What the Afghan Government Wants to Stick Around

[BarakzaiAbdali]

https://www.military.com/undertheradar/2019/03/15/stop-looking-these-kids-heroes-vets-documentary-features-afghan-war-footage.html

‘Stop Looking at These Kids as Heroes’: Vet’s Documentary Features Afghan War Footage

The documentary — a patchwork of scenes showing Marines smoking marijuana while on patrol in Afghanistan, defecating outside the homes of locals, swearing at children and talking lightly of killing innocent people — goes far to challenge the ubiquitous label of "hero" frequently bestowed on American servicemembers.

That activity includes Marines apparently smoking pot in several scenes, including one in which a Marine appears to be rolling a joint in front of Afghan children and his colleague jokes about marrying an underage girl.
"You join the Marine Corps, you think the Marine Corps is like a bunch of perfect people, you know, that don't do anything bad," another Marine says in a different scene after smoking. "But the Marine Corps is full of the most [obscenity] individuals I've ever met. Just like me, you know?"

While images of Marines smoking marijuana and swearing will be seen as a blemish by some on the branch's image, other scenes in the film are more disturbing and consequential.

"I don't care right now about their customs or their courtesies," a Marine says in one part of the film before his men interrupt a religious service at a rural compound. After detaining the men there for what appears to be several hours, it's revealed the "high-value individuals" being sought are not there.

In another scene, a patrol arrives to examine the body of a suspected Taliban fighter who has been shot dead. "Just like a deer," one Marine says of the corpse as others talk to the lifeless body. The group quickly realizes the man was an unarmed shopkeeper.

The Marines discuss covering up the killing as the man's body is shown being wrapped in a carpet, with one saying, "This is no good for people to see."

Lagoze admitted that "there are a lot of different types of guys in the military," but that his film is an accurate experience of his deployment to Afghanistan as a 21-year-old, seven years ago.

"I thought it was important to document as much as I could," Lagoze said. "It was important to the guys who I was filming that I was capturing as much of the reality as possible."

This is why Mohib and others in Kabul can continue to flatulate out of their mouth in some attempt to claim they too are a part of the Afghan polity that deserves to be "heard" and be laughed at like the donkeys they are. Nonsense, when you need the above to prop you up or else you fall in 6 weeks time - all the conspiracy theories in the world about your opponent being Hamid Gul incarnate do not put you on equitable moral footing.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Its utterly laughable that their negotiating point is that they need 5 more years of this and the technocrats like Mohib and these failure "government" emigres ("failure" meaning they rely on the pay checks because they could not accomplish anything in the nation states where they served as emigres) keep raising the bogeyman specter of civil war and a "return to the 90s" as the alternative to their wh-ore-mongering their land. What is most interesting is that none of these "prophets" of what would happen with a rapid draw drown ever saw a single day of the 90s on the soil and on the land.