Month 3 Day 30

Notebook Entry
One deserter from 3rd kandak, one from the Combat Service Support Kandak, BATS, 100% contact for Combined Federal Campaign.

Journal Entry
I finished the BATing for the time being. Now I just need to sit down and bang out the rest of the roster by hand. With the guys from the garrison support unit. I want to shoot myself, but that is OK. I just found out that my S-2 is far more corrupt than I ever thought possible. Corrupt even my ANA standards. I want to crush his little Mustached head. Too bad he isn’t here. Other than that, not much significant to report. Just another day living the dream.

Month 3 Day 29

Notebook Entry
BAT 3 reports from ANA, 1 converted

Month 3 Day 28

Notebook Entry
BAT, S-4 established budget, Communications CMR [Consolidated Memorandum of Reciept], Captain Nowak Class

Journal entry
You can't shit in the showers. I may have already put this in one of these, but it bears repeating. Apparently one of the showers has a tube wide enough for the ANA [Afghan National Army] to shit down while taking a shower. The ANA seem to believe that all of them are capable of this particular feat. Unfortunately, the pipes disagree. They get clogged with human excrement, back up and overflow. Shit is stuck on the ceiling from when some frustrated solder flung it there. The ANA insist on washing their clothes in the sinks, filling them up to the bring and putting additional pressure on them they also like to use the sinks to wash their feet, putting more pressure on them than they were designed to take and inevitably breaking them. They want all of this fixed, but make no effort to maintain what they have. Each one of these shower trailers cost $260,000 a piece, for about 8 showers. This is what happens when the developed country with a culture of maintenance runs into a third world nation with no personal ownership. This place is going to fall apart when we leave.

Month 3 Day 27

Notebook Entry
Afghan National Army Video teleconference


Journal Entry
Lost to the Ether


Edited to Add:
I will pontificate about this at length later, but when I say "Afghan National Army Video teleconference" I mean the Afghans using Marine gear to communicate with their subordinates.  Why we were giving them a capability that they would never be able to maintain on their own is beyond me. 

Month 3 Day 26

Notebook entry
Friday, worked on roster, Nasrallah leaves.

Journal Entry:
Did a fair bit of work on the rosters for the [Afghan National Army] ANA. Worked on my monthly report about the status of intelligence. Cleaned my rifle, ate chow. Got assigned yet another collateral duty, I am now the Combined Federal Campaign manager for the group. It is a bit annoying that they always give me every collateral duty because I am the junior officer, but whatever, it needs to be done.

I need to get a little head-space from this place. I dream about this, wake up and think about this. I think I really do need those 5 goals that we were talking about. I tried to sit down and think about a few of them, but unfortunately my mind kept drifting back to here.

One more ‘nail story’ [as in when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail] someone brought up the good point that with only 19 people on this team it does not really make sense to have posts manned in the [Combat Operations Center] ‘COC’ [Joint Tactical Operations Center] ‘JTOC’ and Firewatch. The COC post could probably be abandoned with little effect. If anyone urgently needed us the Firewatch could have a radio, and if we couldn’t be reached by telephone, then I guess they would just have to use E-mail. But we don’t have offices in the Marine Corps, we have [Combat Operations Centers] CoCs, so this must be manned 24-7.

Month 3 Day 25

Notebook entry
Biometric Automated Toolset, [Holiday], serve chow, football

Journal Entry
[Holiday] Scrubbed for ID.

Reasonably successful day progressing on this roster, got a hold of a lot of the contractors and started work on the brigade. They claim that we got all of them. Working with the brigade is reasonably easy because the guy filling the billet of the S-1 (actually a public affairs guy) speaks better English than some of our terps. The Marines served lunch to the [Afghan National Army] ANA, played football and that is about it. I didn’t do any of the above because I was working on the stupid roster all day. I did get to eat some of the [omitted for id] at the chow hall [omitted for identification] the[y] had sparkling grape juice at the end. [omitted for identification]. I found out that the chai boy for S2 is leaving too, which leaves me with a grand total of zero personnel.

