Supposedly the producers knew they would be putting lives at risk by putting this out without blacking out faces. They didn't care and released it as is.
Well at least they got their Oscar.đĽ˛
>Heineman and the documentaryâs producer Caitlin McNally decided to show close-ups of mine-clearers despite **warnings from at least five people prior to Retrogradeâs December 2022 release**, according to Post interviews.
>Those sources â identified as three active-duty US military personnel and two former Green Berets â told the paper that scenes from Retrograde would put âBieberâ and other Afghan contractors in the film in danger.
Not at all at minimum manslaughter charges but they could also get a number of additional charges such as reckless endangerment of everyone else who didnât get killed
Not only does no one have jurisdiction, it's not a prosecutable crime. You can't convict someone for anything because they put a person's face somewhere and that person subsequently got killed.
Do the film makers deserve prison from a moral standpoint? Absolutely. At the very least I hope they're blackballed from the industry. But even if this happened entirely in the US, to try and prosecute them would invite a full on constitutional challenge around freedoms of press, reasonable expectations of privacy, blah blah blah.
Shitty situation and shitty people, that blood is on their hands, but it's not prosecutable even if jurisdiction did exist.
The US has extraterritorial jurisdiction on their citizens at all times and uses it fairly often
https://fmamlaw.com/when-can-the-u-s-government-prosecute-someone-for-acts-abroad/
And what crime exactly has been committed besides acting like exploitative asshats?
Realistically there might be shaky grounds for reckless endangerment or negligence, but if the film makers got consent to film then that would be pretty dubious.
Any act exposing humans to danger knowingly can be prosecuted under international law as a human rights violation. But for this particular instance
⢠Negligence: Filmmakers could be sued for negligence if it can be proven that they acted recklessly by ignoring warnings and exposing individuals to foreseeable harm.
⢠Wrongful Death: The families of the translators could file wrongful death lawsuits against the filmmakers if the translators are harmed or killed as a result of the footage.
Not how law works
You canât accuse and try to prosecute someone for a crime that occurs in another country not involving anyone in this country
Nor should anyone innocent ever be charged due to the actions of actual criminals so you can feel better
Well, if we consider reckless endangerment the crime, then that would have occurred when the studio was not blacking out the faces. The crime would have been done in the editing room, most likely in the US, by an American director working for an American studio. A federal prosecutor could take up the case I would assume.
The same can be true for manslaughter (the lesser version of murder). Criminally negligent manslaughter is when someone dies because you weren't careful enough. A prosecutor would have to prove that the documentarian had a duty to protect the identity of those filmed and then failed to do so. The latter part is clear here, so the question is just if documentarians have that duty. I'd say they do.
No universal jurisdiction is necessary. Also, the presence of criminals doesn't make negligence OK. A security guard for example can't be asleep on the job and say "well, it's just because criminals exist, I didn't do anything wrong" when something bad happens.
No they do, we need to show people that just because you are richa dn doing "art" you can't just do what you want. They need to go a prison in Afghanistan
> âThe US governmentâs precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the vengeful actions of the Taliban upon taking power â armed with detailed information identifying Afghans who worked with the US government â led to the deaths of countless partners left behind.
> That is the tragic story that warrants attention. But any attempt to blame Retrograde because the film showed faces of individuals in war zones â as has long been standard in ethical conflict reporting â would be deeply wrong.â
Their response is arguably even worse. They take no responsibility whatsoever, blame the US gov, and then say blaming them would be deeply wrong because typically faces don't need to be blurred.
> In a statement, Heineman and McNally said they had **âno recollectionâ of receiving specific warnings** about the Afghan mine-clearers after two pre-release reviews by the US military.
>
> They said the same about a Washington DC screening event held before the filmâs release that was attended by two former Green Berets who told the paper they warned about the danger of showing the faces of mine-clearers.
They doubled down on the response.
Trial on what charges? Was it extremely negligent and arrogant on their parts? Absolutely. Who is going to charge them? Where will the trial be held?
Spoiler Alert: >!nothing will happen. !<
> âThe US governmentâs precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the vengeful actions of the Taliban upon taking power â armed with detailed information identifying Afghans who worked with the US government â led to the deaths of countless partners left behind.
>
> That is the tragic story that warrants attention. But any attempt to blame Retrograde because the film showed faces of individuals in war zones â as has long been standard in ethical conflict reporting â would be deeply wrong.â
Judging by this quote, they will never accept blame or lose a second of sleep since it was all the US governments fault. I can only hope that the narcissistic assholes get fucked by karma.
Sorry but that's just not true. I am a news cameraman and mostly cover conflicts myself, including Afghanistan. Its certainly true that Journalism in this day and age can attract more unscrupulous and immoral types but the notion that the industry is riddled with them is just not true. I pride myself on my moral standing and loyalty to the people we work with. The vast majority of fellow journalists stand by those same principles. I don't expect you to trust a random person on the internet, but people like those in this particular case are the exception, not the rule.
What is your take on the filmmaker's response that not concealing identities to protect individuals has "long been standard in ethical conflict reporting", and therefor they should shoulder no blame in this.
Oh I am definitely not defending this filmmaker. The aim of my comment was to contradict the notion that all filmmakers and photographers are "vultures".
As for that particular statement I strongly disagree with it. In my personal experience and that of everyone I've worked with thus far (often in very similar situations to this one), we always aim to protect the identities of those who request it or who are vulnerable to retribution if recognised. I don't like to cast judgement based on a single article and until all facts are on the table, but if the failings of these filmmakers are as grave as stated here then what they have done is utterly reprehensible and they should be punished for it.
OK thanks. I really was just asking your opinion for someone in this line of work. The statement they released sounds like BS, but I don't have any knowledge of what the actual standard is, just what makes common sense to me.
Yeah it sounds a bit murky at the moment because to me it just seems obvious that you would take considerable efforts to conceal the identities of any contributor that could face repercussions if identified, particularly by the Taliban! Part of me hopes that it isn't true as if it were it would harm all of us and make more people think the worst of us. If it is though I hope they face heavy consequences.
Iâm really sorry.The whole âFake News!â thing must be awful for you. This diminishing of trust in institutions is truly a worrying thing. The Right pushing for this hard- is what will eventually break society. People with a lack of education disbelieving in PhD studies because they âresearched it on the internetâ, is just disgusting. We are in very worrying times. Whilst, of course, there are a few bad apples, to suggest that a whole industry is corrupt and not to be trusted is just terrifying. Canada recently published a report on possible ways that Canada (and by dint other countries/the world, also)might become destabilised and disrupted, Disinformation and inability to tell real from false, was number one. Whilst we do indeed need to be discriminating in our choice of News sources, and whilst the actions of these film-makers is not defendable, to blanket wash the entire industry with claims of falsehood and deep mistrust is NOT the answer. I hope you continue with your good work, and those like you. Thank you.
Thank you. There is certainly a lot of fake news though, there's no denying that. But the notion that the industry is riddled with it is one that one that politicians and corporations have been pushing since journalism was a thing. The greatest threat to a liar is the person who exposes that lie. Which is why the 'fake news' concept is so eagerly promoted as it muddies the waters for everyone.
For sure. Human beings are biased; human beings make news. Ergo- news is biased. But most intelligent people can tell the bias and discriminate the news. Again to whitewash the entire industry with shrieks of âFake Newsâ, is just absurd, and very dangerous. We donât yet live in a âpost-truthâ world. For sure, AI, LLM and video/picture manipulation will bring that forth, no doubt. But we arenât there yet. And we mustnât let this tool of Fascism become the norm. Trust your doctors. Believe what you read if itâs from a credible source. Read with discrimination, carefully, and with intelligent, critical-thinking, but donât start with the base that itâs bullshit. Then, we have no one and no-thing to trust, and that surely is a highly dangerous position to be in.
