Bad Day

This was the start of a bad day. Probably the worst while I was in Afghanistan. The explosion pictured in actually from a MCLIC (mine clearing line charge) so we were expecting it. The picture can't show a few things, though, that are crucial to the story.

First, we were leaving out of the SW gate of FOB Jackson to clear the treeline about 200 meters south of the base in hopes that we could minimize Taliban disruption of the election, which was a day or two after this operation. This was basically a situation where we marched out of the gate in order to draw fire and set off IEDs so Afghans wouldn't have to worry as much about violence if they decided to vote - the joys of counterinsurgency . . .

Second, a sniper had been shooting at us for a while that morning. A bunch of us were sitting around waiting to leave and a big puff of dust kicked up about five meters away with a big SNAP! Everyone scrambled for cover, hoping the bastard wouldn't get lucky.

Third, this picture was taken about four hours after we were supposed to leave. Originally the first element was crossing the LOD at 0600, but it ended up being 0930 or so before anyone stepped off. Something about problems with the MCLICs or whatever. No one ever passed the word.

Fourth, the rest of the day was brutal. It was hot as all get-out. We were ambushed outside of a compound several hundred meters south of the FOB. This was the first and only time in my deployment where we were unable to achieve fire superiority - truly scary. I can't imagine what war was like before we were better than everyone else.

Fifth, it was effing hot. So hot that by 1100 I was drenched in sweat and was sucking water like it was going out of style. Still, it was better than a few months later when I'm pretty sure I spent four weeks without actually feeling my hands. Whatever. 

What was it all for?

I don't know how many of you (who reads my blog anyway?) have seen this video but I just had the pleasure last night. The best way to hear what people think is Facebook right now, so I left it up there all night and was not disappointed this morning with over ten comments from various people. I don't think a single one of them captured what is so disturbing to me about this video.

For starters, I have to give this girl credit. At least she isn't posting anonymous comments somewhere. She has her position, however crude and uniformed, and puts it out there for everyone to hear. That's something, even if she speaks with "the valor of ignorance."

Two things bother me about this (well, that's not true but I'm focusing on these two). One is how many other people I know share her convictions but lack the integrity to say so. What does "Support the Troops" mean to someone who has never served and has no connection to the military community? They probably think, much like this girl, that a bunch of stupid minorities and farm boys are signing up because they either have no job prospects or are seized by unconquerable bloodlust. In their paternalism, these people believe they need to help these poor people in the military understand what they are doing so they can stop being a part of the war machine. The warped view of military life held by so many of these people simmers below a politically correct layer of BS.

The complement to the first issue is how unlikely this girl is to ever change her mind. People with no exposure to the military are not going to magically start meeting and talking with veterans or active duty servicemembers. And even if they did, the exposure would never last long enough for them to move past the "don't you realize how terrible the military is?" phase to the "hmm, I guess I don't really know much about the military" phase. No, instead they will sit with others who agree with them, convinced of their own superiority, and die thinking the same thing.

So why do we fight for such people? Why am I and all the other veterans the ones expected to be so much more mature and turn the other cheek? Because she's young? We're young. Because she obviously has no experience? She never will. Because it's her right? I also have rights of self-expression. Because we should tolerate diversity of opinion? She doesn't have an opinion - she has a belief. A belief is a conviction held without evidence, and that is precisely what this rant represents.

Right now 3/7 is back in Sangin. I hope the next time one of their 19 year-old LCpls rotates back to FOB Jackson he doesn't go online and find something like this video. We all deserve better. America deserves better.

When Things First Got Hot (and Chilly)

This picture reminds me a lot of our team's early days in Sangin. It was taken during one of my first operations in country, or at least I think it was . . . anyway, it was mid to late September. Big Daddy, Creole, Mumbles, Doc, and I had been attached to India Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines for a clearing operation. The LT was butting his head up against a wall trying to get us deployed the way he wanted, but the word from higher was to get CAG "surged" (everyone loved that phrase back then) to India Company, who was the focus of effort. So the team was split up, and each of us ended up with a different element, while LT and Dominicano stayed at the main base and Doc helped out at the Aid Station.