Month 3 Day 24

Notebook entry
Built map of camp, printed maps, published roster, finished badging policy

Journal Entry:
Lost to the Ether

Month 3 Day 23

Notebook entry
Biometric Automated Toolset, 1 report regarding attack on school in South Marjeh

Journal Entry
Did the last bit of [Biometric Automated Toolseting] BATing for the [Garrison Support Unit] yesterday. It remains to be seen how many are assigned but on leave, and how many billets are straight-up unfilled. Yesterday was probably the easiest day. We got a lot of [Afghan National Army] ANA done, for the first time since we got here the ANA were actually ready ahead of time, simply amazing. The S-1 [Administration Officer] also worked without complaint for the entire day. Finally, neither of the guys who were actually on the BATS machines were [Embedded Training Team] ETT marines, I had one from the [Based Defense Operations Center] BDOC and one contractor. This made work approximately 1000 times easier. ETT Marines get double and triple tasked all of the time, this prevents them from getting the job done, but this way we get everything done no one bitches. In fact I think I would probably prefer to work with contractors than Marines on most things. At least you can fire, contractors, and they have resigned themselves to their jobs, so there is minimal bitching. It is nice.

Month 3 Day 21 and 22

Notebook entry Day 21
Biometric Automated Toolset, Found out about Colonel Omar accusing Brigadier General Shujai

Notebook entry Day 22
Biometric Automated Toolset 1 report regarding suicide bombers bound for Lashkar Gah

Journal Entry
Skull drag, the BATing thing is just epic. Trying to get the ANA to show up on time, trying to get them to show up at all. I have to literally sit there every minute or else this roster is not going to be completed.

I am told that on Sat we are going to lose all of our linguists for a class that is being taught on basic soldiering. I just want to be like, what is this whole instructor cadre that you taught doing right now? Oh well, I guess I will figure out how to pointy-talky my way through the BATs [Biometric Automated Toolset].

Month 3 Day 20

Notebook entry
Biometric Automated Toolset, Cancelled Intel shura

Journal Entry:
Lost

Month 3 days 18 and 19

Notebook entry day 19
Staff planning meeting

Journal Entry
Wasted day. Afghans are having Eid, the SIPRnet [secret internet] was down most of the day for maintenance. We played soccer in the afternoon with the ANA. They beat us 7-2. I totally screwed up my ankle. Outback Steakhouse sent a bunch of stuff over to give us a special meal and some random runner-up on American Idol gave a concert. I ate the hell out of a bloomin onion, but did not go to the concert. I racked out instead.

I love my wife

So without going into a great deal of detail we have been told that by [four and a half months from now] our Afghans need to be ready to take the lead. I don’t think that is likely. The USMC sends [a] Capt[ain] to an 8 month school on the planning process, guys who have been in at least 4 years and all speak the same language, are motivated to be there, etc. The regimental commander is divorced from reality if he thinks this is possible. I’ll continue to work all day every day, but it took me a week to explain to them why they needed to have [priority SP] intelligence requirements.

This is not helped by the fact that the Major does not actually train the General or the XO. In a centralized system, where everything is expected to go through them. They need to have at least a basic understanding of the planning process in order to ensure that it works correctly. I just want to remind the Major these guys have a pay scale for generals with under 4 years time in service. This guy doesn’t have a clue what he is doing. You can pin rank on a former mujahedeen, but that doesn’t make him a general. Maybe one day, with training he will know what it is to be a general, but right now he is clueless.

Oh well, what are you going to do? Shut up and work just as hard as you would anyway. Someday perhaps the commanders will find out that their desire to get something done does not matter, it is merely the ability of to accomplish the task. The enemy, the Afghans, the actual battlefield, do not care what you want, Colonel. If this were merely a test of desire we would have already lost. These guys are way more fanatical than we are.