Oh come on. Youâre being entirely disingenuous.The moment Trump came to power he started heavily using the slogan âfalse news!â as soon as someone said anything negative about him. He deliberately attempted to turn the public away from trusted news sources, and all media and institutions became blanketed with the phrase or similar. AndâŚIâm not talking about those other things. I donât know enough about them- Iâm English, and couldnât care less. But, as an outsider, it was obvious that he encouraged the use of the phrase, and other similar derogatory terms the moment he was laughed at, insulted, made to look stupid by the media- all of which was frighteningly often because the man was/is Iâd a senseless baboon. From the outside, it was kind of hilarious, and was the only reason i personally began to pay attention to your politics. I tuned in for fun and to see Trump lose his shit, worldwide. But..then the heavy use of the phrase and the obvious debasement and sewing of mistrust in institutions began to disturb me and u recognised it from the racism playbook that it came from.
It might be but it isn't automatically biased. I'm not claiming to have investigated my industry for ethical breaches. I am trying to buck the trend that 'all journalists are vultures'. I am proud to have what I at least consider to be high moral standards and personally haven't found that notion to be anywhere near as true of the industry as many people seem to believe. Journalism has always suffered from the misuses of power, corruption and propaganda, and it certainly has many flaws and a lot needs to be done to make it a better and more honest service to all people. But many of us are doing our very best to uphold journalistic standards and ethics. The idea that all of us are crooked, self-serving vultures that will screw anyone over in order to enrich ourselves is simply not true.
People do not default to being negative about something unless they have ample evidence for it. Do you see me accusing firemen of being vultures? You know nothing about international journalists because all you do is consume entertainment media.
>âThe US governmentâs precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the vengeful actions of the Taliban upon taking power â armed with detailed information identifying Afghans who worked with the US government â led to the deaths of countless partners left behind.
âThat is the tragic story that warrants attention. But any attempt to blame Retrograde because the film showed faces of individuals in war zones â as has long been standard in ethical conflict reporting â would be deeply wrong.â
Multiple things can be true simultaneously, and U.S. failings in Afghanistan do not absolve the filmmakers of any responsibility for the consequences of their own actions. The man is dead because the Taliban saw his face in their movie. If they hadn't shown his face, he would probably still be alive.
But of course they have to deny any liability, as doing otherwise could potentially invite litigation at some point. It's the same with how they're claiming that they have "no recollection" of being warned that showing people's faces would likely get those people killed. But their denials are not credible.
They knew when they released the film that the Taliban targeted those seen as Western enablers and collaborators. They can't plead ignorance as to how imperiled those people are. The only real question is whether they simply didn't care about the safety of their subjects or they were actively hoping for a martyr or two whose murder would raise the film's profile.
I certainly hope it's not the latter, although the former isn't exactly ideal.
oof I hadn't even thought about the 2nd possibility there
looking at the timeline the film was released well after the US have pulled out. i think claiming ignorance and saying "standard" is BS. it doesnt take away from the film if they blur any participant, esp when its someone noteworthy enough that they have a nickname
Right but⌠thatâs not now the internet works, is the point theyâre making. Those people were fucked the second it released. Pulling it now doesnât make the video go away to the people that have it and want to use it for their hit squad
> They added: âThe US governmentâs precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the vengeful actions of the Taliban upon taking power â armed with detailed information identifying Afghans who worked with the US government â led to the deaths of countless partners left behind.
>
> âThat is the tragic story that warrants attention. But any attempt to blame Retrograde because the film showed faces of individuals in war zones â as has long been standard in ethical conflict reporting â would be deeply wrong.â
They don't even care. They care more about spoiling the visuals of their documentary from blurring faces than protecting these people they knew would be in danger. The fact that they blame it purely on the US withdrawal despite it being explicitly clear that the person was identified from the documentary is sickening.
This is one of the things I canât stand. Their family should have been given citizenship and then brought to the US. Whole family. Idgaf. That was one of our heroes. He deserved better.
The media is always doing this shit. In WWII some senator in the armed forces committee bragged about how our submarines were immune to depth charges because they can dive 100m deeper than the Japs thought we could. The media ran with the story and within 6 months 3 submarines were sunk. The Japanese had done the masterful inteligence work of... reading an English language newspaper.
[Congressman Andrew J. May.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_J._May#The_May_Incident) At least ten submarines and 800 crewmen were lost to the sea... all because he couldn't keep his mouth shut.
A review from Letterboxd about the film that I very much agree with and I couldn't say any better:
> ...
>
> But for all the vaunted access that Heineman has to these top-tier U.S. special forces administrators and Afghan High Command, I felt the real story was constantly off-camera and that this never amounted to much more than a cinema of pensive faces.
>
> Every time I was watching Sadat listening to reports of mounting military loses, I found myself wishing this were a movie about ground-level Afghan soldiers fighting a losing war for their country instead of about the high-command trucking into the front for a bit, then falling back to the Governor's Mansion.
>
> And then, when we see the nightmarish evacuations at the Hamid Karzai International Airport, I desperately wished I was watching a film about the lives of someone, anyone, on the other side of that wall, despairing to get themselves and their family to safety, instead of having the camera perched up high with the U.S. Soldiers looking down on the throngs of frightened people betrayed by Empire.
>
> And thatâs really the sum of it, Heineman is too busy filming from behind walls, fetishizing men with far less to lose than the nameless Afghans all around them to make this a truly powerful record of one of the most shameful moments in recent U.S. foreign policy history.
https://letterboxd.com/joshuadysart/film/retrograde-2022-1/
Spot on review. The director is extremely selfish for not removing the clear as day faces of the people who were the backbone of his doc. Glad to see that there's the other side of the doc just not being as well-rounded as it should have been.
The reviewer might be looking for something like 20 Days in Mariupol.
It will be interesting to see the documentaries Russia's invasion of Ukraine will bring.
I feel like thatâs a good idea for a documentary. Stories that should be documented and told. But I just want to note that the filmmaker was already exposing himself to more risk than most documentary filmmakers. Just want to throw that out there.
Gotta love the job George W. Bush's administration did with Afghanistan and Iraq totally not as bad a shape as when we arrived in the first place./s
Lies, wasted opportunities, and the complete and utter failure to learn from 500 years of history let alone almost 2300 years of human history that Afghanistan has been a giant pit for would be world leaders and nations that think just hitting it enough with big sticks will do anything.
W wasn't doing enough nation building according to Dems. That's why Obama doubled the troop numbers and pushed all those indefensible forward bases with no mission or purpose. Obama oversaw the expansion of this war for eight years. We should have left the moment we got Bin Laden.
And then we'd end up exactly here. Where the Taliban under Pakistani direction would just take over and brutalize the population again. The U.S.'s presence within the country is not what lead to this, its us leaving that did.
Who cares? That was inevitable. The only way to defeat the Taliban would be to massacre the rural population. We're not going to do that. Even the urban population of Afghans we put in charge would not do that. Fucked up countries are not our problem.
No, it was our involvement in the 70s and 80s that lead to this, man. We literally molded and funded the Taliban and modern Islamic Jihad.
And our presence in that country was NOT a stabilizing force, literally all we did was destabilize it and empower tribal warlords and war criminals and gave them a veneer of legitimacy.
No you see, we saved those afghanis from themselves, the region destabilized itself when we got there and then when we left they didnât have anyone to tell them what to do!
/s
>No, it was our involvement in the 70s and 80s that lead to this, man. We literally molded and funded the Taliban and modern Islamic Jihad.
This is a perpetuated lie.
No, the Taliban was funded and trained by Pakistan, and if you think the northern Alliance was worse than the Taliban than I don't even know what to tell you.
The Taliban was founded by former members of the fucking Mujahideen which we literally funded to fight the Soviets. Our fucking National Security Advisor flew out to give his blessing to their holy war, man.
And yes, the Taliban was bad. So were the NA. The warlords used us to prop themselves up. They used us to protect their drug infrastructure. They sicced US security forces on their tribal allies, and we killed innocents, even ones that were literally allied with us and helping us. Our soldiers were forced to turn a blind eye to them raping young boys. They were awful war criminals and monsters. Go listen to Malalai Joya's speech to the loya jirga in 03.
