You know America is in trouble when an actress/Playboy TV reporter/producer and her husband have a more compelling foreign policy than our State Department.
The actress is Kira Reed Lorsch. Her husband is Robert Lorsch, a health-care executive who has made his mark in both business and philanthropy. Together the Hollywood couple have mounted a highly public campaign for the release of a Pakistani doctor who was part of the operation that saw our Navy SEALs deliver long-delayed justice to Osama bin Laden.
The doctor’s name is Shakil Afridi. His contribution to the operation was to run a fake vaccination program in Abbottabad with the help of the CIA. The aim was to collect bin Laden DNA to confirm he was where we thought he was. We don’t know how successful Afridi was in getting samples. But we know from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA Director Leon Panetta that the doctor helped the United States.
Dr. Afridi was arrested within weeks of the bin Laden raid. Last year, he was convicted in a Pakistani tribal court on a trumped-up charge of “colluding with terrorists.” After an initial burst of sympathy, he seems to have been abandoned by the US government and largely forgotten by the American public.
The Lorsches haven’t forgotten. They’ve set up the Web site FreeAfridi.com. Back in February, the couple took out an ad in the Hollywood Reporter asking nominees to “use the spotlight that the Academy Awards provides” to draw attention to Afridi’s case.
This month, they followed up with another ad in the Military Times, a publication read mostly by members of our armed forces and their families. The ad campaign comes as we mark the second anniversary of the bin Laden raid this month, and one year into Afridi’s 33-year prison term.
Besides being cruelly unfair to a man who helped pursue America’s most-wanted terrorist, America’s impotence here sends a terrible signal to friends in unfriendly countries: Think twice before putting yourself at risk to help Uncle Sam.
Just a few months ago, “Argo” — a film celebrating Hollywood’s creativity in helping US hostages escape from Ayatollah Khomeni’s Iran — walked away with the Oscar for Best Picture. If President Obama wants State to get Dr. Afridi out of Pakistan and onto free soil, maybe he should try replacing John Kerry with Ben Affleck.