Dispatches from Blogistan

Former U.S. Marine and private security contractor Tim Lynch is putting his blog "Free Range International" on hiatus, so that he can focus on recovering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (P.T.S.D.). Luckily for Sherpa, bloggers such as Kentucky Woman and Kanani Fong have recommended any number of military and civilian personnel who are still fighting to write about life downrange.

Here are a few collected recommendations, posted here in no particular order:

*****

'BOOKS, BOMBS & BROTHERS'

Mobilized in December 2011 and deployed in late January 2012, writer Todd Uebele is a smart, cheeky U.S. Army captain (?) currently based somewhere in Afghanistan. In fact, he's snarkily living the deployment dream eerily similar to that which I once anticipated myself. Take, for example, this Aug. 25 post, titled "It's Good to be the King":

Apparently, there was a general was being briefed outside and had trouble hearing the briefer, so he or she ordered the generators shut down. Said generators provide power to a majority of the living area and office space here on camp. The good news was that a majority of the soldiers got a nice break. The bad news was they had no place to go as their living areas also had no power. 

I was talking to the Brigade XO and he suggested I go eat. I told him I already had. Then he suggested I go to the gym. I told him I already had. Next he suggested I do a general walk about. Just to keep the theme going, I told him I already had. Finally he offered me some ice cream money. Even if I already had, I would have taken it :).

*****

'RAMBLINGS OF A PAINTER'

"Before the Patrol," @2012 Skip Rohde

In stateside life, Skip Rohde is a contemporary narrative painter and former U.S. Navy officer. From 2008 to 2010, he worked as a civilian in Iraqi reconstruction projects. He's currently working for the U.S. Department of State, a civilian deployed to help building infrastructure in Southern Afghanistan's Kandahar Province. He's slated to return home to North Carolina in October 2012. In both words and pictures, he occasionally presents snippets and scenes of his Afghan experiences at this blog.

Armed with his artistic gaze, Rohde makes even seemingly routine scenes come to life in new ways. On Aug. 19, for example, he wrote about getting back into the Afghan grind, after spending some time back home in North Carolina. I love the details, such as "don't-give-a-hoot crews" and military-issue backpacks:

I arrived back in Maiwand this morning. It was a long trip. I left Asheville on Monday evening. The flight was delayed a bit by weather, but I still got to Atlanta in plenty of time to catch the flight to Dubai. Some of my friends have recently had some bad experiences with United (lost bags, cancelled flights, and don't-give-a-hoot crews and representatives) but Delta has been pretty good for me. Our flight was packed with lots of US civilians obviously heading to Afghanistan. How did I know? They had this certain look to them, of men who had done hard things in difficult situations for long periods of time; calm, competent, no-bullshit carriage. That, and the military-issue backpacks.

*****

'THE KABUL CABLE'

Blogger Ty Mayfield is a self-described "political affairs strategist" in the U.S. Air Force, with multiple deployments to Southwest and Central Asia. He holds graduate degrees in International Relations from the University of Oklahoma, Norman, Okla., and in National Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. Ty is currently participating in the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) directed AFPAK Hands program and splits his time between Washington, D.C. and Kabul, Afghanistan.

Bottom line: He's wicked-smart. Also, he has a sense of humor. Take, for example, this Aug. 16 post titled "My Enemy has a Name: 'Checklist'":

It’s 5 or 6 pages, double-sided and written in about 10 font. Much of it is cryptic, vague and misleading. It seems simple but rest assured that when it comes to deploying; nothing is ever easy.

I was notified via SMS text message by an Afghan-American about my Oral Proficiency Interview (O.P.I.) test results well before the government could get word to me. In retrospect, it isn’t surprising and I didn’t find it unusual at all when the message came across. I mean, why would the Test Control Officer know first? It actually gave me a little chuckle and a glimpse into the networked life of Afghans. Word travels fast in a high-context, relationship-oriented society; any government that tries to outpace the speed of the SMS text is in for a world of heartache.