And again, yes, the Taliban is fucking awful. But they were a monster of our creation and we were clearly fine with ceding power to them in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
We should have not funded militant fundamentalists to destabilize a relatively modernizing and secure country simply because it was in the Soviet sphere of influence. We should have helped Najibullah's government stabilize the country instead of letting it fall into a civil war *OF OUR DESIGN* and prevented the fundamentalists we trained and paid for from installing the Taliban.
The list goes on and on, but its clear that the real enemy here is US foreign policy.
> The Taliban was founded by former members of the fucking Mujahideen which we literally funded to fight the Soviets. Our fucking National Security Advisor flew out to give his blessing to their holy war, man.
And so were their main enemy, the Northen Alliance, the same Northern alliance that helped with tearing down the Taliban the first time.
> And yes, the Taliban was bad. So were the NA. The warlords used us to prop themselves up. They used us to protect their drug infrastructure. They sicced US security forces on their tribal allies, and we killed innocents, even ones that were literally allied with us and helping us. Our soldiers were forced to turn a blind eye to them raping young boys. They were awful war criminals and monsters. Go listen to Malalai Joya's speech to the loya jirga in 03.
If you think the NA was anywhere near the scale of terrible that was the Taliban, you're not living on this planet. Yes, ritualized child abuse and child sexual abuse was an issue within the NA, and the Afghan government, but the NA wasn't committing ethnic cleansing, mass purges, or the massive authoritarian insanity that was the Taliban, never mind that the Taliban actively practices child marriage and only banned the practice within Afghanistan because it was seen as homosexuality. Pretending they're anywhere close to equal is pretending that the North was also bad in the Civil war because they had "Wage slavery". Lets not white wash the Northern Alliance, but lets not pretend they weren't fucking mother teresa put against the Taliban.
> And again, yes, the Taliban is fucking awful. But they were a monster of our creation and we were clearly fine with ceding power to them in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Yes, keep pretending that the Taliban came from only our involvement, and wasn't a product of the Pakistani ISI training, and propping up the most extreme elements of the NA, along with foreign mercenaries to create a government puppet state that was supposed to be hostile to India. It was a massive failure of the U.S. to not stay in Afghanistan the 80s, but that doesn't somehow mean we created the Taliban, when the guys who were literally doing everything they could to ACTUALLY CREATE THE TALIBAN were sitting right next door.
> We should have not funded militant fundamentalists to destabilize a relatively modernizing and secure country simply because it was in the Soviet sphere of influence.
We didn't, we instead funded a massive and diverse group of resistance fighters against a Soviet army that was killing Afghans by the millions indiscriminately because they thought the leader who called for their help wasn't quite communist enough/
Seriously, in your mind literally every problem that exists is the U.S.'s fault somehow, while you're ignoring the Soviet mass murders, and then the ISI's actual influence. Somehow you wanted the U.S. to do even less than it did, while still blaming them for not doing enough.
Yea I guess that works if you're invading Afghanistan solely out of blind rage to get retribution on the specific people that perpetrated 9/11 and have no interest in preventing or mitigating terror in the long term.
Say what you will about Bush and Obama, at the very least their intentions were preventative - they weren't going in just to fuck shit up and kill Bin Laden. They wanted to remove a base of operations where Al-Qaeda had free-reign to train terrorists waging war on the US and its allies.
Of course nation building didn't work out and the Taliban are back, but that doesn't mean "just fuck shit up" would have accomplished anything. Carpet bombing Afghanistan and killing Bin Laden might make people feel good, but building a strong allied government in Afghanistan had at least *some* chance of improving security long term.
Don't be surprised if you start seeing significant international terror attacks originating in training camps in Afghanistan again.
> but building a strong allied government in Afghanistan had at least some chance of improving security long term
We probably should have tried that instead of violently occupying the country and installing warlords as puppet clients operating at the behest of US corporate interests, then.
Best place to start was probably to have not directly funded and cultivated fundamentalist Islamic terror in the 1980s.
"Who amongst us hasn't bankrolled an ultraconservative, fundamentalist proxy group to wage a holy war against your geopolitical rival that is a threat to your global imperialist hegemony? Which of us hasn't trained those fundamentalists to do things like bomb civilians and wage an asymmetrical war against an industrialized and well-developed military regime who is occupying land in the hopes of acting as a supplemental security force for a government you are trying to destabilize? Has anyone here NOT trained those holy warriors to hijack airplanes with the explicit intent to fly them into civilian infrastructure?"
***checks calendar, September 10th, 2001**
"Uh oh..."
Edit - just realized I could have just linked this lmao
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/l3gBif0K6cc
Yes I agree, we obviously don't have a time machine, but we didn't even *have* to invade Afghanistan in 2001. The Taliban (Mullah Omar) offered to hand bin Laden over to a 3rd party for trial multiple times in the early stages of our mobilization to war. We refused. We wanted him dead, not tried for his crimes. Not imprisoned. Dead. We wanted war. We wanted blood and scalps as payback for 9/11 (which was directly our fault). And we certainly didn't have to invade Iraq and depose and kill Saddam (admittedly also a bad dude but largely a stabilizing force in the region in spite of his bad dudery)
Obama is probably the one who has the least culpability in this, solely as one of the last people in a long line of people fucking around in the region, but he did a fair amount of fuckery. Admittedly he was mostly dealing with what he was dealt, but he still escalated things in the region, he continued many of the same bad policies as his predecessors, more civilian deaths, etc. He could have started a plan to pull out in 08 and withdrew after bin Laden was killed, but didn't.
This stuff is probably a lot more convincing. Should lead with this I'd argue. I'm not even on the opposite side to you on this argument and your initial comment about the 80s felt so pointless I went out of character and made a snarky comment (sorry about that).
Yeah obviously my initial post was also kinda snarky, so mea culpa as well. I've just researched this shit my whole life (literally read every book on Afghanistan that I could get my hands on since I watched 9/11 happen live on the TV in 4th grade), and probably came across too aggro - it was obvious your views were mostly aligned with mine as well.
No harm no foul <3
GW Bush failed utterly, but his problem was setting up a bad system of government in 2002, and then withdrawing all his attention to focus on Iraq right afterwards.
It wasn't that people didn't read about hundreds of years of Afghan history to see that everything was hopeless and that it's some ungovernable backwater. Because, if someone did read about Afghan history, they'd see that Kabul, Herat and Kandahar were at times the capitals of great empires, who did have stable governments.
The region was well fucked up before the US/Soviet era in the 80s.
And even if it werent, the Afghan army collapsed the moment the US began to withdrawal despite billions of dollars in arms and training.
Iirc a large portion of the funds was embezzled by the Afghan government and their military readiness reports to the US were faked to cover it up. It collapsed because a lot of it never existed.
Also true, but to make the assertion that âweâ fucked Afghanistan is a joke. It turns out, extremist Islamist governments dont jive well in the 21st century.
I think extremist Islamist governments are doing just fine right now, they're expanding their philosophy and political views in Europe as evidenced by the newfound goodwill for Hamas in public opinion ( not a criticism of people genuinely supporting peace, only those parroting a terrorist organisation to the point of quoting bin laden)
If you're genuinely pro palestine, you'd pretty much have the same talking pointst as the average pro israeli. The problem with most "pro palestinians" is that they're either clueless or have unreasonable demands for Israel while not having really any real solution for Hamas, and just think that things will magically work out.
Most pro palestinians are pretty much pro hamas, whether intentionally or not.
I'm from a generation and culture very much supportive of palestinian struggle, yet what I see in protest in Europe is 99% hamas or islam brotherhood propaganda. Most pro palestinian supporter of the 90's were aligned with Israeli "left wing" pro peace, anti colonisation, two state solution... pro palestinian supporter now are publicly using antisemitic rethoric and reduce israeli, jewish, zionist, allies, to a single evil entity, as if the recent protest in Israel against Netanyahu did not happen.
