BTW- Frontline returns tonight, and the subject is Afghanistan:
Should be a good one.
by John Cole| 38 Comments
This post is in: Television
BTW- Frontline returns tonight, and the subject is Afghanistan:
Should be a good one.
Comments are closed.
General Winfield Stuck
Yes, I watched a twenty minute preview a few days ago, and it was topnotch as per usual from our national treasure that is Frontline. I remember when it first started circa 1980 and I had a mighty crush on Jessica Savitch RIP.
Just Some Fuckhead
I dunno, I’m all warred out after the ghey threads.
maye
Plus everyone’s favorite wunderkind Ezra Klein will be on Charlie Rose tonight.
Aaron
Damn, it is off to quite a start. <3 PBS
Malron
I’m gonna watch and I know its gonna be good but I’m still not buying the “Obama’s War” meme. Especially since Obama was one of the people who was against the Surge in Iraq because it would pull necessary resources from Afghanistan. But oh well…
KG
wait, there’s stuff on teevee on tuesdays besides Sons of Anarchy?
John Cole
My PBS feed just died.
I’m fifteen minutes in, and I am ready to push for a complete withdrawal.
Demo Woman
Joy Behar is interviewing Orly on CNN HLN. Is anyone watching. Sometimes I miss Cable although I’m pleased with my antenna only bill.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: I got a slingbox if you wanna watch it from my teevee in the study upstairs.
General Winfield Stuck
What’s a slingbox? Is it like a squeezebox with a screen?
So far my new comcast is working like a dream. Faster thana scalded dog, in Hillbilly.
Ron in Bloomington
Why is PBS’s Frontline still ran by Cheney’s neocons??? This is NOT Obama’s war. Damn! Come on. How old are these videos? Are they current or just an old mcKRISTOL fantasies?
General Winfield Stuck
@Malron:
It’s teevee, they gotta have a meme to get up in the morning.
Demo Woman
My PBS station is showing the national parks series. The PBS station that I receive is out of Atlanta. The PBS out of Athens is better so I might update my antenna so I can get both. Frontline comes on Sunday, I think.
Chad N Freude
@Malron:
Well, it’s his war now.
Third Eye Open
After I decided to stay in school to get my Masters, I had to decide what I could do without to make ends meet. I can honestly say that getting rid of cable was the best option I could have imagined. Now I will admit it sucks not having PBS or ESPN (sometimes), my netflix account running through my Xbox Live account has given me so much entertainment, for so little money, that sometimes i think I should send someone a thank-you note.
Chris Johnson
Oh now come on, it was ALWAYS his war.
George who? The name is unfamiliar. There was never a George anybody ;)
Demo Woman
@Third Eye Open: If I purchased a ROKU and hooked it up to my dsl.. would that work for instant? I’m not tech savvy but it seems that would be easier than hooking up my laptop to the tv and dragging the screen.
Third Eye Open
I haven’t personally used the ROKU, but yes, it should be the same process. Does your DSL carry the stream well? I am using Comcast, and even though I am home late nights watching, it is always the best quality I can get, sans-HD.
I would say if you have someone special in the house (wink, wink, nod, nod … say no more) the purchase of an Xbox360 would provide the same service –although with an $8 per month charge on top of Netflix– with the advantage of having a console system. but its amazing, the TV shows on demand are great, and the movies are respectable enough to find something new each week that you may have missed or want to re-watch.
Hawes
I love Frontline, but it’s hard to watch. Since it’s the only TV news that accurately reports the unfiltered truth in real depth and with sophistication of thought, it’s REALLY depressing.
Shorter Frontline: Do wonder if the world is as fucked up as you think it is? Yup, it is.
Michael D.
Watched it, and it is good.
Justin
A very interesting aspect of that Frontline piece is that the entire thing was shot on a Canon EOS 5D MkII, shooting full HD video. The guy had a steadicam-type arrangement.
Aaron
@Michael D.:
Agreed Michael D,
I really liked everything about the report, except (as some have noted) the title. It dealth with the practical and political realities in dealing with what is, at the very least, an incredibly complex issue. The troops on the ground have to deal with the terrifying prospect of insurgency, while the political leaders have to work with the framework of the region to try to neutralize the Taliban as well as assuage the concerns of the nation-states in the region. Of course, the war in Iraq does not help the diplomatic situation, or allow for the full use of resources that would have been necessary to do the job in Afghanistan.
That being said, watching Frontline reminds me of how much the rest of television news sucks. I am glad they focus on stupid (and cheap) celebrity gossip rather than actually doing their job and either finding out information or fact-checking the assholes in Congress
Brachiator
Thanks for the info on this. I might not be able to watch it tonight, but fortunately it’s repeated again tomorrow.
Ash
I’ve been watching a lot of Afghanistan documentaries lately, I have no idea why. They’re generally depressing as hell and totally harsh my mellow and all.
I like the Ross Kemp ones from Sky One in Britain.
Sirkowski
FUBAR
wilfred
The Afghan is only a species of nigger. As such, he is denied whites only moral privileges like patriotism and resentment against foreign occupation of his country. He is either with us or against us. He is either a Talib or a born again patriot ready to embrace the American way.
From the comic book presentation by the company Captain to the retro-stock footage of marines firing over embankments to the perplexed villagers wondering what exactly the fuck is going on, this film was 1967 re-visited – even the camera angles are the same. My favorite part was the interpreter having his face concealed, lest the Taliban watch the video, but the villagers not giving a shit. They’re Pashtuns and Muslims, and the Americans are not: that’s all they need to know – we’re too stupid to see them laughing at us.