*****

'9-AND-A-HALF-HOURS AHEAD'

Dan Bohmer describes himself as "just another soldier far from home," a U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery turned Medical Service Corps officer deployed to Eastern Afghanistan. He says he likes to shoot pictures more than he likes to write. He doesn't claim to be a photographer, but, as he puts it—he does have a great camera. According to the "Big Day" counter found on his blog's home page, he will soon to return to the states. If that's truly the case, I hope he continues to write and reflect on his experiences, particularly as he has captured many different facets of military life.

Take, for example, this confrontation with petty warrant officer tyranny, as the warfighter-customer (remember Sherpatude No. 19?) attempts to get a new ID card:

It was obvious [NCO 2] had not heard the discussion I had been having with her boss because as she stepped into the room, took one look at me and said, 'Chief said you might be back, let me check the system to see if it is up.' NCO 1 told her 'No, you cannot check the system until we get a call back.' NCO 2 said, 'What if they forgot to call us?’ NCO 1 said, 'Chief said they wouldn't; do not touch that system unless they call us.' NCO 2 gave her the look like she couldn’t believe anyone could possibly be so dumb, looked at me, shrugged and as she picked up the phone said, 'well, I'll just call them then.' NCO 1 started to say something but NCO 2 had already dialed the number and gave her the 'hand.' The phone call lasted about 15 seconds as the helpdesk assured her the system had been up for several hours.

NCO 2 made me an ID card ... NCO 1 just sat there with a stupid look on her face. WO1 has obviously taught NCO 1 well in the art of not doing your job while acting smug, smart, and important. WO1 & NCO 1 have a bright future at any DMV or government 'service' office ahead of them when they leave the Army.

*****

'WORDS FROM A VET'

I met Ryan Koch at the Military Experience and the Arts Symposium at Eastern Kentucky University last July. A fellow Iowan, he recognized my "Red Bull" bowling shirt. He'd joined the Iowa Army National Guard in 2007 after graduating from high school. He was a member of 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry (1-168th Inf.) before he transferred to active-duty in 2009, so he is also 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division alumnus. He deployed to Eastern Afghanistan with the 101st Airborne Division—the "Screaming Eagles"—at the same time the 2nd Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Inf. Div. (2-34th BCT) was also downrange. He even came encountered some Iowa Red Bull buddies during his Afghan travels in 2010-2011. Big world, small Army.

Koch is now studying communications at Iowa Wesleyan College, Mount Pleasant, Iowa, where he's also a college sports reporter and is active in the local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (V.F.W.). Since the symposium, he's been posting occasional essays and photos regarding his time in Afghanistan, including these regarding the comforts of home:

There was a chow hall, of course, about 4 hajj shops, a barber shop, and a bread store. The bread store was amazing. The Afghani who ran it was this really old guy who only knew how to say about 4 things in English; Sugar, no sugar, one dollar, and thank you come again. The bread in Afghanistan was actually pretty damn good, and he would bake it fresh every day. The best compliment to the bread? A Boom Boom. Boom Booms were the Afghan equivalent to a Red Bull, and they were only a dollar! They were damn good as well, and many times you would see soldiers leaving the hajj shops with a case of 20 Boom Booms. You would have to guard them with your life though, because snooping sergeants and other soldiers wouldn’t hesitate to snag one off your bunk if you left it laying there unguarded. [...]

It wasn’t the luxurious lifestyle we were accustomed to, but any little thing that could give us a taste of the civilized world gave us that little bit of a morale boost to keep us going another day.

Little did any of us know that soon, we would need every little bit of morale boost we could get, and it still wouldn’t be enough ...

Three-Shot Burst of Red Bull News and Views

Earlier this week, my buddies and I got to play with all sorts of Army toys, including the Squad Automatic Weapon ("SAW"), the M-240B ("Em-two-forty-bravo"), and even a brand-spanking new tripod-mounted .50-cal M2 ("Ma-Duece") machine gun.

Reflecting the concept that one should conserve one's ammo by displaying a little trigger discipline, here's a short burst of Red Bull news and views:

MINNESOTA RED BULLS ALERTED FOR IRAQ, KUWAIT

According to this Associated Press article, some 2,700 soldiers of the 1st Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division have been alerted for potential deployment to Iraq andKuwait sometime in summer 2011. In 2007, 4,000 "Red Bull" soldiers--including the 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry "Ironman" Regiment from the Iowa Army National Guard--achieved the distinction of the longest deployment of any U.S. Army unit to Iraq.

