Actors have long been reluctant to fess up to their early roles, and one in particular stands out as making minimal use of any actor’s talents: the stiff.

Plan B: a gig as a dead terrorist

Playing a corpse on CSI is exactly the kind of thing you might put on your résumé, but avoid expanding upon at a casting call.

Never fear, dear unemployed desi actor. The U.S. military has created a new entry-level role for those of brown persuasion that’s one step up from stiff and one step below TV terrorist: mock jihadi at a military training camp.

The assailants… come in two forms: al-Qaeda terrorists, based in an off-limits bit of the wood called Pakistan, and Taliban insurgents living in 18 mock villages. Another 800 role-players live with them, acting as western aid workers, journalists, peacekeepers, Afghan mayors, mullahs, policemen, doctors and opium farmers, all with fake names, histories and characters. Some 200 bored-looking Afghan-Americans are augmented by local Louisianans in Afghan garb…

… then we blow ourselves up. The first blast, in a yellow flash, lights up a guard-tower and the anxious face of a young GI. The second… is much bigger–a hollow boom and an explosion of orange fire that soars 100 feet into the night sky… “Go tell your buddies, you’re all dead…”

Attacks with simulated roadside bombs (known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs), rockets, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and small arms, using special effects and lasers, are unrelenting… Two Hollywood companies have been hired to improve the army’s flashes and bangs, and to give acting classes to the role-players… [Link]

The lads in khaki are enthused about killing, but larnin’? Not so much:

Mr Saul says a key lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan is that American soldiers must know a smattering of the local language. When assured that almost no American soldier knows six words of Arabic, Dari or Pushtu, he admits: “I can take a horse to water but I can’t make him drink.” [Link]

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p>One American soldier echoed the Redcoats’ plaint from two hundred years ago, though the Minutemen’s goals were rather more honorable:

… an American special-forces captain–with broad experience of counter-insurgency–analysed his furtive Taliban enemies thus: “They’re cowards. Why don’t they step up and fight like men?” Apparently, he had not considered how he might fight if he had no armour, no radio, an ancient rifle and the sure knowledge that if he fought like a man, he would be obliterated in minutes. [Link]

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p>The military draws a straight line between badly-executed nation-building, and terrorism. Maybe they could podcast that lesson for the Boy in the Bubble:

Bashir Marley and the Wailers

A favourite buzz-phrase at Fort Polk is “consequence management”… for example, a company commander has failed to deliver medicines to a village clinic… This prompts al-Qaeda fighters to deliver medical supplies to the clinic, and, in the process, they forge ties with the local Taliban. The two groups collaborate in a fierce attack on the offending American company, using car bombs, IEDs and indirect and direct fire, killing and wounding dozens. That will teach them to keep their promises. [Link]

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p>Got a swarthy complexion and a blood-curdling scream? Sign up with the army and earn some bill$. It’ll keep you in the ramen another week.

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