Month 3 Day 17

Notebook entry
Spoke to the Afghan Executive Officer regarding Dinar, played Soccer

Journal Entry:
Lost to the ether

Edited to Add:
When I say spoke I mean spoke, it was a one-way conversation. The Executive Officer was calling over our lead linguist all of the time to run messages to the Team Chief, Major Valquist. This was keeping him up all night, and he was tired. He complained to me, and I told the executive officer that our linguists were not his errand boys, and that if he wanted to talk to the Team Chief, then he should come out of his container, walk across the street, and talk to him.

The Major told me not to beat up the Executive officer about these things, he was an 'ally.'

In retrospect, the Major was probably right. I needed Colonel Sarwar's help a lot later in the deployment. This kind of "I'm an American Lieutenant, and you are an Afghan Colonel, but you need to listen to me" stuff was a bad idea, even though it felt good. There is a time and a place, but this is not it.

When I say we 'played soccer' I mean we got our asses kicked.

Major Valquist, in Afghan garb, goes to meet with the Executive officer, note the high-water pants, he was around two heads taller than any Afghan soldier so they didn't make them in his size. 

Looking out of place in the name of partnering...

Month 3 Day 16

Notebook entry
Eid Sheep killed, Regimental Combat Team here, volleyball, talked with all subordinate intelligence advisers, notes in log

Journal Entry
Lost to the ether

This is a reverse cell-phone tower, when the Afghans couldn't get reception, they would go to the highest point and try to get a signal, in this case a HESCO bunker

Marines getting ready to rotate in for 'Walleyball' as the Afghans said it or volley ball as everyone else does.  The Afghan soldiers were great, and they tore us apart. The start of the mushroom cloud below in the background.

The Mushroom cloud from a controlled detonation just outside of our camp.

Month 3 Day 15

Notebook Entry
Translations to Linguists, Colonel comes to “give” sheep

Journal Entry
Everyone was gone yesterday, so I caught up on some work that I needed to get done over here on the Marine side of Camp Garmsir. We had our own collective action problem here with the linguists. One was working very hard on the translations that I needed to get done, while he was in the CCOC [Combined Combat Operations Center], but the others would sit down, do a slide or two, then leave. The one who was working hard complained and asked me to divide up the classes and have everyone do his own. 3 out of 4 were ok with this, but we have a little umpa –lumpa named Neckpai who was not happy. I told him I could give him the classes as though he were the student, I gave him a glossary, printed off a list of acronyms, told him he could use my personal computer to translate it. Basically, he is lazy and didn’t want to do it. He asked me ‘what happens if I refuse’ I kind of chuckled and then asked the major. The major said he wouldn’t be fire, just sent to some random shit-hole patrol base. Life is comparatively easy up here. He thought doing the translations would be better.

The colonel came over yesterday and ‘gave’ away the sheep. The Afghans picked them up, brought them here, complained that the gift was too small (in truth it cost over $1000, already a price gouge), but the Colonel [Marine regimental Commander] wanted to ‘give’ it to them. This was ludicrous. I now understand what everyone means when they say that infantry commanders are used to being princes of the universe. Oh well, he is the Colonel, and that is that.

Month 3 Day 14

Notebook entry
Spent the whole day using the Biometric Automated Toolseting/translating

Journal Entry
Screw these guys. Eid starts tomorrow, but they want today off too, Eid takes 3 days, and they don’t want to come back to work on Friday (it is like their weekend), so the next day we can really do work is Saturday. How does it get like this? How do these guys bear so little of the fighting load that they feel like they can just up and leave. The whole officers eat last concept is also lost on them all of the enlisted guys are still here, but the officers are gone because they can bump enlisted guys to get on flights. This system is really messed up. The linguists aren’t much better, you ask them to sit down and work and they will hang out for a minute, but then they cut and run because written translations are hard and boring. Yah life is hard an boring, so what that is what you get paid for. Wooo-sa Wooo-sa

Month 3 Day 13

Notebook Entry
Meeting with Base Defense Operations Center regarding badging

Journal Entry
Since my guy was gone I spent a lot of time working on this uber-roster that the major says he needs for the Afghans. It is going to be painful. I figure if everything goes perfectly that it will take 105 man-hours to complete the task, but nothing goes perfectly. This is just going to become a monumental ass-pain, I can see it now. At the end we may not have a picture of the Afghans that is any more accurate than our current picture. Feed the beast I guess. This centralized control is why the commies failed, but I guess no one asked me, eh.

