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We know Afghanistan is a bad situation, or at least that’s what we’re led to believe.  It’s not a situation that decayed over night, which may surprise some who only watch the evening news. 

Still, it’s hard to have an sort of understanding about the country and the war.  Luckily, my good friend Zack served a tour of duty there, came home alive, and was able to shed some light on the complex nature of Afghanistan. 

However, if you don’t have a friend like Zack, then let me suggest you read this extensive analysis by Spencer Ackerman.  It’s really long, but at the end of it you’ll be much better informed about the whole situation regarding the strategies, the decision makers, and what the possible outcomes could be.

Author Jon Krakauer discusses the aftermath of Pat Tillman’s death and the lies of General Stanley McChrystal: “After Tillman died, the most important thing to know is that within–instantly, within 24 hours certainly, everybody on the ground, everyone intimately involved knew it was friendly fire. There’s never any doubt it was friendly fire. McChrystal was told within 24 hours it was friendly fire. Also, immediately they started this paperwork to give Tillman a Silver Star. And the Silver Star ended up being at the center of the cover-up. So McChrystal–Tillman faced this devastating fire from his own guys, and he tried to protect a young private by exposing himself to this, this fire. That’s why he was killed and the private wasn’t. Without friendly fire there’s no valor, there’s no Silver Star. There was no enemy fire, yet McChrystal authored, he closely supervised over a number of days this fraudulent medal recommendation that talked about devastating enemy fire.”

This takes nothing away from the sacrifice Pat Tillman made for this country, but it does call into question the man in charge of turning Afghanistan around for other US Troops.

This is not The Onion, but it might as well be.

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan’s only known pig has been locked in a room, away from visitors to Kabul zoo where it normally grazes beside deer and goats, because people are worried it could infect them with the virus popularly known as swine flu.

The pig is a curiosity in Muslim Afghanistan, where pork and pig products are illegal because they are considered irreligious, and has been in quarantine since Sunday after visitors expressed alarm it could spread the new flu strain.

“For now the pig is under quarantine, we built it a room because of swine influenza,” Aziz Gul Saqib, director of Kabul Zoo, told Reuters. “We’ve done this because people are worried about getting the flu.”

A friend’s son is currently steaming his way to Afghanistan (you remember: the place where we actually were fighting terrorists and making military progress until we pulled out most of our troops to send to Iraq).  He’s Marine Forces Recon and is being deployed as part of a ten-man Airborne jump team.

His mom seems (outwardly) stoic, but all I can do is flashback on news footage of crashed helicopters. Or on the tragic waste of a life in the Pat Tillman incident.  Not that he wasted his life, but that the  command structure was so cavalier in its own carelessness and incompetence that it essentially threw him away as if he were garbage. And then pissed on the grave by lying and covering up to his family.

Over 70 percent of the country want the troops home.  We elected a bunch of  new people in ‘06.  What more can we do to keep men like this from dying over there?  It’s not a rhetorical question:  what more must we do?  I don’t want this kid coming home in a bag so Bush can  look resolute.  What can we do?