The AP article offers interesting perspectives of a few our fellow Red Bull soldiers, many of whom have faced multiple deployments and separations from family:

In Rochester, Fire Battalion Chief Eric Kerska, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, announced the expected deployment at a news conference on the scene of a fire-training exercise. A house engulfed in flames crackled in the background as Kerska talked about the mission.

“Our soldiers are the best our great state has to offer, and we are committed to ensuring they are prepared for this likely call of duty,” he said.

This would be Kerska’s third deployment. He served during the first Gulf War and returned to the region in 2005.

“On the one hand, I really don’t care to go back a third time,” he said. “But on the other hand, it would be kind of nice to tie a bow on that thing and say, ‘OK, we’ve got it done right.’ ”

YOUNG U.S. TRAINERS IN KABUL LAUNCH BLOG

As part of the newspaper's evolving "A Soldier Writes" feature, U.S. Army 1st Lt. Mark Larson recently wrote a thoughtful description of the challenges faced in training and evaluating Afghan soldiers:

The Afghan soldier was giddy. Only seconds before he had spotted the improvised explosive device lying along the roadside. His sharp eye had ensured that the convoy was called to a halt before rolling through the blast zone. Yet his enthusiasm was such that he jogged up to the I.E.D. and triumphantly picked it up.

The U.S. trainers could only shake their heads. The Afghan National Army unit would be marked as having failed the “React to I.E.D.” validation exercise. Instruction would be given. But because of the strict training timeline, the unit would have to move on to the next validation exercise. If it passed the minimum number (and had fulfilled other minimum requirements), it would be given approval to deploy.

Larson and a couple of buddies are apparently launching a blog, called "A Handful of Dust," about their adventures and mis-adventures in Kabul. It's obviously still a rough work, and full of youthful hijinks and high-spirits. While Larson's words in the New York Times indicate some real depth and insight, his words at his blogs indicate a potential vibe along the lines of "Lawrence of Arabia meets amusement park ride."

In other words, keep an eye on it. And keep your hands inside the car at all times.

'SEMPER FI, MOON' POST MENTIONED ON 'BEST DEFENSE' BLOG

Once upon a few nights ago, just before Sherpa's bedtime, he was checking on the next day's Red Bull Rising post. Imagine his gobsmacked expression when he saw that Foreign Policy magazine blogger and former Washington Post reporter Tom Ricks had written about an RBR post titled "Semper Fi, Moon"! (The headline popped up in the Red Bull Rising blog-roll sidebar, where Ricks's blog regularly appears under the heading "Afghan Intel and Insight.")

Ricks, who grew up in Afghanistan, had used "Semper Fi, Moon" as a stepping-off point for a brief reflection of happier memories of Kabul. If you hadn't heard, Anti-Afghan Forces (A.A.F.) are on the move and the attack this week, as U.S. and Afghan forces prepare for a campaign in the southern region later this summer or fall. There have been suicide-bomber attacks on NATO convoys and U.S. bases in the capital of Kabul. Soldiers and civilians from many countries have been killed.

In light of such events, it's good to remember that love and innocence exist in the world, too. They're just harder to see.

Reservist, not Guardsman, Dies in Khandahar

I'm beginning to think that the Associated Press does more damage than good sometimes. Either that, or the headline-writers at the Army Times need a remedial course in basic fact-checking.

Just this afternoon, the Associated Press, via the Army Times, posted the following headline and news item. Here it is in its entirety:

Iowa guardsman dies in Afghanistan incident

The Associated Press

Posted : Saturday Apr 24, 2010 13:04:24 EDT

WATERLOO, Iowa — The Defense Department said Saturday that a soldier from Iowa has died in Afghanistan.

The department said in a news release that 53-year-old Command Sgt. Maj. John Laborde of Waterloo died Thursday. Authorities say Laborde died at Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan. Officials say he sustained injuries “from a non-combat related incident.”

Laborde was assigned to the 649th Regional Support Group in Cedar Rapids.