It was a relatively uneventful start to a difficult day. The first squad LDed pretty early in the morning but by the time I stepped off with the third squad it was already ridiculously hot. Probably 100 degrees, plus all that damn gear. Sweating our way into orchards, across mud walls, rushing through danger areas - it was a long, grueling start. I amused myself during breaks with the EOD Tech with whom I'd made fast friends. Guys like him have to be a little crazy and the one thing constant across 3/7, 1st Recon, and 3/5 was how quickly I was able to make friends with EOD. They are a strange bunch. We eventually joined up with the second squad at a large compound where a family claimed their father was working in the District Center. First squad was pushed out clearing the next sector of the route, so we holed up at the compound while they swept for IEDs. It was a pretty standard scene: Marines bored as hell, kids chucking rocks at their goats and (if they also got bored) each other, women hiding in one of rooms, and me trying to figure out how the hell I could get some useful information for the Platoon Sergeant or maybe even the LT. The father returned, claimed he was an Engineer and sympathetic to the government and the Marines even though he was Ishaqzai. Big Surprise - he only had twenty-odd Marines armed to the teeth waiting for him when he got home. What else was he going to say?

We had a particularly awful terp, so I didn't get very far but the forward element was moving so slowly it really didn't matter. A few hours later we realized there wasn't going to be any further movement before it got dark so the Platoon Commander ordered first squad to RTB. On the way back their Combat Camera was shot in the side above his side SAPI plate. Creole was there, and helped bring him back to the compound where the rest of us were staying. Leatherneck (the main camp) spun up the MEDEVAC bird and sent it on its way, but it took over a half-hour. The Corpsman we had with us brought the guy back three times before the chopper touched down.

He died on the return flight.

Funny, this picture is actually from the next morning. I remember it because it was so cold on radio watch (I think I had 0200-0400) and I had only packed out my poncho liner. Solution? Burn a bunch of plastic from MREs I had eaten, staying close enough to get some heat but not so close that I was hacking constantly. It's a difficult balance.

What Is There Left To Defend?

Sitting in a coffee shop on campus with a few minutes to kill before class. Standing up to refill my cup, I see something . . . absolutely ridiculous. I don't know if you have heard of G4 TV but it's some cable channel focused on young adults. They are showing some game shop-type series with two chicks dressed up to look like a New Yorker's caricature of a trashy teenage girl: daisy dukes, midriff t-shirts, and pigtails.

This is America now. It's 11:45 on a Monday, I'm at one of our so-called "elite" institutions and the flat-screen on the wall is showing two anoxeric whores playing Marble in the Oatmeal, where they mock fight each other in a kiddy pool of porridge.

Originally I wanted this blog to be a way for me to remember and make sense of my deployment to Afghanistan. I've been afraid to write in it for the last five months and I don't know why. Maybe it has something to do with the steaming, messy pile of shit that is American culture. How can you justify what our eighteen and nineteen year-olds are going through when this is what we do with the opportunities?

There is nothing of value is what we create under the logic of profit maximization. I may want to watch some girls flailing around in oatmeal (actually, I really don't but when I was sixteen I might have) but does that justify a channel dedicated to hedonism? Is it right just because they can make a few bucks on advertising?

We are lost.

It never leaves you

Occasionally you are reminded how different you are from other students at school. Most of the time you can pretend you're not but then the most random little event will trigger something inside of you. And that can scare you.

I was walking with a friend toward the Stanford Quad last week along Serra Street. It was a beautiful day, clouds playing across a blue sky while a brisk wind kept it just on the chilly side. The two of us had spent a carefree afternoon walking around the new Graduate School of Business complex looking at some of the new sculptures, discussing them (she's a writer for an art magazine), and generally catching up since we hadn't seen each other since I'd returned.

Two people crashed into each other on their bicycles about one hundred and fifty meters ahead of us while we passed the fountain in front of Memorial Auditorium. I could hear a few people yelling and sprinted over to see if everyone was okay. One of the girls was standing up and seemed to be okay while the other was lying on the pavement on her side, screaming.

The first thing that flashed in my head was how only one woman was even attempting to help. Everyone else was just standing around. I let a wave of anger pass over me and then focused on the girl. She was on her right side, grimacing and incoherent. After making sure someone called 911, I looked her over. She was unable to move her left shoulder but claimed to be otherwise hurt, which a quick scan confirmed.

