Month 8 Day 29

Notebook Entry
Afghan National Army Soldier threatens Marine. Reports, Concept of Operations.

Journal Entry
I spent the day again working on updating the conops [Concept of Operations] and reports.

Some drama with Capt Nowak about intel stuff. Basically he feels like everything he does is a personal favor to me. I don’t think of it like this. It is simply my job, we are trying to win a war. Shouldn’t we all do what is best toward that end?

An ANA [Afghan National Army] soldier threatened one of the Marines on post. He said he was going to shoot him five times. The BDOC [Base Defense Operations Center] just called us. They expected us to deal with the whole thing. Its like dude, you work with these guys on a daily basis. We are the embedded TRAINING team, not the guys who should deal with every Afghan problem on base. It doesn’t help that Maj Valquist personally went to deal with it. It’s like, sir, I know you are a Marine and want to get your hands dirty, but you should have bigger things to worry about. Yet another way we are distracted from the goal.

I was able to sit down with Maj Davidson for lunch and start turning over the admin stuff with him. He was ready with technical solutions to the problems. I finally got through to him that solutions were not forthcoming because the Afghans don’t want solutions. They don’t want to be accountable for the number of leave days they take, what billet they are assigned to, etc. If they can collect pay and do nothing, then they will do that. If you accept that, then you can sometimes use it to your advantage and make some positive change, if you fight it, then you will just get frustrated and the Afghans will just wait you out. He is getting the same story from all of the staff members. I think that it is finally sinking in.