Reaction: Medical Team Murdered in Afghanistan

The Associated Press is reporting that a medical team of six Americans, one German, one Briton and two Afghans, were killed in Afghanistan after completion of a two week mission to provide health care to rural villagers. The Taliban claimed responsibility, stating that the murder were justified because the group consisted of American spies and Christian missionaries.

It's sad when a valid concern, like foreigners attempting to degrade your culture and history through conversion, is twisted so horribly into warped justification for any and all murders, power grabs, and other violent acts that are just as if not more detrimental to a community than that which is being fought against.

RIP to the medical team killed.

Lost in Translation: The Line Between Journalism and Espionage

NY Times article: "Contracts Tied To Efforts to Kill Militants"

Let me get this straight. So the "benign gov't info-gathering program" was a website known as Afpak, proposed by a former CIA guy and a former TV exec., set up to operate as what looks like a local news service focusing on cultural conflict issues in the context of wartime. And the intermediary - the accused Mr. Furlong - between the military and Afpak told Afpak that the military wasn't interested while also telling the military that Afpak was worthwhile? And when the rug got solidly pulled out from under Afpak, Furlong reallocated some of the leftover funding into one military program while shoving the rest - $15 mill. - into thin air?

Out of all this, aside from the outrageousness of his actions, if verified, it strikes me how apparently this Afpak endeavor was never clearly defined as either news-gathering versus covert intelligence gathering. If the boundary between the two is not recognized by the editors, not to mention our own military, contractors and the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan - two countries where the USA has unstable relations, to say the least - then it's no wonder why journalism is regarded with suspicion and contempt by leaders on both sides (despite what they may say in public about the importance of a free press) and why the work journalists produce – and risk their lives for – are regarded as little more than spying.

It’s no wonder why what we do is lost in translation in countries where there is no free press. It’s no wonder why our own gov’t leaders make such pitiful efforts to defend our work and our lives when it comes to that.