Her name was Hillary. I rolled up my sweatshirt and put it under Hillary's head while we talked for the next seven or eight minutes. First the police (a wonderful deputy name Harris Kuhn who is a good friend of the Stanford veterans) and then the fire department showed up and took over, much to my relief. This should have been a pretty unremarkable event - Hillary gets hurt, gets help, end of story - but it wasn't. Not to me.

Kneeling over her, telling her she was going to be okay, telling her help was on the way - all of the sudden I was back in Sangin during a clearing op with L/3/7, watching an Afghan soldier with no legs slowly bleed out muttering "Allah, Allah" over and over again. All I could do was shout at him in English to stop moving because we were about to drop a GBU on a compound only sixty meters away. He ended up dying on the MEDEVAC bird. Did I check his tourniquets and do a blood sweep every time we moved him? I think so.

I think so. But I'm not sure. It never leaves you.

War as an Attachment

Life as an attachment sucks, especially in war. We breath the same air, eat the same food, walk the same route, and can die just like everyone else yet we are never a part of the core group of guys, the grunts who do all the sweating and bleeding. Try as we might, attachments hover slightly off the "tip of the spear" earning a dubious gratitude from their infantry counterparts.

The basic Marine warfighting unit is the infantry platoon, which varies in size but usually contains about thirty-five people. These guys must be augmented to provide a full spectrum of offensive capabilities: machine gunners, snipers, assaultmen (think rockets), and others as dictated by the mission.

In Afghanistan the (ideal) standard loadout also includes engineers to sweep for IEDs, a dog and dog handler for explosive detection, an Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) team to dispose of any IEDs, an interpreter for the patrol leader to talk to locals, a Human Exploitation Team (HET) guy to question any shady characters, and poor ol' Civil Affairs bringing up the rear to gather information on VIPs, identify projects to help out locals, and pay claims for damages or deaths.

This never happens. In fact, I have never seen an infantry patrol with all elements together ever - even in training. Two reasons for this: one, there aren't enough personnel to cover down on every platoon; and two, attachments can be viewed (rightly, sometimes) as another mouth to feed. So instead we end up moving around a larger area, attaching and detaching as instructed.

For Civil Affairs the default infantry attitude is skepticism if not downright hostility. Most of our work is seen as a joke - the whole hearts and minds crap that no one sees as useful in a place as violent as Sangin. When you first start out with a new platoon you have no friends and cry yourself to sleep every night. Or maybe that last part is just me.

Anyway, there's nothing to do but plug away day after day - patrol, debrief, stand post, fill sandbags - until the guys start to open up to you. Eventually you get know the names of the squad leaders, then the fire team leaders, then the individual Marines. You learn the "in" jokes, get made fun of, wrestle or box someone and win/lose (usually lose), and work your way in. Depending on the platoon this process could take two days, a week, or even a month.

And then you leave. The relationships you built are gone. The guys you've learned to work with, respect, and trust are gone. You're gone, headed off to a new group where you will face a sea of uncertain, even unwelcome faces again.

Lather, rinse, repeat. War as an attachment.

Rocket launchers and Pharmacists

It's very easy to lose perspective in Afghanistan. Marines tend to forget how they look in the eyes of the population, both figuratively--an occupying force--and literally--gigantic alien-looking guys with big guns). Creole saw this first hand a few months ago.

He was on a patrol in the bazaar with an infantry squad and needed to speak with key health care personnel in the area to determine the level of care provided to the locals. True to form, Creole offered to carry some ammunition or gear to lighten the load for some of the grunts. This is a fairly standard practice; it helps us integrate with the guys and shows we're willing to carry our fair share. This seems intuitive but you'd be surprised how many attachments pretend they are above the normal responsibilities of a Marine.

Anyway, before this patrol Creole takes an AT4 anti-tank rocket launcher and straps it to his back. About an hour later, they reach their destination - a pharmacist's shop toward the southern end of the bazaar. Creole is of course the guy who goes in to speak with the pharmacist (AKA someone can pronounce the names of drugs in Pashto). Just to make sure everyone's tracking, we have a giant Texan in full body armor and bristling with weapons walking into a shop simply to ask how business is doing. The guy at the counter was (justifiably) scared and refused to answer the questions. I'm pretty sure he thought his shop was going to get blown up. And Creole was getting pissed because he couldn't understand what the guy was so scared of. Finally the interpreter sorted out the problem and the Marines left to finish their patrol.

