Maureen Dowd: Worth a Bottle of Whiskey
[Maureen Dowd writes for the NYT.]
Our 3,413th day at war in Afghanistan seemed like a good day to learn about Afghanistan.
The longest stretch of war in American history has merited the shortest attention span.
I didn’t go to Kabul on the secretary of defense’s Doomsday plane this time. I signed up with the Pentagon for time travel, flying through history watching a remarkable seven-hour marathon of a 12-play series called “The Great Game.” The plays use real and fictional characters, actual transcripts and imagined scenes, to trace the trellis of foreign involvement in Afghanistan from 1842 to the present....
Nicolas Kent of the Tricycle Theatre in London, co-director of “The Great Game,” said the plays are not “agitprop.” When he commissioned them, he felt that the allies “absolutely” should not be in Afghanistan. “But the more I’ve gone into the history and talked to Afghans,” he said, “I personally think we should be there.”...
James Lobb, a 36-year-old Marine captain based at Joint Forces Command in Suffolk, Va., who spent seven months in Afghanistan in 2004, read about the special performances and tracked down Nicolas Kent to score some tickets.
He called it a cautionary tale about taking care before jumping into foreign endeavors. He was struck by the comment of a C.I.A. officer to a mujahedeen in the play. “I understand the difference between you and me,” the C.I.A. guy says. “I know if you lose, I still have a home to go back to.”...
Lobb sent Kent a bottle of whiskey to thank him for the tickets, and the history lesson.
Read entire article at NYT
Our 3,413th day at war in Afghanistan seemed like a good day to learn about Afghanistan.
The longest stretch of war in American history has merited the shortest attention span.
I didn’t go to Kabul on the secretary of defense’s Doomsday plane this time. I signed up with the Pentagon for time travel, flying through history watching a remarkable seven-hour marathon of a 12-play series called “The Great Game.” The plays use real and fictional characters, actual transcripts and imagined scenes, to trace the trellis of foreign involvement in Afghanistan from 1842 to the present....
Nicolas Kent of the Tricycle Theatre in London, co-director of “The Great Game,” said the plays are not “agitprop.” When he commissioned them, he felt that the allies “absolutely” should not be in Afghanistan. “But the more I’ve gone into the history and talked to Afghans,” he said, “I personally think we should be there.”...
James Lobb, a 36-year-old Marine captain based at Joint Forces Command in Suffolk, Va., who spent seven months in Afghanistan in 2004, read about the special performances and tracked down Nicolas Kent to score some tickets.
He called it a cautionary tale about taking care before jumping into foreign endeavors. He was struck by the comment of a C.I.A. officer to a mujahedeen in the play. “I understand the difference between you and me,” the C.I.A. guy says. “I know if you lose, I still have a home to go back to.”...
Lobb sent Kent a bottle of whiskey to thank him for the tickets, and the history lesson.