What's the problem? The 649th Regional Support Group is not a U.S. National Guard unit. It's a U.S. Army Reserve unit. Same Army, but completely different organizations. Confusing the two is like writing a headline about a State Trooper losing his or her life in the line of duty, when it was actually a U.S. Marshal. Or a municipal police officer. They're all law-enforcement professionals, to be sure, but they're all different.

Similarly, too many civilian reporters apparently think that all uniforms look alike.

Memo to Associated Press: A quick Internet search--even looking it up in your newsroom's dead-tree telephone directory--will help avoid such mistakes in the future.

This won't be the first time I've observed that careless headline writing and news reporting is hurtful to people like me, who go into mental overdrive every time we see or hear a reporter start off with the phrase "an Iowa National Guard soldier ..."

That said, I'm sure that others will also grieve with me the loss of any American citizen-soldier. The fact that Command Sgt. Maj. Laborde is from Iowa just brings the war closer to home, once again. The "non-combat" circumstances of his death don't make it any easier, either. In the coming dark days, please remember him, his family, and his fellow troops:

Be safe. Be vigilant. Be prayerful.

We Has Met the Enemy, and It is Us ...

This (next?) week's Time magazine cover story regards both tactical and practical factors in implementing counterinsurgency (COIN) practices. Writer Joe Klein tells the story of how a young U.S. Army officer struggles to get a school re-built in the southern Afghan town of Senjaray, Zhari District, Kandahar Province.

Here's the "nut" paragraph, upon which all other words turn:

The past four months in Senjaray have taught [Capt. Jeremiah Ellis, 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division] how difficult it is to do COIN in an area that is, in effect, controlled by the enemy — and with a command structure that is tangled in bureaucracy and paralyzed by the incompetence and corruption of the local Afghan leadership. Indeed, as the struggle to open the school — or get anything of value at all done in Senjaray — progressed, the metaphor was transformed into a much bigger question: If the U.S. Army couldn't open a small school in a crucial town, how could it expect to succeed in Afghanistan?

The questions and challenges discussed in the story are likely to be faced by some of my Red Bull buddies when they deploy downrange, although my faith in the citizen-soldier alleviates some of my potential concerns about how we Midwesterners will perform. I've seen it before, and I'll see it again: National Guard soldiers often have more life-experience to draw upon than their younger active-duty counterparts. We're soldiers, but we're also farmers and city engineers and building superintendents. I don't think you'd ever hear one of our leaders saying that we were "just knuckle-draggers," a sentiment more-than-implied by the 1st/12th Infantry's executive officer (X.O.) here:

That task is more difficult because the 1/12 battalion hasn't exactly had a terrific rotation in Afghanistan. "We've been asked to do a lot of different things," says Major Korey Brown, the battalion's executive officer. "They detached us from our brigade, which is headquartered in eastern Afghanistan, and sent us out here to Zhari district to be storm troopers — that's what General Vance called us — and that's what we were trained for, that's what we like to do. To find, fix and finish the enemy." But the mission changed with the arrival of General Stanley McChrystal, as commander of the International Security Assistance Force in the summer of 2009. "It's not about how you engage the enemy so much now. It's how you engage your district governor," says Brown. "That's a huge change for guys like us — call us knuckle draggers or whatever, but we weren't trained to do COIN."

The article also addresses some of lack of an effective "civilian surge" currently demonstrated, a situation that my blogger buddy Jeff Courter and I exchanged thoughts and blogs on earlier this week. (See here, here, and here.) As Klein writes:

The 1/12's problems were compounded by a practically nonexistent local government, led by a district governor who insisted on keeping his office at the battalion's forward operating base, rather than among the people. "And then the Afghan army regiment we were supposed to partner with was diverted to Helmand province, for the battle in Marjah," says Brown. And the so-called civilian surge — the civil and economic development component of the offensive, led by the State Department — arrived late and weak. "So the 1/12's been out there, pretty much alone," a State Department official based in Kandahar told me. "No Afghan military partner, a lousy relationship with the local government and not enough help from us."

