Month 10 Day 17

Notebook entry

53 reports given, conversation with dinar, conversation with the major, Dr.'s birthday.

Journal entry

In the morning I was only able to sleep until 0630, that was not fun because I was really tired and needed to get some extra sleep.  I couldn't.  I went to the shower cut my hair had my Friday breakfast in the chow hall, and then came back to camp.  I fought the battle of the inbox most of the morning and did a good job of it.  I was nice that I was able to access my e-mail from LNK because I didn't have so much to catch up on.  

I took Dinar to lunch.  He spoke to me about how bad he felt about how the Gunny treated him.  I told him everything I could think of.  Gunny's omnidirectional hatred because of his failed marriage, poor relationship with his daughters, the rejection of the USMC.  I told him how we couldn't touch the Gunny because he had reached sanctuary, and how Dinar shouldn't take these things personally.  I told him how other people see what they are expecting to see and therefore see a lazy Afghan when they look at the linguists because that is what they expect.  I told him how to try to turn the other cheek, I talked about Job, I talked about persecution even unto death, and that is where I had to stop.  I felt really bad for him.  

He's like. "you know how it makes me feel when educated marines (12th grade education) say that "I hate this country, I hate all of the lazy fuckers in it.  Do you know how much of my family I risk to be here?  Do you know how much I am reviled by the Taliban. I don't want to complain to the boss because I don't want to be weak, and because he alreday has a million problems with the general.  Just sometime, when Col Schmitt asks, how things are going with the team I want to tell him the truth, but instead I tell him, it's all great, sir."

I met up with Major Tawoos this afternoon.  He is a man with one lazy eye, about 5,5 and a normal build.  I walked into the bedroom and it was cleaner than when it was just Salim.  He had rearrangeed it, there was now a soldier to serve Chai, he gave us some ubiquitous crappy candy and poured some glasses.  He told me  that he started in the Army 25 years ago under the Russians, that he began as a commando went to school in russia, came back and after the Russians fell he stayed in the Army, they put him in the infantry.  When the Taliban came to power he didn't have a job, and then when Karzai came in he rejoined.  He has been working for the pastsix years in Zabul and Qandahar.  Most of his time has been in Counterintel and in HUMINT working for the legacy program.  He told me as he took a drag on his 'pine' brand cigarettes.  He informed me that he really needed to make sure there were no threats inside of the Army and that he had already spoken to the XO about getting a counterintel officer at each of the kandaks.  He had no idea that they were missing regular intel officers.  He has eight kids, three boys, the oldest boy is 14 and the rest are girls.  They live in Kabul and he hasn't been able to see them in two months.  He was hoping to get transferred to Kabul after working for 6 years in the south, but he was not able to.  I told him about his predecessors, he shook his head an agreed that a lot of the officers try to buy their positions, and they are only in it for the money.  He wanted to know how the section was doing and how things were going in the brigade.  I gave him my assessment of his sergeants and how intel was not functioning right now.  He said he needed help with getting air conditioners and stuff for his office and room, I told him that they used to have offices with A/C, but because the S-2 was gone so long other officers took over those places.  He's said this is the most important thing.  I said "really, I thought the most important thing was beating the Talban" He smiled wryly and said "yah, you're right."  I told him about the training goals I had to accomplish with him, the class schedule, my weekly reports, how and when I give them reports, and how things needed to go. He seemed a bit resistant, "I have a lot of experience." well I've heard that before, we'll see.  I set up a time for Salim to show him all that he has learned in the past few months.  I asked him to be careful of Salim's feelings.  Salim has not learned a lot, but he has done his best, worked hard for an Afghan (1 hour per day of class), that's all I ask.  

I went to the birthday of the Hospital Corpsman rate, it is a dumbed down Marine Corps ball, but it is good that they have a little special esprit for the harder lives that they lead with Marines as opposed to how they live on ship. 

Month 10 Day 1

Notebook entry

16 reports given, rearrange office, promotion, interpreter conversation, at lunch, Salim cardinal directions, beer with Central intelligence agency, regimental combat team communications Officer here, Capt. Arthur’s comments

Journal entry

In the morning I tried to help Salim put the office in order.  Papers are just laying everywhere, stacked on top o each other, nothing is actually filed in the filing cabinet, it is just stuff in there. In the process I discovered a ‘moush’ a mouse in English which we proceeded to kill and dispose of. 

Then it was time for my promotion.  I was promoted with then Maj Valquist and then LCpl Casbarro.  I had Capt Nowak pin me on.  I thought he would be really annoyed if I didn’t and he actually seemed to care about it, so I called him out.  I had Col Schmitt pin me on the with other. The Afghans were out there too and I got a million ‘Tabrik Boshi’s’ (congratulations) along with four giant pendant things to hang around my neck, they are basically a bunch of paper with some ribbon stapled to the front.  They are kind of corny, but they must take a long time to make. 