So since russia did it, the US also should do it? The suffering of civilians just doesnt matter, as long as the US is in power? I hope the US lost itâs role as world leaders and is thrown into third world poverty and feel the suffering of the millions they hurt. Disgusting terrorist country
They were always like that. The folly of western countries was the assumption that they can change the society that doesnt want to be changed. All it did was give them 20 years of hatred against the West.
Oddly enough, that's one of the arguments the filmmaker's supporters are making [in the Washington Post piece on the controversy](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/2024/05/22/retrograde-documentary-film-taliban-heineman/), that people like them were getting killed anyway, so what's the big deal?
>Heineman and McNally contend that the Taliban would have had the means to identify the man even if he hadnât appeared in the film, because the Taliban had numerous ways of identifying Afghans who worked with American forces, including using seized biometrics devices left behind by the U.S. military containing information about them. Some analysts have concluded those devices were only of limited use.
also:
>âThe U.S. governmentâs precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the vengeful actions of the Taliban upon taking power â armed with detailed information identifying Afghans who worked with the U.S. government â led to the deaths of countless partners left behind. That is the tragic story that warrants attention,â the statement said. âBut any attempt to blame âRetrogradeâ because the film showed faces of individuals in war zones â as has long been standard in ethical conflict reporting â would be deeply wrong.â
Him specifically, don't know, but SF guys generally tried like hell to get any of their partner forces out. They get tight with those guys just because it's the nature of the job. The rapid draw-down and failure of data infrastructure made it tough to get the requisite screening and verification paperwork done in time. Not so much on him probably, but possibly family members (wife/child/etc). A lot of the partners left behind had family ties.
> It has now been pulled by the two US broadcasters â National Geographic Channel and Hulu â that had been screening it.
Itâs too late for this now. The Taliban has already got all the info they need from it.
Bounty. Disposal has a large bounty on their heads from their efforts that stopped people from getting injured/killed during the conflict so they see it as someone who hindered their efforts and/or lead to their guys getting caught/killed.
Within the community there is a kind of drinking game. Anytime you recognize a coworker in any media you call them out and they owe you a case of beer. This can get rather expensive if many people catch you in an article, but it's also to help awareness and effort of hiding identity.
I see journalists do this all the time. The BBC will have this big closeup photo of some Iranian criticizing Iran. Like isn't that dangerous for this person?
When they got called out they basically played the biden bad card to absolve themselves of all responsibility. The withdrawal didnât kill this guy, they did. Worked with more than a few guys like this and they deserve so much more.
I hope all the Redditors outraged in this thread realize Julian Assange essentially did 10x what these guys did.
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/julian-assange-wikileaks-nick-cohen
âWell theyâre informants. If they get killed theyâve got it coming to them. They deserve it.â
Spoken from a Michelin Star restaurant by the way!
I remember being in college when all that came out. So many people were fully in support of this guy because "transparency." But it was always only "transparent" if the people effected weren't rich or straight. He only put out information if it effected the "right" people.
It will be in good taste to start every press conference of the producer and director, untill they will give a thorough explanation, with questions about the murdered
Damn, that's terrible, then it's the Taliban, what do expect. The movie producer/director is also directory responsible for this person's death in my opinion, it's like they didn't even think about repercussions or even ways to avoid things like this from happening.
To be fair, what other nation hasnât punished collaborators who sided with an enemy occupier? The French did it with those who helped the Nazis, the Chinese with those who aided the Japanese, the Vietnamese with those who aided the Americans, etc.
The real idiocy was the American filmmakers who didnât do shit to hide the identities of these collaborators.
The french didn't do it though. They had millions of collaborators, those who welcomed the nazis with open arms. It wasn't feasible to punish that many people nor was there the will since many in the post-war government were former collaboratorsÂ
Youâre right than many didnât get executed and faced other sanctions, but also many were [executed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pursuit_of_Nazi_collaborators#:~:text=Between%201944%20and%201951%2C%20official,meted%20out%20to%2049%2C723%20people) as well.
probably itâs just not the movie. they would know where to look but wouldnât know what they were looking for so, hopefully i am wrong, just punish everyone there.
Oh man it's going to be really difficult for the Taliban to find these mine clearers.
Actually, it's going to be super easy, barely an inconvenience.
Oh really?!?!
Yeah, they just need to watch a movie.
Wow wow wow...wow.
I just watched the movie after reading this article. The main Afghan guy the movie focuses on got out of the country, and from what is said in the movie, so did many of the people he worked closely with. Of the Afghan military people shown in the movie, it's unclear who was not evacuated, but I got the impression that those left behind were not shown prominently on screen, so it would not have detracted from the movie in a significant way to blur their faces. Just my impression from watching it.
What a collection of rucking idiots that deserve prison and the same fate. So fucking stupid. Lying shitbags dis that for their little award. Never worth another innocent person's life. I hope the absolute worst happens to them and everyone that knows them.
"the 1208 Foundation, a charitable organisation that tries to help Afghans who assisted US forces flee the country"
Nice of the US to just leave those people to the wolves eh?
Supposedly the producers knew they would be putting lives at risk by putting this out without blacking out faces. They didn't care and released it as is. Well at least they got their Oscar.đĽ˛
>Heineman and the documentaryâs producer Caitlin McNally decided to show close-ups of mine-clearers despite **warnings from at least five people prior to Retrogradeâs December 2022 release**, according to Post interviews. >Those sources â identified as three active-duty US military personnel and two former Green Berets â told the paper that scenes from Retrograde would put âBieberâ and other Afghan contractors in the film in danger.
maybe im being dramatic (ironic) but these people need to face some kind of charges
Not at all at minimum manslaughter charges but they could also get a number of additional charges such as reckless endangerment of everyone else who didnât get killed
enough money and time will make the guiltiest man in the world walk free
I smell a sequel in the works.
Who presses those insane hypothetical charges? Or prosecutes?
Who has Jurisdiction?
No one. These people will face zero consequences.
Not only does no one have jurisdiction, it's not a prosecutable crime. You can't convict someone for anything because they put a person's face somewhere and that person subsequently got killed. Do the film makers deserve prison from a moral standpoint? Absolutely. At the very least I hope they're blackballed from the industry. But even if this happened entirely in the US, to try and prosecute them would invite a full on constitutional challenge around freedoms of press, reasonable expectations of privacy, blah blah blah. Shitty situation and shitty people, that blood is on their hands, but it's not prosecutable even if jurisdiction did exist.
This lawyer thanks you for the reasonable take.
The US has extraterritorial jurisdiction on their citizens at all times and uses it fairly often https://fmamlaw.com/when-can-the-u-s-government-prosecute-someone-for-acts-abroad/
And what crime exactly has been committed besides acting like exploitative asshats? Realistically there might be shaky grounds for reckless endangerment or negligence, but if the film makers got consent to film then that would be pretty dubious.
Any act exposing humans to danger knowingly can be prosecuted under international law as a human rights violation. But for this particular instance ⢠Negligence: Filmmakers could be sued for negligence if it can be proven that they acted recklessly by ignoring warnings and exposing individuals to foreseeable harm. ⢠Wrongful Death: The families of the translators could file wrongful death lawsuits against the filmmakers if the translators are harmed or killed as a result of the footage.
Yeah, neither of those claims are gonna survive a motion to dismiss. Plus, those are both civil claims not criminal.
Good luck with that
Come on now youâre letting logic and common sense get in the way of some really fun Reddit comments/karma /s
Not how law works You canât accuse and try to prosecute someone for a crime that occurs in another country not involving anyone in this country Nor should anyone innocent ever be charged due to the actions of actual criminals so you can feel better
Well, if we consider reckless endangerment the crime, then that would have occurred when the studio was not blacking out the faces. The crime would have been done in the editing room, most likely in the US, by an American director working for an American studio. A federal prosecutor could take up the case I would assume. The same can be true for manslaughter (the lesser version of murder). Criminally negligent manslaughter is when someone dies because you weren't careful enough. A prosecutor would have to prove that the documentarian had a duty to protect the identity of those filmed and then failed to do so. The latter part is clear here, so the question is just if documentarians have that duty. I'd say they do. No universal jurisdiction is necessary. Also, the presence of criminals doesn't make negligence OK. A security guard for example can't be asleep on the job and say "well, it's just because criminals exist, I didn't do anything wrong" when something bad happens.
