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I recently watched Guy Ritchie's The Covenant. I'll observe three things: that it's about an Afghan translator, I suspect the reason it's specifically "Guy Ritchie's The Covenant" is because it stands so far away from the rest of his repertoire that nobody would think he made it, and the performances are superb with Jake Gyllenhaal excellent as expected but the star of the movie being Dar Salim. I think Ritchie aspires toward Ridley Scott, who was recently elevated to Knight Grand Cross (the highest class, Knight/Dame Commander is the second-highest and confers knighthood/damehood), and the prolific amount of work he's done since 2019 is in pursuit of his own knighthood. In the vein of Scott, GRTC is I think analogous to Black Hawk Down, it's a far better movie, though I did enjoy BHD, and also something rings probably coincidental as Ritchie cast Josh Hartnett in a couple of his recent movies and Hartnett held top-billing on Black Hawk Down. Big fan.
The film paints a compelling picture of the apparent bureaucratic mess of approving visas but of course it doesn't explain the actual Special Immigrant Visa Program It's a 14-step vetting process to prevent Taliban infiltrators, who were numerous, from gaining entry to the United States. As a lengthy process bureaucratic mishaps are going to happen, but it's not arbitrarily slow, nor should it be.
That said, since 2021 the US has brought in nearly 200,000 Afghan refugees; the top estimate for collaborators is 300,000; the Taliban issued amnesty and pardons for translators and soldiers who fought against them, and while there have been extrajudicial killings, the numbers are minimal, such killings were also inevitable. It's war, there are going to be war crimes, and while I don't think most or even half of the dead necessarily deserved it, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if all 160 killings were of war criminals. That article also considers the Taliban killing IS-KP and NRF soldiers as violations of their promise of amnesty, they promised no such amnesty to those fighters, and also, those fighters are still carrying out attacks. They get what they deserve.
As for "Rafi," that he missed being in the 200,000 brought over and before that wasn't given an SIV despite a CIA officer's endorsements paints the picture of a man who shouldn't be here. To call CBP One a method of legal entry is bureaucratic sophistry, it was a platform expressly designed to enable any foreign national to game the US asylum system. Those admitted under its auspices should be removed, and if this CIA officer has such a problem, I'd agree to keeping "Rafi," if that officer is bound to a perpetual shared legal liability for any crime he commits.
Some details on this, lest anyone else have to look it up. Sir Ridley was made a Knight Bachelor in 2002, which isn’t super senior but does let you go by “Sir Ridley”. The Order of the British Empire is (I guess) more senior, but only the top 2 of 5 classes confer that title. Out of nowhere last year Sir Ridley was catapulted into the top class.
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