Edited to add:
This goes to show what little I knew at the time.  This roster would later become one of the most useful things that we could have had.  It allowed us to finally get a handle of who was supposed to be where and just how much leave everyone was taking.  That said, it was an epic pain-in-the-ass.

SSgt Tom A. Peter pets the goats that we bought at an exorbitant price from a local farmer as an Eid gift, we would later eat them, and the Afghans would later tell us that they didn't think we gave enough...awesome.

Month 3 Day 12

Notebook Entry
S2A Leaves

Journal Entry
Yesterday and the day prior. I worked with Samir two days ago. I tried to get an agenda out of him for this intel shura…No love. We talked about what he owed me, but I didn’t show up when I asked him to and I couldn’t find him. I found out yesterday why that was. He hopped on a flight yesterday and headed home for Eid, not on an Afghan flight, on a USMC flight, if anyone would have told me I would not have let him go. I am not really sure why there is at least a tacit acceptance of some of the bad behavior of the Afghans. They rate 30 days off per year, that is it. They take 3-4 times that amount. Well the officers do anyways because the soldiers probably aren’t getting any leave at all. This is bullshit. On the bright side, at least some of our reporting has indicated that our enemies also take a break for Eid, so that is nice of them. So it is me and the chai boy, Nasrullah, a great kid, never complains, does everything you could want, but illiterate, innumerate, and does not want to learn. He is afraid that if he learns they will promote him, if they promote him he will have more responsibility and people will yell at him. Also worked out badging policy with the base defense operations center.

Month 3 Day 11

Notebook entry
G-2 rep at shura, shura agenda, talked with S-3, talked with S-4 regarding camouflage

C-130 comes in for a landing

Month 3 Day 10

Notebook entry
Date for Intel Shura, throwing away camouflage, messing with the Gunny.

Journal Entry
Met with Samir [Assistant Afghan Intelligence Officer], talked about him not being belligerent to our GySgt [Casanova, our senior enlisted Marine]. I told him the GySgt is about to get out of the Marine Corps and probably wouldn’t care if he was read the riot act for beating the hell out of an Afghan. Especially if the Afghan Deserved it, as Samir so often does. I gave Samir an overview of targeting. I went to pick up the S2 [Intelligence] guys the Major [Kraus], Lt Fortenbras (Targeting) and LCpl Schneider came along. Schneider served as their [in]terp[reter]. His Dari was not very good, but I think it was effective. He understood exactly what we wanted translated as an intel marine, then it was just a matter of presenting it. Often when working with linguists their Dari is good but their English sucks, and they really don’t have any idea what you are talking about, particularly when you get into intelligence tradecraft. This makes be wonder if half of what I am saying actually gets through to the guys on the other end. I really need to learn Dari better, but that would require some intellectual effort on Samir’s part to understand what I am saying. We had [some special food-redaction for identifying information] in the afternoon, and everyone was in pretty good spirits.

Edited to Add:
Samir was a tough case. His story will be developed later, but he basically did not want his job, and was told to wait at the unit until the Intelligence Officer returned. Thereafter he would be allowed to transfer, he wanted to be a commander. Months passed and the intelligence officer did not return, his juvenile acting out grated on everyone.

Marines near the end of their careers are an interesting bunch. Basically no one can make them do anything. Their pension is secure after they reach a certain number of years, and from then on they have nothing to love. Some of them have been habituated into a certain kind of action and they continue on that trajectory, others realize that they have merely been habituated and start to act as they please. The latter was the case with our senior enlisted man. He tried to advise his Afghan for a while, but he eventually gave up and no force on heaven or earth could pull him out of his tent.

