomed to fail. What irritated me the most was the hundreds of billions being dumped there, not really accomplishing much while the US was in recession. All in all an interesting experience but I don’t have any real insight on what we could different besides never going in. When Bush first sent in a battalion of special forces I thought that was ok Then they had Osama cornered Bush and company didn’t want to finish the job at that time. They had a lot of other stuff they wanted to ram thru while Americans were in a patriotic fervor far as I am concerned Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al are war criminals.