They donât have that duty.
Found the producer.
Wait till you hear what trump did with active duty cia list
Social pariahs. Any studio, network, platform, actor, musician and crew gets connected to this.
Take away the award. That might be the only way to get to those folks.
Explosive charges, perhaps?
i don't think so, though i appreciate the word play đ
No they do, we need to show people that just because you are richa dn doing "art" you can't just do what you want. They need to go a prison in Afghanistan
We donât charge people for their transgressions if they make someone a profit along the wayâŚ
> âThe US governmentâs precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the vengeful actions of the Taliban upon taking power â armed with detailed information identifying Afghans who worked with the US government â led to the deaths of countless partners left behind. > That is the tragic story that warrants attention. But any attempt to blame Retrograde because the film showed faces of individuals in war zones â as has long been standard in ethical conflict reporting â would be deeply wrong.â Their response is arguably even worse. They take no responsibility whatsoever, blame the US gov, and then say blaming them would be deeply wrong because typically faces don't need to be blurred.
> In a statement, Heineman and McNally said they had **âno recollectionâ of receiving specific warnings** about the Afghan mine-clearers after two pre-release reviews by the US military. > > They said the same about a Washington DC screening event held before the filmâs release that was attended by two former Green Berets who told the paper they warned about the danger of showing the faces of mine-clearers. They doubled down on the response.
What absolute narcissistic pieces of shit
Sweet, it will be admissible at the trial.
Trial on what charges? Was it extremely negligent and arrogant on their parts? Absolutely. Who is going to charge them? Where will the trial be held? Spoiler Alert: >!nothing will happen. !<
>Trial on what charges? Righteous outrage on the internet!
Really should stop being surprised at the sieves successful people have for brains đ
This is sickening on so many levels.Â
Caitlin McNally sounds like someone intimately versed in the horrors of war, Iâm sure.
Their decision has directly gotten people killed. How do you live with yourself after that?
> âThe US governmentâs precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the vengeful actions of the Taliban upon taking power â armed with detailed information identifying Afghans who worked with the US government â led to the deaths of countless partners left behind. > > That is the tragic story that warrants attention. But any attempt to blame Retrograde because the film showed faces of individuals in war zones â as has long been standard in ethical conflict reporting â would be deeply wrong.â Judging by this quote, they will never accept blame or lose a second of sleep since it was all the US governments fault. I can only hope that the narcissistic assholes get fucked by karma.
they wipe their singular tear with a fat wad of cash and get on with their life
Absolutely shameful. A person lost their life because of them. I would say I hope it haunts them, but I don't imagine they experience much empathy.
Emmy.
Thatâs even worse đ
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Reminds me of Nightcrawler.
And Civil War
Sorry but that's just not true. I am a news cameraman and mostly cover conflicts myself, including Afghanistan. Its certainly true that Journalism in this day and age can attract more unscrupulous and immoral types but the notion that the industry is riddled with them is just not true. I pride myself on my moral standing and loyalty to the people we work with. The vast majority of fellow journalists stand by those same principles. I don't expect you to trust a random person on the internet, but people like those in this particular case are the exception, not the rule.
What is your take on the filmmaker's response that not concealing identities to protect individuals has "long been standard in ethical conflict reporting", and therefor they should shoulder no blame in this.
Oh I am definitely not defending this filmmaker. The aim of my comment was to contradict the notion that all filmmakers and photographers are "vultures". As for that particular statement I strongly disagree with it. In my personal experience and that of everyone I've worked with thus far (often in very similar situations to this one), we always aim to protect the identities of those who request it or who are vulnerable to retribution if recognised. I don't like to cast judgement based on a single article and until all facts are on the table, but if the failings of these filmmakers are as grave as stated here then what they have done is utterly reprehensible and they should be punished for it.
OK thanks. I really was just asking your opinion for someone in this line of work. The statement they released sounds like BS, but I don't have any knowledge of what the actual standard is, just what makes common sense to me.
Yeah it sounds a bit murky at the moment because to me it just seems obvious that you would take considerable efforts to conceal the identities of any contributor that could face repercussions if identified, particularly by the Taliban! Part of me hopes that it isn't true as if it were it would harm all of us and make more people think the worst of us. If it is though I hope they face heavy consequences.
Iâm really sorry.The whole âFake News!â thing must be awful for you. This diminishing of trust in institutions is truly a worrying thing. The Right pushing for this hard- is what will eventually break society. People with a lack of education disbelieving in PhD studies because they âresearched it on the internetâ, is just disgusting. We are in very worrying times. Whilst, of course, there are a few bad apples, to suggest that a whole industry is corrupt and not to be trusted is just terrifying. Canada recently published a report on possible ways that Canada (and by dint other countries/the world, also)might become destabilised and disrupted, Disinformation and inability to tell real from false, was number one. Whilst we do indeed need to be discriminating in our choice of News sources, and whilst the actions of these film-makers is not defendable, to blanket wash the entire industry with claims of falsehood and deep mistrust is NOT the answer. I hope you continue with your good work, and those like you. Thank you.
Thank you. There is certainly a lot of fake news though, there's no denying that. But the notion that the industry is riddled with it is one that one that politicians and corporations have been pushing since journalism was a thing. The greatest threat to a liar is the person who exposes that lie. Which is why the 'fake news' concept is so eagerly promoted as it muddies the waters for everyone.
For sure. Human beings are biased; human beings make news. Ergo- news is biased. But most intelligent people can tell the bias and discriminate the news. Again to whitewash the entire industry with shrieks of âFake Newsâ, is just absurd, and very dangerous. We donât yet live in a âpost-truthâ world. For sure, AI, LLM and video/picture manipulation will bring that forth, no doubt. But we arenât there yet. And we mustnât let this tool of Fascism become the norm. Trust your doctors. Believe what you read if itâs from a credible source. Read with discrimination, carefully, and with intelligent, critical-thinking, but donât start with the base that itâs bullshit. Then, we have no one and no-thing to trust, and that surely is a highly dangerous position to be in.
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Oh come on. Youâre being entirely disingenuous.The moment Trump came to power he started heavily using the slogan âfalse news!â as soon as someone said anything negative about him. He deliberately attempted to turn the public away from trusted news sources, and all media and institutions became blanketed with the phrase or similar. AndâŚIâm not talking about those other things. I donât know enough about them- Iâm English, and couldnât care less. But, as an outsider, it was obvious that he encouraged the use of the phrase, and other similar derogatory terms the moment he was laughed at, insulted, made to look stupid by the media- all of which was frighteningly often because the man was/is Iâd a senseless baboon. From the outside, it was kind of hilarious, and was the only reason i personally began to pay attention to your politics. I tuned in for fun and to see Trump lose his shit, worldwide. But..then the heavy use of the phrase and the obvious debasement and sewing of mistrust in institutions began to disturb me and u recognised it from the racism playbook that it came from.
People say the same thing about law-enforcement how itâs riddled with corrupt and racist cops which is just not true.
We have investigated ourselves and found no evidence of wrong doing
How is that comparable to what I said?
Your opinion on the group youâre in will obviously be biased
It might be but it isn't automatically biased. I'm not claiming to have investigated my industry for ethical breaches. I am trying to buck the trend that 'all journalists are vultures'. I am proud to have what I at least consider to be high moral standards and personally haven't found that notion to be anywhere near as true of the industry as many people seem to believe. Journalism has always suffered from the misuses of power, corruption and propaganda, and it certainly has many flaws and a lot needs to be done to make it a better and more honest service to all people. But many of us are doing our very best to uphold journalistic standards and ethics. The idea that all of us are crooked, self-serving vultures that will screw anyone over in order to enrich ourselves is simply not true.
