"That was weird" said my wife after watching the 60 Minutes segment Sunday night, portraying the 101st Airborne serving in one of Afghanistan deadliest combat zones. Yet it was a feel-good piece, allowing the American TV viewing audience a "sneak peek" into the daily lives of heroic U.S. soldiers serving near the Pakistan border.



For the average viewer, it was a glimpse into the real challenges faced in this conflict - difficult terrain and an invisible enemy. Our soldiers are also extremely frustrated that the enemy can safely hide over the Pakistan border where our hands are tied.

The segment followed a troop on their daily rounds, securing an important roadway and clearing mountain passes, but delivered "engagement" when our troops attacked a band of "suspicious" armed men walking through the mountains. Later, U.S. ground troops came under fire - on camera - showing how we located and killed several insurgents. One of ours was also winged in the arm, treated on the spot by medics and airlifted out within minutes. Also during the skirmish, one soldier found a video camera in a corn patch which had on it footage of over 50 heavily armed insurgents training and blowing stuff up - and our soldiers being surveilled.



The piece took a more somber downturn when the troop lost four soldiers and an Afghani translator to a roadside bomb. In asking these young soldiers their feelings, one offered this mission would take over a decade. Another told the correspondent what he told his daughter - that we were helping a bunch of good guys beat the bad guys.





We should also help the troops get that access into now-nuclear Pakistan, even if this exacerbates the same complex tribal conflicts that have plagued the region for thousands of years. Also unreported on the network news? 190,000 Pakistani refugees are abandoning their homes in tribal areas because of the violence between the Pakistani military and the Taliban. This could create fertile ground for recruiting insurgents whose families are facing starvation in tents this winter.



As a long-time 60 Minutes watcher, I'm disappointed with the lack of depth in this report and the many angles of the overarching conflict left unaddressed. Personally, I side with the experts who have long felt the response to 9/11 should have been a more patient, carefully measured and long-term international law enforcement matter. Seven years out, I wonder if the young gunmen in those mountains even understand the global "war on terror" - the concept of "the West", sandwiched between an armed occupying superpower (you're with us or against us), and brutal tribal chiefs who press young men to fight or mount suicide missions under threat of kidnapping or murder of their families.



60 Minutes made little attempt to explain this enemy's perceptions of us, nor the many who feel we need stepped up diplomatic or humanitarian efforts. Showing this blind "acceptance" of the war, CBS displays a remarkable under-representation for popular public sentiment.

Off the TV network "Matrix", however, Afghanistan's own emerging antiwar movement has been attempting to negotiate truces between the Taliban and Afghan state forces, showing us a possible track we could have taken years ago.