Month 12 Day 20

Notebook entry

Three reports given, kick out the British, Salim and Qais sleep, 1030 meeting.

Journal entry

I went to the ceremony for Afghan Independance Day.  It was the
anniversary of the end of the 3rd Anglo-Afghan War, a pretty short
nonsense war that just reaffirmed what was already decided, the Durand
line would be the border.  I kind of wonder how the ceremony went over
up in 3rd Brigade where the Brits are the mentors.  They invited LtCol
Valquist to speak and he pulled out the revolutionary war era phrase
"give me liberty or give me death."  At least Afghanistan and America
have independance struggles against the Brits in common.

Salim and Qais were supposed to do class at 1000, but they were both
asleep and Munir didn't have the khootsba to roust them.

At 1030 they had their morning briefing. Graham, Brian and I all pulled
our gear out of our tent so that the next guys could move in.  This
has clearly been a traumatic experience for Graham.  He reminds me of
my dad "don't throw that away, it might be useful."  Brian calls him a
"junkist."  That is, one who collects a bunch of junk for not
particular purpose.  For me it was a labor of love.  It is wonderful
to be able to turn over this place, and move onto a cot in the
knowledge that the next time I sleep on a real bed, it will probably
be my own.

We gave away the chairs that Brian and Graham made to the linguists.
They kindly made me a chair, though I didn't do anything but beat out
some of the stuffing.  Maj Neller, the new team's XO came in and said
"they don't need those things, we'll take them back."  That really
pissed off Brian, he said "we made those things, they don't appear on
the team's density list, they were gifts to our linguists."

At noon, nothing eventful.

In the afternoon our power went down, they claim it was the battery on
the generator, but I suspect the new enclosure was trapping too much
heat in.  I took around the Gunny from CISE and showed him where all
of the contractors live, and because the Route Clearance Company
decided to play ball, there was a big line to get BATed, so none of
the contractors were done this week.

The new team started to show up and put their gear down.  I felt bad
because we hadn't really cleaned our old tent yet, so I ran a broom
around for a while and wiped the floor with some sanitizer wipes.

The XO's new privacy shade

We beat the British Ceremony

Month 11 Day 29

Notebook entry

14 reports given, communication civilian here, Ramadan pre-meal.

Journal entry

I got to talk to Suzan in the morning, and see her on Skype, that was fun.  I did the inventory of the Biometric Automated Toolset and Marine-Air-Ground Task-Force Secondary Imagery Dessemination System gear (we really need to come up with better nomenclature for stuff).  I wonder if these silly names come because the contractors who sell the stuff are former military guys who know exactly what the uniformed guys want to hear. I imagine the conversation goes like this

'I've got some cameras that your snipers could use to send pictures back to the HQ."

Systems Command military guy "I'm not really interested"

Six months later the contractor returns with a large green Pelican case with exactly the same gear in it

"As you know, the infantryman's eyes are the primary imagery system in the Marine Corps, oooh-rah, as a secondary system to reinforce the Marine-Air Ground Task Force that is so vital to the nation's defense.  I've got some I've got some cameras that your snipers could use to send pictures back to the HQ.  Oh, by the way the Army doesn't have it."

Marine "I'll take 500."

"Nice doing business with you" Now sign on the dotted line they cost a mere $8,000 a piece (actual price).

Brian bitched to me at lunch, rightfully so, I think, about the way the LtCol was dealing with the ANA coming into the chow hall.  Rather than demand that they leave or the AC units will not be installed he has said that the contractors will merely need to work around the ANA who have illegally occupied the building.  Basically, the ANA get exactly what they want, a new mosque, the A/C units, and they learn that they can bully their way into whatever they want no matter who is paying for it.  The LtCol would probably say "It's late"

Anyways, in the afternoon I worked with LtCol Valquist on the AAR and on the Questions for the congressmen. 

I tried to meet up with the S2 to give them the weather, but they weren't around.  I cleaned my rifle, pistol, and did some more job-hunting.

Month 10 Day 16

Notebook Entry

None

Journal Entry

Today was a fine day.  I slept in until about 0630.  That was really nice and I needed it because of the little sleep that I got the night before.  I worked out at the gym.  It is such a nice little gym, clean, compact everything that you need.  I did my normal morning routine, went over had an omlet, French toast sticks, fruit, and yogurt for breakfast.  I went to the Command post for the 215^th Corps AT and I fought the battle of the inbox for a little while.  Not a ton going on.  One of the guys in my AO is trying to get maps for his guys and trying to get them to use their own system.  He has been told by his guys ‘my old mentors always got me maps, why won’t you…no shock there I have heard that a lot.

I went back wrote my journal for a long while. 