8 years in and this is what we get – loud-mouthed boys scolding squatting Afghan villagers. The only good thing to come out of all this will be the premature but welcome death of the American Empire.
As for Obama – he asked for it. He’ll probably compromise with about 15,000 more troops. He championed it from the beginning, it’s his war whether he likes it or not.
wilfred
Incidentally, a note on critical thinking.
Is it really an ‘insurgency’, with all that that suggests, when one’s country is under occupation by a foreign army and its current leader is the hand-picked puppent of said occupation and implicated in obivous election rigging?
srv
Wilfred, I remember John offered to have you do an essay once.
Would love to read it.
Caroline
wilfred, that’s harsh.
It also denies the fact that NATO is only the latest occupier. Do you give any responsibility to the Afghans at all? Have different factions of them been cowering or oppressing each other for a long time or not?
Perhaps Biden’s plan for Iraq would work for Afghanistan better. Divide it all up and let the various tribal/political/religious leaders rule sections of what is an arbitrary state (thanks to the British).
Then we all get the hell out of there.
Would that make you happy?
inkadu
@wilfred: I saw about 10 minutes of the program, consisting entirely of shadowing our foot patrols through the region.
I decided that the entire situation is hopeless. Seven soldiers in full gear walking around with an interpreter dropping in to talk to people with questions like, “Have you seen any Taliban around?” and saying things like, “If you see any of your friends, tell them to work with us. It’s all right;” and “If you see any Taliban, tell them not to come around anymore.”
At one point, we see the leader of the group call in his report, “Yeah… we just interviewed that guy… the one who was smiling when he was saying things he shouldn’t be smiling about…” That’s the reason they went out to see this guy. He was smiling when he shouldn’t be.
Really. I get nervous when a see a cop in my rearview mirror. Imagine have seven m-16’s pointed at you by people who don’t speak your language and who have the right to take you to prison and torture you. It’s nuts.
And you’re all right about the news coverage. If this had been on the MSM, it would have been 3 seconds. The v/o would be, “Troops in Afghanistan are patrolling the area looking for any remaining Taliban…” and then they’d cut to the audio at the point the group is saying, “Hey, howya doin?” leaving the audience to imagine the response is, “Yo, nigga, wazzup? Nope. We haven’t seen any Taliban, but if you’d like to stay for dinner, we’d love to cook you up some hamburgers.”
The sooner the press starts doing its job, the sooner we can get out of there. But we’ll be there forever. I know it, you know it, and Obama knows it. Goddamned empire.
Leelee for Obama
I fell asleep while this was on-not the fault of the contnet, just sheer exhaustion on my part. I will try to watch it in full today-but I think the bit I heard this AM on CNN completely changes the debate. According to McChrystal, we face failure, regardless of how many troops we put in! Guess that wasn’t in the original leak; hmm…wonder why?
I have been very conflicted about this situation because I think AfPak has the potential to cause us no end of misery and security issues. I just can’t condone endless increases in troop levels on most accounts, and if there is no basic argument for success on some level, what exactly is the point?
Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to our security to harden targets here and in other nations, step up intelligence gathering and interpretation, and expend our military efforts in the direction of crushing terror cells world-wide? Cut off their money, supply lines and ability to move about and quite possibly, they will wither like the Red Brigade, or Bader /Meinhoff?
Am I completely off-base here?
Malron
I gotta catch it online now because I missed it on the telly, dammit.
nikkos
That was a heavy Frontline. Witnessing the on-camera death of Marine Corporal Sharpe was brutal. No, this fucking war is not worth it. But will Obama withdraw? I fear he will not, but will merely “compromise” by sending fewer troops than McChrystal wants…Why do I get the sinking feeling McChrystal represents some “Great White Hope” to a certain demographic? I also worry that if he withdraws, that could be the “last straw,” and some militia nutbag type will take matters “into his own hands.”
Amanda in the South Bay
It seems like in the past several years a whole new industry has been built up around COIN-a gaggle of former officers cum intellectuals (Kilcullen, Nagl, etc) who do a good job of selling their product to DC think tanks, bloggers and pundits. After watching the Frontline video, I’d rather trade all their knowledge for a permanent revolution in American politics that eschews getting involved in fucked up colonial wars to begin with.
nikkos
Amanda-
Yes, the military-industrial-complex is nothing if not adaptable to whatever is going to rake in the most dough. Lost in the discussion is the fact that lots of people and corporations don’t want the wars to end. Ever. Too much $$$ at stake.
HyperIon
@Sirkowski:
Yes.
Hard to watch.
The supporters of this war are clueless.
How many times do we have to go down this road before we learn that wishes and hopes are NOT solutions to real problems?
KXB
It was a terrific report, and while it correctly pointed out U.S. missteps, it also made the point that even if the U.S. did everything right, it may not matter so long as Pakistanis believe they have a right to run Afghanistan as their own private fiefdom. Some degree of instability in the region makes the Pakistani military more valuable. Keep in mind – Afghanistan had a raging civil war in the 1990s, when we were not around. If they continue to fight after we leave, what matters is will that theater be the source of a future attack on the U.S. Since Mullah Omar now gets his mail in Quetta, that may be the place to look.
raptusregaliter
just playing with tags. nothing to see here.
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