Month 3 Day 9

Notebook Entry
Received one report re pending attack

Journal Entry
Met with Samir (the Afghan Assistant intelligence officer) briefly in the morning. We are still running really low on linguists, so I had to go through with my broken Dari. It is made more difficult by the fact that Samir has no desire to understand what I am saying and gets easily frustrated. English or Dari, if you put a noun and a verb in a declarative sentence you should be ok. I even put them in like they do in Dari, e.g. You how are? Any way did that and then was tasked with collections stuff. I don’t mind collecting intel, as long as they understand that I only have so much time in a day, but when I do, I want to make sure that it is not wasted. Right now people are just collecting information for its own sake, then it does not end up in any databases, and ends up being lost. I want to make sure that the data we collect is actually useful. It is immensely frustrating.

Edited to Add:
The loss of information and the lack of institutional memory were very frustrating to me. Each level of the chain of command maintains their own file system where data is lost. Each service branch has their own network, and even if they are the same network, oddly, sometimes they do not talk to one another (i.e. I would send an E-mail to someone in the Army over the same secret network and it would not go through). Fixes did arise, like posting all relevant information to secret websites, but those were ponderously slow outside of the area they were in because people wanted to put scrolling items and large images on them. All this led to some frustration on my part. Many of my reports were never read, or if they were read they were buried in some share drive somewhere never to be seen again.

I believe that I put this photo in here Merely to show that even when the Afghans stole from us, they did it in a lazy way, note that they did not even fully paint over the "Park" on the sign that they took from us.

Month 3 Day 8

Notebook Entry
Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace given. Mullah Abash reported to bin in Marjeh

Journal Entry
Samir [the Afghan Assistant intelligence officer] gave his IPB [Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace] brief. It was decent, but he got a little bit nervous and forgot some of the stuff that he was supposed to brief. I met with him briefly in the morning and talked about the S-2 [Intelligence] training cadre as well as some reports that he had been giving. I was tasked with the ‘my hair is on fire’ issue of the day getting a bunch of literacy teachers ID cards and getting their phones back. These guys are important to our effort, agreed; however, it seems like everything is important to our effort. There just aren’t enough guys around for the CO [Commanding Officer/Team Chief], XO [Executive Officer/Deputy Team Chief] and OpsO [Operations Officer] to throw out tasks and expect everything to get done. It is impossible to get a solid schedule with the Afghans so mentoring them is what suffers.

Edited to Add:
One of the troubles with adviser teams is that they are top-heavy. There are a large number of high-ranked individuals with very few subordinates. For instance, at my rank I would normally have had roughly thirty subordinates; however, because were were there to advise the Afghans and they were the ones who actually had troops to command we did not have an additional contingent of Marines of our own. This makes sense; however, it takes time for Marines to get used to this. The CO, Major Valquist was used to having nearly 1000 Marines at his disposal. He would throw out tasks like we were his battalion staff, but we didn't have our own Marines to help us accomplish the task. We officers thus became grunt-workers, presenters, and mentors. Long-term mentoring suffered because on any given day you could not advance your Afghans very far, but on a given day you could put out one or two of these hair-on-fire issues. You would never be asked for instance "did you teach your Afghans how to read a map today" everyone knew that was a ponderous and slow process, but you could be asked "fix this situation with the teachers" but because there was only you, and you couldn't simultaneously fix a problem and teach a class the thing that was not asked suffered. This improved toward the end of deployment with a weekly refocus on our long-term goals, but at the start, it was tough.

Month 3 Day 7

Notebook Entry
Spoke about GSU intelligence, Major doesn’t want to work with, didn’t coordinate time for Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace, Guy from 2nd Kandak came, Made Priority Intelligence requirements List, figured out source funding.