I had a lunch-date with Capt Jim Kim Sengupta from the Brits.  He has a bunch of good training marterial on his Centrix site, but because of the Marine Corps policy of not playing well with others it is very difficult for me to get off and get over to my guys.  Especially since there has been a knee jerk reaction to that fucking retard Bradley Manning.  It is amazing what damage one Army PFC can do. 

Anyway lunch with him was good, I had a meat pie, they were out of tomato sauce and that made me sad.  I also had some nice yogurt and some juice.  We talked about things.  Things are goin much better for him than me, or so it would seem.  It seems that they do a lot for their Afghans.  Their Brigade is basically directly tasked by Kabul he says because the Corps is so fucked up.  We talked about the HUMINT money, he said that he had not followed the money trail to the ground and was not even familiar with the forms that they use. He was saying that it  was not something that he really wanted to get into.  Without him knowing what is going on down at the lowest level it is difficult for me to assess the level of corruption in his brigade.  It is certain that he has better staffing than I do.  He says that he likes to talk to me because it makes him feel better about his own guys.  Ha, I guess I can see that.  I told him how we are all running out of steam on our team and I talke to him about Major Davidson.  He said that for the british intel corps their guys are deliberately staggered by 3 months so that there is no loss of corporate knowledge, but you have always got fresh guys working too.  That also would prevent the Afghans from pulling the ‘my last mentors…’ We also talked about Major James Blitz, he questioned just what the hell Maj James Blitz did.  WE both believe that he is a well-meaning retard, but that is ok, you can work with retards you just have to play Jedi mind-tricks with them. I went back, fought the battle of the inbox some more.

In the afternoon I was particularly naughty.  I layed down and watched two TED talks and a movie.  I watched one that really wasn’t all that great by Dan Dennet I think.  He basically said we have to calculate the cost of problems that we are already in and weight that with the cost to repair them.  I watched a good one by Richard Dawkins.  It didn’t have anything to do with God.  He was talking about how our brain is programmed to deal with a middle-sized world.  If we were a fly we would be programmed to treat surface tension as a major part of our lives, but we are not. If we were bacterium, then Brownian motion would be a big deal, but as it is, we generally view ‘solids’ as solids because to our hands they are, but if we were neutrino size, then we would have evolved differently.  It was a really good point and he brought up the really good point of why it is so hard to understand quantum mechanics because it is simply not a world that we live in.  He asked the good question, if we have kids play computer games that act according to Quantum Mechanics rules would they be able to build their brains to conceptualize them?  It is a reasonable idea.

I added to my naughtiness by watching Australia.  That was definitely a movie trying to be more epic than it was.  The acting was fine, the directions was more like a Jerry Bruckheimer, and it certainly seemed to take itself very seriously, but the screenplay just wasn’t all that it should have been.  I just couldn’t give a shit about the characters. Their predictability was a major problem too. That said, I didn’t turn it off even when I groaned towards the beginning and I turned it on in the airport.

That said, I felt a homesick for Australia.  I like the wide open spaces. I miss how open it is.  I hate and love that it is really far out of the way.  There is part of me that wants to say, fuck it, let’s pack it all up, move down there and just give it a go in some seaside town.  Maybe I could be happy with that. 

I caught a ride to the airport with Maj James Blitz.  He really feels like the USMC screwed him for some reason or other.  I suspect he thinks he is much better than he is.  He is probably going to try to hit sanctuary and retire, or do a contractor gig after this.  Then come back on active duty.  He asked ‘does that make me a bad person?’ I said no, that’s just how the system is set up, you are doing what is rational.

As I sit here and look around I see many more contractors than I did the last time, that more than the time before that.  There are 17 contractors here and only 11 military members.  War Inc. what games we play with numbers, the drawdown of military personnel has started, but the ramp-up of retired, and reservists with contractors has just begun.

Month 7 Day 27 and 28

Notebook Entry
None

Journal Entry
Stuck in Leatherneck the whole day.

 In the morning I saw some of the Georgian military. Wow, if these guys are emblematic, then they need NATO much more than it needs them. Fingers on triggers, uniforms in all states of disrepair. The funny thing is that one of their primary missions here is to train Afghans. Ha, the blind leading the blind.

The Capt the Gunny and I tried to get onto a C-130 Space-a [Space Available] but the flight was canceled because of a sandstorm. I spent most of the day in the terminal working on my sample chapter, outline and book proposal. It was nice time away from the work environment for that. The Capt and the Gunny decided to sleep in the terminal and were a bit miffed at me for going back to the tent. They were also a bit upset that I didn't want to take part in mindless conversation, I wanted to read and learn and write. The Capt said I spent all day writing the book and the Gunny said he was going to sue me if I published it. Oh well, I slept well, except for a little restlessness contemplating whether I could go to jail for writing up things of dubious classification or whether I could be sued for libel, got up worked out, had a good breakfast in time to make it back only to miss a USAF flight not because I was last but because it was down for maintenance. I tried to call to find out some more info about flying rotary wing without flak and kevlar, they said we needed them. This was different gauge [information] than they gave the Gunny and he blamed me for us not going on it tonight. He is just grumpy that his heroic stay in the Paxterm [Passenger Terminal] was fitful.