I didn't hear this story until several weeks later and I couldn't stop laughing. Dark military humor, I guess. The reality right now is we can't be the baby-kissers and money-spenders in Sangin because security is all anyone cares about. It'll get better, in sha Allah, but for now I'd prefer to have that guy with a rocket launcher, even if he is Civil Affairs.

Team Love

I wish I could explain exactly what happened a few night ago in our hooch. It was just one of those weird moments you know you'll remember for the rest of your life. All the enlisted guys were lying around killing time. It was two days until the junior guys were due to leave Sangin for good.

I was sitting on my cot cleaning my M4 sort of half-assed. I wasn't getting much carbon off the bolt, but the sound of bore brush's constant scraping relaxed me - put me in a reflective mood, I guess. I looked up and slowly gazed around at my team.

Buddha sleeps to my left. He had a white sheet hung up between us, and I could see his fuzzy silhouette as he fiddled around with his laptop. He's always messing around with it because everyone picks up viruses when they share movies on external hard drives. Buddha, though, never accepts degraded performance from his machine; he diligently dissembles the computer, diagnoses the problem, and fixes it. This process sometimes takes days, and we all give him shit for being such a stereotypical Asian.

Dominicano lay on his cot across the walkway watching a movie. His boonie cover rested low on his head and was pulled down, almost completely covering his face. With his earphones in, I don't think he was aware of anything but a bootleg action movie with russian subtitles.

Mumbles had moved over from his normal spot down to the left. Instead he sat on a stool on Dominicano's near side so he could watch Creole play Plants & Zombies. This is a very popular (and incredibly stupid) video game played by 90% of the junior enlisted Marines. The volume was turned up, so the sound effects blasted out of the computer speakers. This ceased bothering me after month #2 or so - I tuned it out completely.

To my immediate right, Big Daddy was also enjoying some electronic entertainment. He had discovered the HBO Series "True Blood" the day before and was already an addict. I'm pretty sure he watches seven or eight hours a day right now. In any case, his attention was absorbed in the dramatic lives of vampires with bad southern accents constantly trying to sleep with each other.

In other words, the team was together and happy. We had finished almost all of our RIP (relief in place) with the new team and had nothing to do but enjoy each other's company. I looked from one guy to the next, lingering a little on each face as memories of the deployment swirled around in my head.

I don't know what to call the emotion I felt. Love, maybe. Affection, probably. Kinship, definitely. These were my guys and we'd been through a lot both separately and together.

Creole must have felt me staring at him - we locked eyes.
"Hey Sarn't T."
"Yeah?"
"Quit being gay."
"Shut up."
"Roger that."

Yup, my team.

Easing back in

Learning to live anywhere but an isolated patrol base is a difficult process. Everything you take for granted in the States has been stripped away - hot food, hot water (hell, running water), toilets, central heat, clean air, and so on. It's amazing how much crap we use every day that doesn't contribute meaningfully to our survival.

Anyway, what's strange is you can't pick back up the habits of using these amenities even they're available again. Sitting inside insulated from the wind makes me sweat because I'm wearing layers all the time and I've acclimatized to the severe Afghan winter. The cough I developed from breathing in all the dioxide (thank you, burning piles of plastic and shit) has lessened noticeably. My fingernails are clean for the first time in months.

Strangely enough, the hardest thing to pick back up is showering. Normally I'm a pretty clean guy but going weeks on end with nothing but baby wipes changes a man. I took a shower five days ago and still feel really, really clean.

And I'm not even the worst on the team. You should see Mumbles. Or smell him, I guess. I had to threaten to duct tape him to his cot and beat him senseless if he didn't take a shower. It was something like a month but he has had access to the shower trailer for at least two weeks.

Living on this Forward Operating Base for a few weeks will help the transition to Camp Leatherneck, which adds a cafeteria and heated rooms into the mix. From there it shouldn't be too much of a leap to the manicured, perfumed reality awaiting me back in the good ol' U.S. of A.