Journal Entry
Met up with S2A [Assistant Intelligence Officer]. I told him there was a Major in another unit on this base who might be able to help with Intel. He has no desire to work with him. The relationship between the brigade and the Garrison support unit is tense. What is really ironic is that the brigade, the operational unit, rolls around like its shit doesn’t stink, when in reality they are the ones who are basically worthless and the Garrison unit is actually pretty good. I also forced him to sit down for 2 hours and work on his Priority Intelligence requirements.* We should have presented them yesterday, but because this is tantamount to saying that he needs to do more work the date has been pushed off again and again. Major Kraus, the S2 [the Marine Intelligence Officer] wants to come over here and teach them some stuff, but I don’t think he understands how little they are going to retain or leave with. He also wants to talk about why I am teaching them conventional Intel doctrine designed for force-on-force warfare. The truth is that I am teaching them this because I was told to teach them this. Sometime you just need to shut-up and color.

Fate seems to have tapped me to get out of the USMC. I got a FitRep yesterday from Major Hesko. It was average and lacked some of the key words that I think you really need for upper-level promotion, especially with the culling that the force is going to get after this war draws down. It was a fine review, but he said the last 5 1stLts he had were in Ramadi with him in 2004 as his platoon commanders and XO with plenty of Bronze stars, combat Vs etc. I can’t argue that I need to be ahead of that curve.

Post Comments:
The Garrison Support Unit, these soldiers managed the facilities on the base and made sure that all of the infrastructure was running correctly so that the Brigade soldiers could do their job. They dealt with local security, water, food, housing, everything except planning where units were to be moved to and employed.

*Priority intelligence requirements are basically a list of questions from the commander that he wants to have answered. They should be the primary drivers behind his decision-making process.

Month 3 Day 6

Notebook Entry
Captain Samir gave me Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace Presentation, worked on Priority Intelligence Requirements in the afternoon.

Journal Entry:
Lost.

Edited to Add:
I was trying to use the teach-back method to get him to show me that he grasped the concepts. He did in fact learn much faster than his subordinates.

Month 3 Day 5

Notebook Entry
Gave Captain Samir Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace Presentation, Sergeant Najibullah gone

Journal Entry:
Lost

Edited to Add:
I gave Samir the Presentation because he was inexplicably gone on the day he was supposed to receive it.  This would be a constant struggle in teaching.  You have to have a certain critical mass of students to get them to retain knowledge and advance.  My students were home half the time, and when they were at base they were rarely physically there.

Month 3 Day 4

Notebook Entry
Went to Meeting at Falcon Crest, good info produced, missed Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace presentation

Journal Entry:
Lost to the Ether

Edited to Add:
Falcon Crest was some distance away, the whole loop of the combined Marine-Afghan base was nearly 7 miles, so this was a trip.  

Month 3 Day 3

Notebook entry
Capt Samir showed me the report he sends to Corps about the number of weapons, names, IEDs found, just has numbers, no times, locations, gave job description, says promotion is based on who you know job description is irrelevant, Got Afghan National Army Intelligence Form B

Journal Entry:
Lost to the Ether


Edited to Add:
Little did I know how much my counterpart was showing me.  I thought he was sending up more information, but this was literally all the information that the higher headquarters received or wanted.

Month 3 day 2

Notebook Entry:
Meeting with RCT on 4th 0800 Showed METLs and Status report

Journal Entry:
Yesterday was a decent day as far as mentoring goes. I got one of my sergeants to nearly reliably find a point on a map. That is good. I also sat down for nearly an hour and spoke with the Captain frankly about the state of intelligence in the brigade. Prior to our meeting he told me that he knew everything that he needed to know about intelligence and that there was nothing that I could teach him. I sat down with him and told him that I assessed intel to be nonfunctional in this brigade and he started to point the finger at everyone else. I enumerated the points that they have failed at, and again I got excuses. It is difficult to relay to someone their deficiencies when they are ignorant of the entire process. How do you tell someone that they don’t know what they don’t know when you don’t even have their language doesn’t even have the words for it? Anyway. I think I made some progress with Samir.