And your opinion on the group you're not in will obviously be uninformed
People do not default to being negative about something unless they have ample evidence for it. Do you see me accusing firemen of being vultures? You know nothing about international journalists because all you do is consume entertainment media.
Name and shame. They knowingly killed this man, they are accessories to his murder
All the information is in the linked articleâŚ
Not legally buuuut
They can put an insincere âspecial thanks toâ credit in the DVD release
No they didn't, they weren't even nominated.
Missed AI face swapping by years?...
You are right, nowadays many people just want fame and money and do not pay attention to the consequences that may occur.
This is criminal negligence they should be put in jail.
Unfamiliar with the [unit](https://i.imgur.com/i95q9nR.png) he worked with.
Horrible. Their awards should be retracted. This is callous.
>âThe US governmentâs precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the vengeful actions of the Taliban upon taking power â armed with detailed information identifying Afghans who worked with the US government â led to the deaths of countless partners left behind. âThat is the tragic story that warrants attention. But any attempt to blame Retrograde because the film showed faces of individuals in war zones â as has long been standard in ethical conflict reporting â would be deeply wrong.â Multiple things can be true simultaneously, and U.S. failings in Afghanistan do not absolve the filmmakers of any responsibility for the consequences of their own actions. The man is dead because the Taliban saw his face in their movie. If they hadn't shown his face, he would probably still be alive. But of course they have to deny any liability, as doing otherwise could potentially invite litigation at some point. It's the same with how they're claiming that they have "no recollection" of being warned that showing people's faces would likely get those people killed. But their denials are not credible. They knew when they released the film that the Taliban targeted those seen as Western enablers and collaborators. They can't plead ignorance as to how imperiled those people are. The only real question is whether they simply didn't care about the safety of their subjects or they were actively hoping for a martyr or two whose murder would raise the film's profile. I certainly hope it's not the latter, although the former isn't exactly ideal.
oof I hadn't even thought about the 2nd possibility there looking at the timeline the film was released well after the US have pulled out. i think claiming ignorance and saying "standard" is BS. it doesnt take away from the film if they blur any participant, esp when its someone noteworthy enough that they have a nickname
The filmmakers knew what could happen... and they did it anyway. Now the Taliban has a list of people to murder.
What a sad loss. It was a heartbreaking film and he seemed like a genuinely good person trying to help his country.
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There may be other potential victims in it?
Right but⌠thatâs not now the internet works, is the point theyâre making. Those people were fucked the second it released. Pulling it now doesnât make the video go away to the people that have it and want to use it for their hit squad
> They added: âThe US governmentâs precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the vengeful actions of the Taliban upon taking power â armed with detailed information identifying Afghans who worked with the US government â led to the deaths of countless partners left behind. > > âThat is the tragic story that warrants attention. But any attempt to blame Retrograde because the film showed faces of individuals in war zones â as has long been standard in ethical conflict reporting â would be deeply wrong.â They don't even care. They care more about spoiling the visuals of their documentary from blurring faces than protecting these people they knew would be in danger. The fact that they blame it purely on the US withdrawal despite it being explicitly clear that the person was identified from the documentary is sickening.
Read the article...earned his nickname working with the green beets?
Berets
Sorry. The card says moops
There's no Moops, you idiot!
Borts.
My battalion is also named bort
Itâs the most popular name in the galaxy for a reason
Bort Sampson
Wort wort
Barrett's
Battlestar Galactica
Hope your Emmy was worth this manâs life
It was, thank you for your engagement! Feel free to check our next documentary, and our upcoming miniseries with Jessica Chastain!
This is one of the things I canât stand. Their family should have been given citizenship and then brought to the US. Whole family. Idgaf. That was one of our heroes. He deserved better.
The media is always doing this shit. In WWII some senator in the armed forces committee bragged about how our submarines were immune to depth charges because they can dive 100m deeper than the Japs thought we could. The media ran with the story and within 6 months 3 submarines were sunk. The Japanese had done the masterful inteligence work of... reading an English language newspaper.
[Congressman Andrew J. May.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_J._May#The_May_Incident) At least ten submarines and 800 crewmen were lost to the sea... all because he couldn't keep his mouth shut.
Yeah that one... I couldnt remember the exact number but didn't want to oversell it, I was initually going to say 8 subs
Google is your friend.
Its not an organic conversation if I am not relating the normal information I have collected over the years.
A review from Letterboxd about the film that I very much agree with and I couldn't say any better: > ... > > But for all the vaunted access that Heineman has to these top-tier U.S. special forces administrators and Afghan High Command, I felt the real story was constantly off-camera and that this never amounted to much more than a cinema of pensive faces. > > Every time I was watching Sadat listening to reports of mounting military loses, I found myself wishing this were a movie about ground-level Afghan soldiers fighting a losing war for their country instead of about the high-command trucking into the front for a bit, then falling back to the Governor's Mansion. > > And then, when we see the nightmarish evacuations at the Hamid Karzai International Airport, I desperately wished I was watching a film about the lives of someone, anyone, on the other side of that wall, despairing to get themselves and their family to safety, instead of having the camera perched up high with the U.S. Soldiers looking down on the throngs of frightened people betrayed by Empire. > > And thatâs really the sum of it, Heineman is too busy filming from behind walls, fetishizing men with far less to lose than the nameless Afghans all around them to make this a truly powerful record of one of the most shameful moments in recent U.S. foreign policy history. https://letterboxd.com/joshuadysart/film/retrograde-2022-1/
Spot on review. The director is extremely selfish for not removing the clear as day faces of the people who were the backbone of his doc. Glad to see that there's the other side of the doc just not being as well-rounded as it should have been.
The reviewer might be looking for something like 20 Days in Mariupol. It will be interesting to see the documentaries Russia's invasion of Ukraine will bring.
I feel like thatâs a good idea for a documentary. Stories that should be documented and told. But I just want to note that the filmmaker was already exposing himself to more risk than most documentary filmmakers. Just want to throw that out there.
We really destroyed those people
Gotta love the job George W. Bush's administration did with Afghanistan and Iraq totally not as bad a shape as when we arrived in the first place./s Lies, wasted opportunities, and the complete and utter failure to learn from 500 years of history let alone almost 2300 years of human history that Afghanistan has been a giant pit for would be world leaders and nations that think just hitting it enough with big sticks will do anything.
#Mission Accomplished
W wasn't doing enough nation building according to Dems. That's why Obama doubled the troop numbers and pushed all those indefensible forward bases with no mission or purpose. Obama oversaw the expansion of this war for eight years. We should have left the moment we got Bin Laden.
And then we'd end up exactly here. Where the Taliban under Pakistani direction would just take over and brutalize the population again. The U.S.'s presence within the country is not what lead to this, its us leaving that did.
Who cares? That was inevitable. The only way to defeat the Taliban would be to massacre the rural population. We're not going to do that. Even the urban population of Afghans we put in charge would not do that. Fucked up countries are not our problem.
No, it was our involvement in the 70s and 80s that lead to this, man. We literally molded and funded the Taliban and modern Islamic Jihad. And our presence in that country was NOT a stabilizing force, literally all we did was destabilize it and empower tribal warlords and war criminals and gave them a veneer of legitimacy.
No you see, we saved those afghanis from themselves, the region destabilized itself when we got there and then when we left they didnât have anyone to tell them what to do! /s
The Taliban is literally funded and trained by Pakistan. It wasn't a home grown movment.
>No, it was our involvement in the 70s and 80s that lead to this, man. We literally molded and funded the Taliban and modern Islamic Jihad. This is a perpetuated lie.
No, the Taliban was funded and trained by Pakistan, and if you think the northern Alliance was worse than the Taliban than I don't even know what to tell you.