Big Daddy

Certain days you realize you have it good in life. Let me tell you a short story about how lucky I am, and maybe you'll understand what I'm feeling.

Let's start off with two facts: Fact #1 I'm a cocky bastard. Anyone disagree with that? No one? Fact #2 I don't do a very good job of hiding it. Any care to disagree? Alright good, let's move on to the story.

I realized several months ago that I would have had a totally different experience in any other Civil Affairs team. LT takes an unusual approach to leadership, encouraging dissent and listening to everyone's opinion before pulling the trigger. He values broad perspectives and never takes the status quo for granted - to him, there is always a way to improve.

But the next guy in my chain of command isn't him - it's my Gunny. Our pre-deployment training was strange because he was gone a lot of the time, on leave and then at Civil Affairs school. Team 1 effectively lost our number two Marine, the one who makes things happen. I tried to step into that role but it requires a familiarity with the Corps you can't get as an off-again, on-again reservist. We missed him, more than we realized at that point.

He is a quite a guy, and I've come to respect him more and more. There really in no other name for him than Big Daddy. He's short, about 5' 7", built compact and strong. Creole always complains that he can do pull-ups forever because of his "old man strength." Only in the Corps is 33 considered old. Big Daddy runs us hard but fair, and takes care of us when we're in trouble. I can't even begin to count the number of times he's given me good advice on a problem I saw as overwhelming or hopeless.

He also lets me off easy, and that was huge during the deployment. 99% of the Staff Sergeants and Gunnery Sergeants in the Corps would have smacked me down hard for being too forward, too cocky, too aggressive, and not deferential enough. I'm nothing is not a stubborn and prideful cuss, so you all know how I would respond to criticism like that.

Don't get me wrong - these complaints are all spot on. But Big Daddy gave me a soft landing. He took the time to show me how I'd dropped a lot of attitudes of respect for rank and tradition during my time in college, and how this undermined the Total Marine concept we were both trying to impart on the younger guys. We walked through it together and I'll be damned if I didn't come out of that conversation more dedicated to him than ever before, even though he basically told me I was being a jackass.

I've never quite found this type of relationship before. We're as different as night and day but have worked out a system of cooperation second to none. Whatever I think about my own abilities, I thank God every day Big Daddy is there to catch me if I fall.

Funny what you can be grateful for.

The Sound of the Police

If you're one of those people who did not enjoy my last blog about Afghanistan's complexity then you're sure to like this one. Here I'll write like your standard editorialist and reduce this country's malaise into the crisis du jour.

Today we're serving a big steaming pile of police. Afghan Uniform Police to be specific. It used to be the Afghan National Police until the Wizard of Oz in Kabul - or perhaps DC - decided to plus up security by adding militias called arbakai. So now we have uniform policemen and some yokels with AK-47s.

And why are we doing this? Several reasons, it turns out - none of them particularly comforting.

First, because we promised some people we'd begin withdrawing troops in 2011 (this year, in case you don't have a calendar handy). That means we need someone to fill the void and we can't train AUP fast enough. Someone hit on the great solution of arming young men with few qualifications, a minimum of training, and close to no oversight. Problem solved.

Second, people hate (HATE) the AUP. They're poorly trained. They aren't motivated. They take bribes. They harass locals. Some are even Taliban. They smell. Okay okay, I added that last one. The rest I've heard straight from locals on numerous occasions. To address these concerns, the thinking is, we use locals with "skin the game" and a knowledge of the area, pay them a token salary, and watch the Taliban disintegrate. Problem solved.

Third, there's already a strong tradition of local defense in Afghan culture. As I mentioned earlier, bands of arbakai have been around for centuries. Afghanistan has never enjoyed a long period with strong central leadership so each area developed the institutions necessary to provide for their own defense. Now the US can co-opt this phenomenon and use it our advantage. Problem solved.

It's not all bad with the cops here. A lot of them work hard and just want the violence to die down. Most (read 90%) are stuck in a crappy situation not of their own making. But that 10% man, they're freaking AWFUL. And the police are a fascinating illustration of the problem of providing security when you don't know who to trust.

