Month 11 Day 26

Notebook entry

29 reports given, Salim back, class with Salima, OKOCA

Journal Entry

“This country has no future” That was the last statement that Dinar
made to me.  He went off for nearly 30 minutes at lunch about the
corruption in this country.  “I make more than the General, I haven’t
been able to pay for an engagement party, but the general has a couple
of houses and a staff.  Where did all of that money come from, when we
went to first kandak that XO of 1st kandak had his ass chewed for
giving the weapons they found in caches to the Marines.  Why does the
General care? I’ll tell you why there is a bazaar in Kabul that deals
in weapons, most of these are supplied by the ANA, the ANP.  The XO
himself told me that every officer in this brigade is involved in
corruption.”  Finally he told me a story the punchline was basically
“It’s time to run, run out of this country.”

This all started because he was bitching about how the General was
acting this Morning.  Yesterday, during the leave flight the Gunny had
told some officers who were late that they were not allowed to get
onto the leave flight.  The General came and said
 “Let these officers on the leave flight.”
The Gunny said “no.”
“I am a General I say let them on this leave flight.”
“no”
 “I’ll tell Col Schmitt”
“OK”
The LtCol came in this morning and the General bitched to high heaven
about how he had been dishonored and his position was besmirched.  The
Col decided this was a ditch he was going to die in and told him
“I’m tired of hearing about your culture, lets talk about the culture
we have in common, military culture.  The Gunny is a disciplined
Marine, he follows the rules, that is his job and that is what he is
supposed to do.”

All of this could have been solved if the ANA had arranged their own
flights, but well they are dependant on us, so they play by our rules.

In the middle of the meeting an ANA Lt came up and asked them about
going to SBK.  He and 13 of his closest friends had been left behind
by Capt Arthur when he went up there because after he told them three
times what time they needed to show up, they fail to show up.  The
General wanted us to miracle an airplane because Corps was leaning
into him. Sorry buddy, doesn’t work like that.

For me it has been an uneventful morning.  I loaded up some of my
FitReps to the Qualcomm website, did a bit more job stuff and
registered with Columbia.  Sgt Salim came over at 1000.  He really
pissed me off, he showed up late, had no materials, required a
pick-up.  It was aggravating, this is not what I expect from Marines.

I also tried to sort out the guy who is trying to double-dip as a
linguist and ANA Lt.

I took the terps to lunch after that and our conversation can be seen above.

I came back and met up with Munir and Salim in the afternoon.  Najib
and Qais were both sleeping at 1500.  This is not the right time for
sleep, and it made me wonder if this is how things were going to be in
the section while Tawoos is gone and they are flush with people. On
the face of it it's good to get Munir back, he's gone to school for
about 5 weeks (though he's been gone for 12), and rather than be
reassigned to the kandaks the General wants to keep him at this level
and make him the S2A. He's been a hard-worker in the past, so that
might not be a bad idea. I caught him and Salim up on what has
happened since they have been gone, talked them through what the Maj's
expectations are, and then I called the Maj to see if he had any
additional guidance he wanted me to pass on.  He wasn't tracking on
Munir coming back and wanted to know my opinion of him.  It seems that
my firm but consistent approach has paid off.  He asks for and values
my opinions.

We'll see.

There is a Funny slide that I inserted into an E-mail if you search for this day, then you will find it.