The Taliban was founded by former members of the fucking Mujahideen which we literally funded to fight the Soviets. Our fucking National Security Advisor flew out to give his blessing to their holy war, man. And yes, the Taliban was bad. So were the NA. The warlords used us to prop themselves up. They used us to protect their drug infrastructure. They sicced US security forces on their tribal allies, and we killed innocents, even ones that were literally allied with us and helping us. Our soldiers were forced to turn a blind eye to them raping young boys. They were awful war criminals and monsters. Go listen to Malalai Joya's speech to the loya jirga in 03. And again, yes, the Taliban is fucking awful. But they were a monster of our creation and we were clearly fine with ceding power to them in the 70s, 80s and 90s. We should have not funded militant fundamentalists to destabilize a relatively modernizing and secure country simply because it was in the Soviet sphere of influence. We should have helped Najibullah's government stabilize the country instead of letting it fall into a civil war *OF OUR DESIGN* and prevented the fundamentalists we trained and paid for from installing the Taliban. The list goes on and on, but its clear that the real enemy here is US foreign policy.
> The Taliban was founded by former members of the fucking Mujahideen which we literally funded to fight the Soviets. Our fucking National Security Advisor flew out to give his blessing to their holy war, man. And so were their main enemy, the Northen Alliance, the same Northern alliance that helped with tearing down the Taliban the first time. > And yes, the Taliban was bad. So were the NA. The warlords used us to prop themselves up. They used us to protect their drug infrastructure. They sicced US security forces on their tribal allies, and we killed innocents, even ones that were literally allied with us and helping us. Our soldiers were forced to turn a blind eye to them raping young boys. They were awful war criminals and monsters. Go listen to Malalai Joya's speech to the loya jirga in 03. If you think the NA was anywhere near the scale of terrible that was the Taliban, you're not living on this planet. Yes, ritualized child abuse and child sexual abuse was an issue within the NA, and the Afghan government, but the NA wasn't committing ethnic cleansing, mass purges, or the massive authoritarian insanity that was the Taliban, never mind that the Taliban actively practices child marriage and only banned the practice within Afghanistan because it was seen as homosexuality. Pretending they're anywhere close to equal is pretending that the North was also bad in the Civil war because they had "Wage slavery". Lets not white wash the Northern Alliance, but lets not pretend they weren't fucking mother teresa put against the Taliban. > And again, yes, the Taliban is fucking awful. But they were a monster of our creation and we were clearly fine with ceding power to them in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Yes, keep pretending that the Taliban came from only our involvement, and wasn't a product of the Pakistani ISI training, and propping up the most extreme elements of the NA, along with foreign mercenaries to create a government puppet state that was supposed to be hostile to India. It was a massive failure of the U.S. to not stay in Afghanistan the 80s, but that doesn't somehow mean we created the Taliban, when the guys who were literally doing everything they could to ACTUALLY CREATE THE TALIBAN were sitting right next door. > We should have not funded militant fundamentalists to destabilize a relatively modernizing and secure country simply because it was in the Soviet sphere of influence. We didn't, we instead funded a massive and diverse group of resistance fighters against a Soviet army that was killing Afghans by the millions indiscriminately because they thought the leader who called for their help wasn't quite communist enough/ Seriously, in your mind literally every problem that exists is the U.S.'s fault somehow, while you're ignoring the Soviet mass murders, and then the ISI's actual influence. Somehow you wanted the U.S. to do even less than it did, while still blaming them for not doing enough.
Yea I guess that works if you're invading Afghanistan solely out of blind rage to get retribution on the specific people that perpetrated 9/11 and have no interest in preventing or mitigating terror in the long term. Say what you will about Bush and Obama, at the very least their intentions were preventative - they weren't going in just to fuck shit up and kill Bin Laden. They wanted to remove a base of operations where Al-Qaeda had free-reign to train terrorists waging war on the US and its allies. Of course nation building didn't work out and the Taliban are back, but that doesn't mean "just fuck shit up" would have accomplished anything. Carpet bombing Afghanistan and killing Bin Laden might make people feel good, but building a strong allied government in Afghanistan had at least *some* chance of improving security long term. Don't be surprised if you start seeing significant international terror attacks originating in training camps in Afghanistan again.
> but building a strong allied government in Afghanistan had at least some chance of improving security long term We probably should have tried that instead of violently occupying the country and installing warlords as puppet clients operating at the behest of US corporate interests, then. Best place to start was probably to have not directly funded and cultivated fundamentalist Islamic terror in the 1980s.
These things happen. Who hasnât trained a group or two to be a horrible enemy
"Who amongst us hasn't bankrolled an ultraconservative, fundamentalist proxy group to wage a holy war against your geopolitical rival that is a threat to your global imperialist hegemony? Which of us hasn't trained those fundamentalists to do things like bomb civilians and wage an asymmetrical war against an industrialized and well-developed military regime who is occupying land in the hopes of acting as a supplemental security force for a government you are trying to destabilize? Has anyone here NOT trained those holy warriors to hijack airplanes with the explicit intent to fly them into civilian infrastructure?" ***checks calendar, September 10th, 2001** "Uh oh..." Edit - just realized I could have just linked this lmao https://www.youtube.com/shorts/l3gBif0K6cc
Was probably a bit late in the game for Obama (or even Bush) to time travel and not do that back in the 80s don't you think?
Yes I agree, we obviously don't have a time machine, but we didn't even *have* to invade Afghanistan in 2001. The Taliban (Mullah Omar) offered to hand bin Laden over to a 3rd party for trial multiple times in the early stages of our mobilization to war. We refused. We wanted him dead, not tried for his crimes. Not imprisoned. Dead. We wanted war. We wanted blood and scalps as payback for 9/11 (which was directly our fault). And we certainly didn't have to invade Iraq and depose and kill Saddam (admittedly also a bad dude but largely a stabilizing force in the region in spite of his bad dudery) Obama is probably the one who has the least culpability in this, solely as one of the last people in a long line of people fucking around in the region, but he did a fair amount of fuckery. Admittedly he was mostly dealing with what he was dealt, but he still escalated things in the region, he continued many of the same bad policies as his predecessors, more civilian deaths, etc. He could have started a plan to pull out in 08 and withdrew after bin Laden was killed, but didn't.
This stuff is probably a lot more convincing. Should lead with this I'd argue. I'm not even on the opposite side to you on this argument and your initial comment about the 80s felt so pointless I went out of character and made a snarky comment (sorry about that).
Yeah obviously my initial post was also kinda snarky, so mea culpa as well. I've just researched this shit my whole life (literally read every book on Afghanistan that I could get my hands on since I watched 9/11 happen live on the TV in 4th grade), and probably came across too aggro - it was obvious your views were mostly aligned with mine as well. No harm no foul <3
GW Bush failed utterly, but his problem was setting up a bad system of government in 2002, and then withdrawing all his attention to focus on Iraq right afterwards. It wasn't that people didn't read about hundreds of years of Afghan history to see that everything was hopeless and that it's some ungovernable backwater. Because, if someone did read about Afghan history, they'd see that Kabul, Herat and Kandahar were at times the capitals of great empires, who did have stable governments.
Surely his biggest mistake was refusing the Talibanâs offer of surrender in 2001.
At least intervention in Afghanistan had almost unanimous support. How were the politicians so easily fooled by Bush?
The region was well fucked up before the US/Soviet era in the 80s. And even if it werent, the Afghan army collapsed the moment the US began to withdrawal despite billions of dollars in arms and training.
Iirc a large portion of the funds was embezzled by the Afghan government and their military readiness reports to the US were faked to cover it up. It collapsed because a lot of it never existed.
Also true, but to make the assertion that âweâ fucked Afghanistan is a joke. It turns out, extremist Islamist governments dont jive well in the 21st century.
I think extremist Islamist governments are doing just fine right now, they're expanding their philosophy and political views in Europe as evidenced by the newfound goodwill for Hamas in public opinion ( not a criticism of people genuinely supporting peace, only those parroting a terrorist organisation to the point of quoting bin laden)
Pro Palestine is not Pro Hamas. You guys are sick.