What's the real solution here? I am not the Wizard dispensing answers from behind the veil - I can't answer that. What I can tell you is the organizations needed to provide security in Afghanistan probably can't be developed in the timeline we're stuck with. Keep your eyes and ears open for timeline extensions, lowered expectations, or a depressing mix of the two.

Remember when I said I'd make this problem simple? yeah, That was a lie.

Afghanistan as Art

Do you want to know why you don't understand Afghanistan? It's because no one understands Afghanistan. It's because Afghanistan is a huge mix of cultures with no - let me repeat that, NO - unifying traditions or values.

What else is like this? Where in the world can we find examples to help us gain a measure of confidence in discussing the future of our involvement in this "country"? I believe art can help.

If you know me, you know I hate modern art. I don't understand it all, and I think most of it is a huge joke perpetrated on the public by people without the skill, time, or inclination to learn how to paint or sculpt realistically.

But I digress. You've probably seen this painting before:

"A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" by Georbes Seurat. I think it's the key to Afghanistan. This is - according to my Kindergarten level understanding of art - the first popular example of Pointillism. Rather than brush strokes, the artist used the tip to make small circles of color. Viewed from a distance, these dots appear to be a picture of a lot of strangely dressed people hanging out next to a river. With umbrellas in the shade. In reality, it's a bunch of dots - we only see a picture because that's how our minds make sense of it.

Enter the war. I've discovered that reading news about Afghanistan while deployed doesn't reflect anything I experience on a day to day basis. Hell, listening to other guys on my team talk about a village two kilometers from my patrol base is like hearing about a different universe.

Each small area here is its own dot. There's very little resemblance in behavior or composition from one to the next, and they often lack the sort of interaction we'd expect in a more developed country. This is especially true of the more rural areas in southern Afghanistan where the Marine Corps doggedly pursues the Taliban with one hand tied behind its weary back.

You'd think this isolation, variation, and complexity would inject a little humility into the writing about Afghanistan, but it doesn't. Everyone has their opinion about what's happening, and these always deal with the broad trends of the war. Discussing the true war - the amalgamation of blood, sweat, and tears unique to each area - necessarily reduces one's scope to the point where you'd have to have 10,000 long conversations rather than an 800 word-tall pile of goat shit.

But hey, it's always possible that I only understand Afghanistan as well as I understand modern art. Maybe the joke's on me . . . but I doubt it.

Counterinsurgency strategy for dudes

All told, I've spent about four of my six months here on patrol bases. Some were larger and better equipped than others but they all shared certain characteristics: we ate MREs - maybe tray rations if a resupply convoy came in; the highest ranking officer was a Lieutenant; there were no women; and the average age was around 20. (Note: that average includes me, the oldest guy in most places at 28)

We patrolled, we stood post, we waited around as QRF (the quick reaction force, called up in case the patrol gets in contact, hits an IED, and/or has a casualty). We ate bad chow, we worked out, we chopped wood, we police called, and we talked. A lot. About everything on God's green earth.

Although there were certain topics everyone loved - women, alcohol, trucks, hunting, fancy restaurant food - conversations inevitably drifted toward the war. By and large these guys feel like they were cheated out a good war in the name of counterinsurgency, or COIN. Hearts and minds. Population-centric warfare. AKA bulls#it.

As the Civil Affairs Marine I become the personification of all things COIN. I am the reason they can't just drop mortar rounds, call in bombs, and watch gun runs all day. Basically I suck more than anyone has ever sucked in the history of the world.

This forced me to come up with an explanation of why we were using the COIN approach to Afghanistan. This went through several phases, including raw logic (total flop), pointing out that was basically how the Soviets lost (total flop), even using Marine Corps history from the Phillipines, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Vietnam (total flop). What you are about to read is the culmination of six months talking to teenagers about complex military strategies using more expletives than real words. Feel free to stop reading if you're worried about your virgin eyes.

Here goes: you're at a bar with one of your buddies. He's an average guy: 5'9", a little chubby, quotes movies rather than makes up his own jokes, et cetera. You don't really like hanging out with him but you feel sorry for the guy. You've got other plans tonight, which means time is precious. Your goal is to off-load him on a girl so he can enjoy himself without clinging onto you for the rest of the night.