Now I'm here. I kicked it with the Bosnian chick (term used loosely) and the Dude (a bald weightlifter type) and talked to them about their 2.5 year tours first in Iraq and now here. They say they don't mind it, they get to go home every four months they Skype with their kids, and I am sure the pay is pretty good for pretty easy work. This war is a welfare program for more than just Afghans.

I love my wife.

Day 28
Notebook Entry
None

Journal Entry

Went back worked on the book chapter, watched I am Legend. Went to sleep

Month 7 Day 5

Notebook Entry
None

Journal Entry
Yesterday didn’t end it just bled into today. I went to the gym a second time half out of bordom and half because Lt Jim McDermott said to me that I was looking puny compared to what I was at OCS [a school that I went to years ago]. He is right, but it was still a dick-head thing to say. I had to get on a bus to the Kuwait international airport in a pair of trousers because I was not allowed to wear my shorts. I changed back out of these loaner trousers on the way to the airport and when I arrived, lo and behold there were plenty of locals there who were wearing sandals, shorts and short sleeved shirts. Cultural sensitivity is one thing, but it is generally sensible to [know] the culture that you are purportedly being sensitive to before presuming that you can cast a sensitive air. The presumption [that] a conservative society is basically just like the American south is one (or perhaps several) presumptions too far.

So the airport that oil built was spectacular. The shopping complex was nice, the architecture was impressive. The only hitch was that I didn’t bother to check the exchange rate prior to busying my donut at the caribou coffee. I think it ended up costing me about 15 dollars for that and a hot chocolate. I am dubious about the real need to arrive there at 2000 as we did I think It would have been more than sufficient to take the bus that went at 0100, but the lazy contractor who masked his small job with perfect grammar, enunciation and hid behind a wall of bureaucracy tried to pack every soul onto the bus that left earlier. It must have been a terrible inconvenience for him to wake in the middle of the night to give his thirty second liberty brief and them tell all of the passengers that “under no circumstances are you to return to K2.” [this was the holding tent where we were prior to processing] He is just one of the thousands of contractors who are feeding off of this way. I must admit it is pretty tempting to do the contractor gig for a year. There is a guy working in the S2 [Intelligence] shop on Dwyer who makes 1,000,000 per year for making statistics in excel. Yep, it would suck, no doubt, to be away again, but we could be free of all material concerns basically for the rest of our lives if we could pay off the mortgages.

Month 6 Day 4

Notebook Entry
Fourteen reports to the ANA, spoke with the Executive officer, Gerry Bellett and Joshua Hersh come regarding Counter Intel support Failure, Rafi came late.

Journal Entry
Yesterday was Friday. My day to catch up on stuff. I made a progress report for the ANA [Afghan National Army] XO [Executive Officer] and a training plan for next week. Maj Hesco did a PME [class] which seemed worthwhile for the Jr Marines. He read General Petraus’ message on the insurgency. I am not sure why the officers had to come given that we had all already read it. Oh well. It was nice to sleep in a little bit yesterday. I didn’t get a chance to get out to the hospital. I felt really bad about that. I really like going there, but I just didn’t get time. Instead, the CISE [Counterintelligence Support Element] and BDOC [Base Defense Operations Center] guys showed up about a guy who works here who is supposedly a threat to us. The whole thing shows ignorance of the Afghans, this guy is an Uzbek, he doesn’t like the Taliban, the General can’t outright fire him not only because he is a civilian, but because the general is a Hazarah and a Shia. The BDOC and CISE Lts were all pissed off that we couldn’t just kick him out. I’m like guys, this isn’t how this works. The Maj and Capt left for Marjeh last night to see the new kandak. I got clearance from the Major to go do some training for the Company Level intel Cells in the weeks and months ahead.

I had an interesting conversation with Capt Brawny yesterday morning. I wondered to myself if the military actually produces leaders, or if military leaders only know how to be positional leaders. That is, all orders from superiors carry with them the force of law, so is it really leading? There seems to be little to no attempt around here to get buy-in. The second thing that I brought up with him was that for the first time in my life there was no exciting next step for me for a while. The next steps in the USMC are more of a noise than a word 'meahhh.' He said 'well [redaction for ID]this is really your first career, I think all careers are like that.' That gave me pause, perhaps he is right. I like my dilettantism, but it may not be reality unless I am a Congressman or something.

Hmmmmm.