Three Afghan Soldiers Visiting Cape Cod Have Gone Missing

[MADem]

58. We do these ALL THE TIME. It's not news. We do them with a variety of countries.

The idea is to focus on inter-operability so everyone is using the same playbook, the same standards, the same essential equipment, so that if we are tasked to do something in cooperation (or they are), that they can get to work straight away without saying "We're going to use these protocols and this equipment and this methodology to do X job"-it is what militaries do, customarily, when they are maintaining readiness with their allies. I hardly think teaching anyone about international human rights standards is a bad thing, in any event.

The three guys were trying to get to Canada, because they had the mistaken impression that Canada was more liberal--they found out otherwise. Canada doesn't care about asylum for Afghans. They care about people with lots of money who will start businesses, and people with special skills that Canada is shorthanded in possessing.

The only alternative is to never do any training on US soil. And that's just a crappy idea, frankly. These mil-to-mil relationships provide future foreign leaders with a deep understanding of what life in USA is actually like, and this kind of stuff works to our benefit. Russia does it, China does it, it's par for the course with allied nations--and it's a two way street. While Afghanistan doesn't have assets like a military war college or advanced training, places like Japan and Pakistan and UK do, and we send our people over there too.

The CENTCOM vetting actually worked--all the guys who went walkabout weren't terrorists...they were just guys who wanted to go over the wire and settle in a western country.