The news coming out of Afghanistan is endlessly fascinating! Grimly fascinating, some of it, like watching the proverbial slo-mo train wreck, but there are also the stories that make us shake our heads, roll our eyes and cry, "WTF??" and "OMFG!!" and "What were they thinking?"
Agence France Presse (AFP) reports that some leaked diplomatic cables reveal that American diplomats suggested trucking in Bollywood movie stars to Afghanistan to "bring attention to social issues there." The thinking - if it can be called that - was that the Afghans are bonkers for Bollywood films, and appearances by India's voluptuous leading ladies and their smoldering on-screen loverboys would somehow, ah...would somehow...(here's where the concept gets fuzzy)...lead to peace in Afghanistan? Of course if the Bollywood beauties did come to Afghanistan and perform in a sort of USO show, a la Ann-Margret and Bob Hope in Vietnam (that sure helped!), they would be unrecognizable under the burqas which they would no doubt be forced to don, since it would be impossible to pixillate their cleavages and bare bellies as is done on TV. Then the punch line: the diplomats touted this scheme as part of India's "soft power" assistance in Afghanistan. "Soft" seems the wrong adjective for the hordes of sex-starved young Afghan men who watch Bollywood films.
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