The bottom line? A well-reported story, with plenty of meaty examples, written at a scale and pace applicable for deploying Red Bull soldiers. Regardless of where we eventually land in Afghanistan, many of us are going to be walking in the 1st/12th Infantry's figurative bootsteps. Time to mount-up mentally:

[...] Zhari is strategically crucial, the gateway to Kandahar city from the west, the staging area for most Taliban activity in the region. It is a largely rural district straddling the Afghan Ring Road and the Arghandab River. It includes the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar's hometown of Sangsar. The Taliban aren't outside agitators here; they are neighbors — not exactly beloved neighbors, given their propensity for violence and peremptory taxation, but more trustworthy than a deeply corrupt Afghan government and much more familiar than the foreign troops. Senjaray is the largest population center, a town of somewhere from 8,000 to 12,000 (there hasn't been a census), at the eastern end of the Zhari district. If Senjaray can't be won over, Kandahar won't be.

The Red Bull Film Festival: Coming Attractions

A couple of weeks ago, I tongue-in-cheekily proposed a "Red Bull Film Festival," a series of movies through which Regular Joes might be educated while being entertained. The subjects, themes, and messages? The history, people, culture, and/or geography of Afghanistan and its neighbors. Not everybody reads books and magazines, I reason, and there's got to be some different ways to engage soldiers in conversations about the issues and situations they may face downrange. Movies seem like a good bet.

I'd soon grown frustrated, however, that movies explicitly about Afghanistan seemed few and far between. (Hollywood is only now getting around to getting Iraq right--Oscar-nomination kudos to The Hurt Locker, by the way--so maybe we can hope for more cameras focused on Afghanistan.)

As I've said before, however: God works in strange and mysterious ways. Sometimes, he works through my car radio. Other times, he works through my Facebook account.

In the first case, I was gingerly speeding along my new 45-minutes-of-wintery-county-road commute, when a National Public Radio story used a classic Jack Nicholson movie to help describe the challenges of governmental corruption and resource management in Afghanistan.

Here's an excerpt for context, but the line I'm particularly in love with is: "Kandahar is Chinatown":

In one case, the provincial council seized land in Kandahar belonging to the Afghan defense ministry; it was developed into a gated residential community.

In another case, the provincial council took over water rights on land in Kandahar from a local tribe.

"This matters because this is the desert," says Greentree. "Water is the most valuable resource after land. Kandahar is Chinatown," he says.

In that Jack Nicholson movie, set in 1930s Los Angeles, powerful figures try to secure water rights on land outside the city. That is akin to what's happening now in Kandahar, says Greentree.

"A political mafia gets control of the water resource and knows where it's going to distribute so they buy up and acquire all the land around it and then become fabulously wealthy and powerful as a result. ... That's the underlying story," he says.

Benjamin Tupper, author of the soon-to-be-republished "Greetings from Afghanistan: Send More Ammo" (Sherpa's review here), was the first to call my attention to "Restrepo," a documentary recently well-received at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. (It one the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary.) A shout out also to Facebook friend Jo L. for calling fire-for-effect on the recommendation. I'll keep y'all posted if/as the movie gets distribution.

My ever-growing Task Force Facebook also potentially hooked me up with Scott Kesterson, part of the freelance photojournalist/videographer/mil-blogger team that made a documentary called "At War." I'm hoping to score a copy that I can screen for 3,499 of my closest friends in uniform.

In the further spirit of "Coming Attractions," here are some the titles I plan to review here at Red Bull Rising, with an eye toward creating a non-traditional training opportunity for our Red Bull troops during these pre-deployment months. I'm seriously calling it "The Red Bull Film Festival," and think that I might be able to book that big stadium-seating interactive classroom they have at one of our armories. I might even have to sell popcorn and T-shirts ... Gotta make this Army gig pay off, you know?

• "The Kite Runner"
• "Charlie Wilson's War"
• "Chinatown" (Hey, given NPR's suggestion, I'll give it a try.)
• "The Beast of War"
• "Rota 9" (A buddy of mine saw this while attending a U.S. Army school, but it's apparently hard to find in a DVD Region 1 format.)

Is this a good time to tell you that, in addition to fixing radios, one of Sherpa's previous mil-jobs was to run a U.S. Army movie theater in the middle of a foreign desert? It was a like a drive-through, but with more camels ... That, however, is another story.