At lunch I had a converstation with the terps.  Sami said that after the US was out he might join the ANA.  The other terps were like wha?? He said that he wanted to serve his country.  The other terps were like, don’t you think that you are serving your country now?  He said “I want to serve my  country directly.”  Dinar said that he once thought about joining, but he never met the ethic qualifications for the jobs that he wanted in the government.  The affirimative-actionesq system kept him out of  the NDS. They said that they were in a really bad position.  They are hated by the ANA and they feel like they are hated by the Marines too.  Some of them never want to come back and others feel like it is their duty.  They are going to be a really interesting bunch to put in the book. 

In the afternoon I gave salim the weather and tried to work with him on the cardinal directions as well as the locations of the places within our AO. Capt Chuck CJ Radin then came over and worked with him for a while on briefing techniques. 

I bounced to chow and sat down with one of the guys who does contracting for the CIA here.  They live a whole different lifestyle.  They have a great gym, chow hall, tiled floors.  He’s like ‘man you wouldn’t even know it is Afghanistan.’  He also invited me over for a beer some night.  “they don’t like enlisted to come over, but if you ever want to come have a beer and relax, just walk on over.” HMMMM

Capt Arthur has been in a particularly foul mood.  I feel for the guy he has been tasked with this huge investigation, but he has not really freed himself from his normal job so he keeps getting reamed out.  He said that it goes deeper than that.  He’s like I’m not really a great Marine, but I would like to know that what I am working on actually makes a difference, but I have been a complete failure.  There is nothing that has gotten better here.

I’m not the only one.

To cap it all off Maj B tells me that some other guy is inbound for 2/1, so God only knows where I will be sent when this thing is done.  It will be somewhere on Pendleton, but no telling where.

Month 9 Day 22

Notebook entry

Sgt. Paul Radley a turnover, $250 million tombstone next fiscal year, $100 million ongoing, $500 million upcoming soon

Journal entry

Woke up and stood watch. Went to Tombstone.

The Major really went there to hash out the details of the move, arrange Kalimars o move the 40 foot containers, arrange flat beds for the track hoe, bulldozers, etc. This is a lot of extra troublefor guys that the RCT wants to use as provisional riflemen. One funny episode the Kandak commander blamed some manufactures defect on the reason all of the transmissions were broken in the dump trucks.

I found out the Maj James Blitz’s orders were somehow messed up or incomplete and the he would be returning to the US on Tues.  This meant that I spent most of lunch and the early afternoon doing a turnover with Sgt Paul Radley.  I gave him an overview of the problems that I was facing and told him that I really needed to start with the personnel, once I got decent personnel I could then move on to training them or sending them to training. I told him that my section had basically regressed since I had arrived because of personnel turnover.  I told him that the general signed but ignored PIRs, that they did not drive a collection effort, that the information they took in was merely typed (because they feel that is more official) then signed by the general then two hole punched and put into a binder never to be seen again, with this in mind they do no analysis, no production, and dissemination is limited to voice transmissions over their one HF radio set.

After that I fought the battle of the inbox for a little while.  Did some coordination with the CLB guys who are going with us on the move and then eavesdropped on a meeting that the G-4 was having.  Apparently the us army Corps o engineers briefed that it is in the midst of $100,000,000 worth of projects for helmand and nimruz, about to kick off another $500,000,000 in projects and they are going to be spending $250,000,000 on camp Shorabak, the corps headquarters alone.  They will also be dealing with the operations and maintenance of those contracts until 2014. When the mentors asked who was going to be training them how to use and maintain the facilities that they have the rep smiled and said, you guys. I cannot believe this shit. Especially when some of the projects are to rebuild/move shit that is already in place.  Just like the millions that are being poured into Camp Garmsir even though it is only a temporary facility. 

I also chased down the billet and ID number of an Afghan soldier detained for associating with the TB the Corps is going to talk to MGen Malouk and figure out how they are going to treat this guy.

Came back, ate chow, took a picture of the giant lot of trucks.

On the ride back from the trucks dinar asked me “are people in America like they are here? I mean you can feel how much they hate you when they see your dark skin and when they find out you are a Muslim. It feels terrible.” I told him that people are scared of what they don’t know and if he goes to a place where they never see a brown person, then he could run into trouble, but if he sticks to some of the bigger cities where he will not be special then it would not be a problemexcept possibly at airportss.  I felt pity for him as he said the next words “you know even in the remote parts of Afghanistan people are understanding and forgiving, they have lost sons to the Taliban, sons to the Americans, and they understand, sons die in war.  When I go back to them they tell me ‘you are so lucky to be working for the Americans’ and I say yah, I don’t have the heart to tell them.” 

photos of the hundreds of trucks just baking away in the sun at the higher headquarters.  Each one paid for by the American Taxpayer