You spy a gaggle of four girl in the corner. They're all reasonably cute but no one stands out - that is, there's no angry-looking chick who wants to spoil everyone's fun by running interference on guys coming to talk. You order another two beers, let your buddy know these girls have been eyeing him, and start walking over.

A conversation strikes up among the six of you. The girls enjoy your jokes and are obviously interested. Your buddy, unfortunately, is pretty much dead weight right now. You've tried to coach him on things to say and ways to interact but it's in one ear and out the other. Still, you're staying afloat and that gives you hope.

Time drags on - one girl catches you checking your watch. Crap, now the whole group will know you're on a timetable. Ah well, can't be helped. Things are still flowing but you're starting to sense one of the girls isn't adding much. She's sitting there, stirring her drink and occasionally making a bitchy comment to your buddy. You dub her Mean Girl.

The girls spy a friend they know and walk over to make small talk for a few minutes. You coach your buddy a bit more, pointing out Mean Girl's tactics. He looks at you like there's too much cud in his mouth. Man, this guy is an idiot. It's going okay, you tell him, one of the girls definitely likes him (not true). Now you reiterate the game plan: try to win over Mean Girl by showing her extra attention, listen the girls' stories about how awesome the Twilight movies are, keep the drinks flowing for the next few hours, and you're golden. Okay? He nods. You're not convinced.

Fifteen minutes comes and goes. Nothing is happening. You're getting frustrated: your other friends are texting and calling and you can't answer because it risks ruining whatever mood has been set so far. You're painfully aware of how much hinges on your efforts. You're at the point where you wish you had never agreed to go out with your buddy at all - he probably won't have any luck tonight if you leave, but if you don't then your whole night is going to suck. So what do you do?

Explanation time: you are the Americans. Your buddy is the Afghan government/military. The girls are the Afghan people. Mean Girl is the Taliban. Like I said, your job is to get out of this situation as quickly as possible (2011, 2014, whatever) but in such a way we leave the Afghan government/military with the people, even though it's not entirely clear either really cares that much about the other. The Taliban can wreck this in a flash, requiring additional time and energy on your part. So you have to sideline them by a) getting the locals to stop supporting them (AKA COIN), b)killing every single one of them (AKA total warfare), or c) leaving the country and not worrying about it (AKA the Ron Paul solution).

Believe it or not, this story worked really well. It's pretty clear, draws from the Marines' experiences, and uses women as metaphors. Check and mate.

Turning toward home

180 days into a 210 day deployment and I'm ready to start thinking seriously about coming home. This doesn't include all the day-dreaming about BBQs, beer, pancakes, and so on - conservatively that's taken up about 50% of my waking hours here.

In any case, sticking my toe back into the water means I have to pick one thing to write about and let it go. Very simple, very short.

So here it is: My expectations were totally out of line with the reality here in Sangin. Thinking back to pre-deployment training (which was this decade, right?) we focused on things like our agricultural training at Fresno State and using crazy technology to efficiently development and implement development projects.

And . . . we used pretty much none of this. I haven't talked much to the other teams so I don't know what they did in Now Zad, Musa Qaleh, and Marjah. Maybe things were less "kinetic" and they took advantage of their training.

Actually, it's not true to say I didn't use the training - it's more accurate to say I found it distracting rather than helpful. In the beginning I was more focused on Civil Affairs as it was described on paper: projects, money, or some combination of the two. I wanted to make use of what I had learned, even if it wasn't what anyone around me wanted. So there were several times during patrols (when you're looking for IED indicators) that I noted the type of irrigation they were using, or the number and condition of livestock in a compound.

An example - (Talking out loud) Okay, they have three cows, four goats, and . . . ten chickens. BOOM! Okay, they have two cows, four goats, and seven chickens. BOOM! Okay, they have one cow . . .

This didn't last long but it did illustrate how weak my critical thinking skills were at twenty-eight years old. Next time (hopefully there won't be a next time) I'll understand that my job is to LISTEN first and foremost - both to Marines and Afghans. I am, to the use the LT's favorite word, the interlocutor between all things civil and military. Nothing more, nothing less.

That's enough for now. I should be writing one of these every week or so for the next month then cranking out a more steady stream in hopes of making sense of what the hell I've been doing since August.