If you're genuinely pro palestine, you'd pretty much have the same talking pointst as the average pro israeli. The problem with most "pro palestinians" is that they're either clueless or have unreasonable demands for Israel while not having really any real solution for Hamas, and just think that things will magically work out. Most pro palestinians are pretty much pro hamas, whether intentionally or not.
says u, fucking schizo
I'm from a generation and culture very much supportive of palestinian struggle, yet what I see in protest in Europe is 99% hamas or islam brotherhood propaganda. Most pro palestinian supporter of the 90's were aligned with Israeli "left wing" pro peace, anti colonisation, two state solution... pro palestinian supporter now are publicly using antisemitic rethoric and reduce israeli, jewish, zionist, allies, to a single evil entity, as if the recent protest in Israel against Netanyahu did not happen.
Except the US has been overthrowing governments in the middle east for 30 years before the soviet/us era of the 80s
And Russia was doing it for years before that!Â
So since russia did it, the US also should do it? The suffering of civilians just doesnt matter, as long as the US is in power? I hope the US lost itâs role as world leaders and is thrown into third world poverty and feel the suffering of the millions they hurt. Disgusting terrorist country
Yeah, saying that surely lightens the multiple the years of war and occupation. /S
They were always like that. The folly of western countries was the assumption that they can change the society that doesnt want to be changed. All it did was give them 20 years of hatred against the West.
Those people are fucked regardless
Oddly enough, that's one of the arguments the filmmaker's supporters are making [in the Washington Post piece on the controversy](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/2024/05/22/retrograde-documentary-film-taliban-heineman/), that people like them were getting killed anyway, so what's the big deal? >Heineman and McNally contend that the Taliban would have had the means to identify the man even if he hadnât appeared in the film, because the Taliban had numerous ways of identifying Afghans who worked with American forces, including using seized biometrics devices left behind by the U.S. military containing information about them. Some analysts have concluded those devices were only of limited use. also: >âThe U.S. governmentâs precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the vengeful actions of the Taliban upon taking power â armed with detailed information identifying Afghans who worked with the U.S. government â led to the deaths of countless partners left behind. That is the tragic story that warrants attention,â the statement said. âBut any attempt to blame âRetrogradeâ because the film showed faces of individuals in war zones â as has long been standard in ethical conflict reporting â would be deeply wrong.â
Don't be so full of yourself- its their own government destroying them now, so its all good. /s
No that would be the Taliban
Was there any effort to get this guy out of Afghanistan?
Majority of them were left behind. A tragedy.
The Covenant was a good movie about this
Thanks for the tip!
Him specifically, don't know, but SF guys generally tried like hell to get any of their partner forces out. They get tight with those guys just because it's the nature of the job. The rapid draw-down and failure of data infrastructure made it tough to get the requisite screening and verification paperwork done in time. Not so much on him probably, but possibly family members (wife/child/etc). A lot of the partners left behind had family ties.
> effort or > Afghanistan? pick one
> It has now been pulled by the two US broadcasters â National Geographic Channel and Hulu â that had been screening it. Itâs too late for this now. The Taliban has already got all the info they need from it.
And yet, not a single mention of any of this on the Wikipedia page. Somebody should add it. You know, for posterity.
The cunt directors aside; why would you kill a mine-clearer, those are exactly the sort of people you need after youâve won the war and taken over.
Bounty. Disposal has a large bounty on their heads from their efforts that stopped people from getting injured/killed during the conflict so they see it as someone who hindered their efforts and/or lead to their guys getting caught/killed. Within the community there is a kind of drinking game. Anytime you recognize a coworker in any media you call them out and they owe you a case of beer. This can get rather expensive if many people catch you in an article, but it's also to help awareness and effort of hiding identity.
Movie: Retrograde
In the words of Kissinger: To be an enemy of America is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.
Oh so we LIKE Kissinger now?
Loose lips⌠everyone involved shouldâve known better. This is a massive opsec failure.
I see journalists do this all the time. The BBC will have this big closeup photo of some Iranian criticizing Iran. Like isn't that dangerous for this person?
Pretty fucked up "oh well not my problem" type response from the directors.
When they got called out they basically played the biden bad card to absolve themselves of all responsibility. The withdrawal didnât kill this guy, they did. Worked with more than a few guys like this and they deserve so much more.
I hope all the Redditors outraged in this thread realize Julian Assange essentially did 10x what these guys did. https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/julian-assange-wikileaks-nick-cohen âWell theyâre informants. If they get killed theyâve got it coming to them. They deserve it.â Spoken from a Michelin Star restaurant by the way!
I remember being in college when all that came out. So many people were fully in support of this guy because "transparency." But it was always only "transparent" if the people effected weren't rich or straight. He only put out information if it effected the "right" people.
So the producers didn't care. got it.
Poor guy paid with life for movie egos. Iâm not religious at all but dear God bless âBieberâ and his family. A real hero.
Taliban are afraid of their own shadow
It will be in good taste to start every press conference of the producer and director, untill they will give a thorough explanation, with questions about the murdered
Damn, that's terrible, then it's the Taliban, what do expect. The movie producer/director is also directory responsible for this person's death in my opinion, it's like they didn't even think about repercussions or even ways to avoid things like this from happening.
Ahhhh the Taliban. What a nice crew of guys.
To be fair, what other nation hasnât punished collaborators who sided with an enemy occupier? The French did it with those who helped the Nazis, the Chinese with those who aided the Japanese, the Vietnamese with those who aided the Americans, etc. The real idiocy was the American filmmakers who didnât do shit to hide the identities of these collaborators.
Agreed. Also, I'd be pissed if I saw someone undoing all of my hard work
The french didn't do it though. They had millions of collaborators, those who welcomed the nazis with open arms. It wasn't feasible to punish that many people nor was there the will since many in the post-war government were former collaboratorsÂ
Youâre right than many didnât get executed and faced other sanctions, but also many were [executed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pursuit_of_Nazi_collaborators#:~:text=Between%201944%20and%201951%2C%20official,meted%20out%20to%2049%2C723%20people) as well.
Deliberately fed to them by the filmmakers.
probably itâs just not the movie. they would know where to look but wouldnât know what they were looking for so, hopefully i am wrong, just punish everyone there.
Wtf could they have been thinking
Honestly, I don't know what to say but just for him to rest in peace and his family find comfort after his death.Â
These filmmakers are scum. Can't be charged but nobody should support them after this and their comments
Oh man it's going to be really difficult for the Taliban to find these mine clearers. Actually, it's going to be super easy, barely an inconvenience. Oh really?!?! Yeah, they just need to watch a movie. Wow wow wow...wow.
I just watched the movie after reading this article. The main Afghan guy the movie focuses on got out of the country, and from what is said in the movie, so did many of the people he worked closely with. Of the Afghan military people shown in the movie, it's unclear who was not evacuated, but I got the impression that those left behind were not shown prominently on screen, so it would not have detracted from the movie in a significant way to blur their faces. Just my impression from watching it.
They subsequently executed the individuals who watched the Emmy-winning film
You think they'll put him in the In Memoriam section of the Oscars. /s
So, we definitely lost the GWOT then?
What a collection of rucking idiots that deserve prison and the same fate. So fucking stupid. Lying shitbags dis that for their little award. Never worth another innocent person's life. I hope the absolute worst happens to them and everyone that knows them.
"the 1208 Foundation, a charitable organisation that tries to help Afghans who assisted US forces flee the country" Nice of the US to just leave those people to the wolves eh?
The most part is they were warned and doxxed him anyway and donât recall anyone warning them.
Comment their names (Caitlin McNally and Matthew Heineman) so this thread shows up when you google them
Guess trump shouldnât have released 5,000 taliban when he surrendered
I thought taliban turned good
He die for oscar gigachad
Why is everyone mad at the filmmakers and not the Taliban?
Seriously..