One good thing happened the General said that he wants to have an intel meeting every month with all the guys from the kandaks [Afghan battalion roughly 1000 personnel]. Maybe this will get everyone off of leave and up to T/O [Table of Organization, how many people they shoudl have]! Awesome.

Edited to Add:
The language barrier was very difficult. There are six dialects of Dari, itself a sub-dialect of Farsi. The Persian armies came into Afghanistan from the west, generally ran into the mountains and stopped. The terrain was so bad that many of the villages were cut off from the larger body of Persia, thus their languages slowly evolved on their own track. Those who are closest to Iran, like those from Herat speak a dialect nearly indistinguishable from that of the Iranians whereas many of those from the mountainous portions of the country struggle to understand them. This is before you throw in the other language families (Pashto, Uzbeki, Baluch). All of this language segmentation forces people to learn a small portion of a few languages to be understood, and even their native dialect is not very well known to them. It is like putting a second grade hick from North Carolina next to a bogan from Australia, they might understand some of what they are saying, but it is difficult. The language devolves to its simple mono-syllable roots. The Persians/Iranians often have the words to express the thoughts that you would like to convey to the Afghans, but if you show them the word in the dictionary, then they will have no idea what the word is or means. This linguistic challenge continued throughout the deployment and will be further expounded upon later.

To be sure, this is not the fault of the Afghans. That they are a poor people in a land with terrible terrain surrounded by stronger people is not their fault, but it the truth. These effects are as real as the effects of the Normans, and the Vikings on the Saxons and Angles. Look at the types of words that English retained, base words from German about the home and hearth. High-minded words, democracy, liberty, equality, are all direct transpositions from Latin via French. These things simply were not the concern of those old English speakers in 1066 when the Normans invaded. Through several centuries of close contact and dominion, much of the French language was taken on by the English and they learned what these ideas meant. I was dealing with the equivalent of an Saxon peasant in 1067, he didn't understand the words I was trying to convey, and he was more concerned about the equivalent of the Welsh, Irish than about my seemingly incomprehensible words.

Month 3 Day 1

Notebook entry
Conference, taught Najib map, upon arrival sergeant Fahim gone

Journal Entry
Yesterday I spent the better part of the day removing the ‘intelligence speak’ that is pervasive in so many intel classes. I have to modify the Company Level Intelligence Cell curriculum to teach the Afghan S-2s [Intelligence] from the company all the way up to the brigade, but there are so many propriety terms, so much jargon, that basically have to rewrite the whole thing. It is one of the odd bars to progress in this field. Oddly the more jargon that you throw around the more people are like WOW that guy must really know intel, even when that is antithetical to the entire point of intel.

I don’t know if I have already penned this or not but it bears repeating. I don’t understand why we are structured as we are for an advisor team. I have one section, that amount to just a few guys while the Logistics officer is dual hated as the Admin officer and has like 4 subsections under his commodity. It is like the USMC said here, this is what we use, this must be what the afghans need. Unfortunately, the Afghans are not structured like we are and the odd structure that we have slows progress. It is another example of the USMC projecting a mental image of itself and saying this must be correct vs saying, how can I help you become better and tailoring a solution to that. We are a solution in search of a problem, not vice versa.

Edited to Add:
I still agree with what I said here. What I did not realize at the time was how little institutional learning occurs in the Marine Corps. I presumed that the structure of our adviser team was thinly veiled solipsism, in fact, our team was structured like this because no one knew any better. After spending some time seeing the process of unit creation after the deployment it struck me how little the planners knew about the requirements on the ground. Marines are the consummate generalists. The presumption is that nearly any line officer can fill any other's job, and we are deliberately rotated so that we gather the maximum amount of experience in a plurality of fields. This has its virtues, but I was the recipient of one of the downfalls. If someone had been an expert on an adviser teams, or even been on the previous adviser team, or had even E-mailed the adviser team we replaced, then we could have had a much more logical structure. As I would articulate later. Afghanistan has not been a ten year war, it has been ten one-year wars.