So the Afghan acted on his culturl imperative and then Ayala acted on American imperiatives which is to punish and kill a a man who would burn a woman alive for no good reason.

I personally would not judge Ayala of murder it was justified homicide.

The vivid mental image that I get when I hear that expression is the future war cutscenes from the first two Terminator movies, with the Skynet ground mech caterpillar treads crushing dry H. sap skulls and such…

This program is a giant boondoggle for the guys being paid at the very top rung of the contractor ladder on one hand and the big firms like PAE who have absolutely no experience in anything remotely associated with the HTT program on the other. The HTT’s could be a valuable tool if they lived outside the wire and started developing their own networks like … say the ANSO Eastern Region Coordinator, a former London banker who got bored, came on with ANSO, and now knows more about the eastern region, Pakistan tribal areas, and the Taliban than any HTT member anywhere in the world. Mind you he started as a banker who had nothing more going for him than native curiosity and the ability to organize data and write well. Now he is a one man HTT with embedded language ability and he is making 25% of an HTT member and living on maybe 0.5% of the life support costs being spent on HTT types. That is serious money by the way – we spend crazy money in life support which does not go into the local economy, is unnecessary, and much too lavish in the opinion of this former Marine. I don’t think it imperative for the fobbits to have 7 different flavors of Baskin and Robbins and I don’t care how long their tours are. A cursory glance tells me most of them don’t need the extra calories anyway.

The one thing the ANSO rep has in common with all the others who understand Afghanistan is that he has been here months on end year in and year out. This is not rocket science and it doesn’t take “academics” it takes people willing to spend the requisite time in country to learn the human terrain. Books don’t do it, multimillion dollar contracts don’t do it, large design and build firms like PAE cannot do it and I ask once again when will we see common sense prevail in our approach to Afghanistan?

As best I can figure, an eye for an eye leaves the World one-eyed, which, I would think, would leave it much more cognizant of the need to avoid commission of eye-destructing activities.

Nortius: Back a few days before the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, troops at a guard post at border crossing between Iraq proper and the Kurdish sector saw the following: A Kurdish woman carried a container of gasoline to the Iraqi sector to sell it in order to buy food for her children. An Iraqi soldier took the container, dumped it over her, and set her on fire.

I am afraid that if I had been the officer at that guard post OIF would have started right then and there. I would have shot the SOB who burned the woman and then led all available troops to overrun the Iraqi post and not stopped chasing the bastards until we were in e’ffing downtown Baghdad.

And I am, admittedly, what you would call a REMF. If you consider flight lines and launch pads The Rear.

Sorry, I do try. But this one trips too many of my “civilization” circuit breakers.

This Abdul character didn’t like being quizzed by an uppity woman, and his response was to set her on fire? Not acceptable. Full stop.

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind?”

How about “Don’t START nothin’, won’t BE nothin’.”