Maybe not all, but there seems to be enough anecdotal evidence to warrant some sort of investigation or regularization of their status relative to the Armed Forces. Doubtless there are some bad guys in there, but for those who aren’t? They’re often risking their lives.

Old Blue relates a story today about his own interpreters, with whom he trusts his life, being treated as common criminals when they accompanied him on an officially-sanctioned trip to Bagram. After being denied permission to eat because their IDs were not stamped right, they were then prevented from boarding the same C-130 they had arrived in, and forced to ride in a taxi, in uniform, back to Kabul.

I wish Blue’s interpreters were not the only ones to have suffered such humiliation, but it is a routine experience. Another interpreter I met, a very smart young husband and father who lives near the Pakistani border, had been trying for two years to get an interpreter visa to come to the U.S. because his family had begun receiving shabnamah, or night letters, from local militants for his work at the American base. In 2007, the team leader of the cultural advising team I was visiting super pinky swore to submit the paperwork, but never got around to it. The next team leader—both these men were Lieutenant-Colonels who walked home with medals—made the same promise, but then spent his last month stationed there in the MWR watching Minnie Driver movies.…

It gets worse still.…

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.