Update 19, totally frivolous

Do you think that Mission Impossible 4 will start out with Tom Cruise
asking Ving Rhames' character, "Remember that crazy dream I told you
about, where I got married and there was a rabbit's foot?" Otherwise,
I am not sure how they are going to get him out of being a married
spy. That's right, it's time for another Update.

Also, a crazy video, which I should mention that I can't see,
http://www.military.com/video/operations-and-strategy/air-strikes/the-mother-of-all-jdam-attacks/792774915001/?ESRC=dod.nl

It is pouring down rain here in Afghanistan tonight. Really impressive
pouring rain. One of those blattery, spattering rains that seem like
they are coming from all directions at one. Since all of our
buildings, actual buildings, not tents, are made of corrugated tin, it
gets noisy.  The tents are their own problem. All that stretched
canvas, with plastic layers underneath, it is both noisy and damp.
And have I brought up that there are no worms here? I know that this
seems like a creepy thing to obsess over, but there are seriously no
worms. I've never been anywhere when, after it rains, there are not
worm trails about. How does this soil work? How are there areas where
things DO grow, without worms? I am really freaked out by it. (And for
the two sci-fi nerds out there, this makes me wonder how the
sand-worms of Arrakis were supposed to work. Here I am, in a desert,
no worms at all. How did they get HUGE worms on Arrakis? I know,
space, planets, aliens and sci-fi, but seriously, it seems to fly in
the face of what I now recognize as an immutable fact of life: there
are not worms in the desert.)

I have spent the evening ignoring responsibilities. I mean, I did my
job, which was easy enough. My school work is mostly complete;
probably it is complete to the level I plan to complete it. But I have
been avoiding writing this Update. I am not sure what to talk about
tonight.  I have spent most of the week working on school, which is a
good thing. (A great thing, a wonderful thing.) But it is not the sort
of thing that leads to fascinating Updates.

For a second I thought that I could really squeeze out some thoughts
on worms, but I think that I have tapped that well. What is left?
Well, we are firmly entered into the final pages of this journey,
there is certainly that to talk about. We're almost into the 40 days
left arena, which feels good. Everyone's heart is a little lighter
with the thought of leaving. We are all discussing strategies for
packing and carrying the least weight possible. They really do give
you a lot of weight to carry for these missions. In most cases, I
imagine, it is worthwhile. In our case, we never used 85% of the gear
we were issued. It was good to have it, I suppose, but we really
didn't get to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the products.
(Plus, while I was packing things up for shipment home, I found a few
items that I have no idea where they came from. They are in my bags,
which I packed, so I must have gotten them somewhere. They are useful
items and they look like issued gear, but I have memory of being
issued them. That's strange, right?  Oh well, they are packed up and
ready to be returned, if they are extra then perhaps Uncle Sam will
make a profit.)

I don't know if I have characterized a deployment this way previously,
but it is a series of bad smells. There is the pungent man-odor of the
tents which never get aired out. There is the moist and cloying stench
of the latrines that are never flushed properly… (Think of every
female comedienne's routine about men, then imagine a place where
there are hundreds of men and no women. That's what a deployment it.
The segregation of males and females is a really good thing in lots of
ways, but hygiene is not one of those ways.) There is the hospital
reek of disinfectant and blood and then there is the general dusty
stink of Afghanistan. I was working on a theory the other day, the
idea that the point of all of this malignant odor is due to a
calculated strategy. If you were ever taken captive on a base,
blind-folded and walked out, you could tell where you were based on
the various stinks you encountered on the way. When you smelt BO and
farts, you'd know you were near the tents and could call out for help.
It's probably not accurate, but it would make a good scene in a movie.
 Sneakers 2: The Afghan Campaign.

In return to the world news: There is an annual Baconfest in Chicago.
I will miss it this year, but would anyone like to guess where I will
be in April of 2012? That's right, BACONFEST!!!

For more of the Afghan Updates, or any I failed to send you, please
visit: http://dustintheeverything.blogspot.com/?zx=ee6fac97810abcfc

Update 18

I spent the week really down. I couldn't think of anything to write
for school all week. I stared at my homework and just felt dumb. Then
today I woke up in a really good mood and did a week's worth of all my
subjects in about 2 hours. So, Update time.

Let's talk about current events. So, there is all this talk about
funding for the military and reducing the forces. People are worried
that it will hurt the troops, or hurt our war-readiness. To some
degree, these fears are genuine, but let's break it down a little bit,
from the in-the-military perspective. There are two kinds of military,
garrison and operational. And there are combinations of the two.
Garrison operations, that's like the hospital in Bethesda. Or it's
like what I did in Okinawa, it's having an office and not being in the
field. In a way, it is what I am doing now, too. I am deployed, but to
a garrison unit. We are on a base, we are not out in the field and no
one is shooting at us.

Military funding works in a really bizarre way. Places like Bethesda
have so much money that you can't believe it. Partly that's important,
there are really excellent medical procedures that happen there that
require top funding. The ability to pioneer in the field of medicine
requires money. However, there are also flat-screen HD TVs all over
the place. That adds to the concept that we're a top-tier hospital,
but it is also a pretty effective waste of tax-payer dollars. The way
that budgeting works in garrison is something like this: Each October
a budget comes out. There are X dollars for the fiscal year. If you,
as a department, spend less than $X, your budget the following year
will be less by that amount. Consequently, around about August or
September each year, every department spends whatever money they have
left over on anything that they can remotely call a reasonable
expense. Sometimes, depending on the department, you can find some
truly extravagant items. You know that it's a budget-blowing time when
you suddenly get office chairs that are $600 each. Or the
aforementioned flat screens. If anyone does an audit and finds things
like this, it is considered Fraud, Waste and Abuse. It's a really big
deal. But just like in real estate, where developers have boats named
First Draft, it is usually not caught or disputed. That's just how
budgeting works in the military.

When you're in an operational environment, it is a little different.
Well, at least with the Marines. I have no idea how it works with the
other branches, I have never been operational with them. But the
Marines always get the oldest equipment and the least money. As a
result, they tend to be really good at re-purposing and innovating
with what they have. But even there, especially the Navy side of the
house, there are some total wastes of budget. I was on a field
exercise in Okinawa and we had stretchers. They were old, probably
Vietnam era, stretchers, but they were built to last and would be
expensive to replace. They were collapsible and, when we requisitioned
them from the supply compound, they were collapsed. When we got to the
field we found that most of them were missing the bolt that locked
them in place, when expanded. The mindset was that we could throw them
away and get new ones. (Though we would not have gotten NEW ones, we'd
have gotten the same Vietnam era ones, but not broken.) I looked
around the site and found a repair kit for something else that had
bolts that would work, talked to some Chiefs and got permission to fix
the stretchers using the bolts. I spent pretty much the whole day
doing it, but saved our unit some untold number of dollars in the
process. It was a simple matter, but not one that anyone was willing
to go through the trouble to take care of otherwise.

All of this to say, I am not sure that budget cuts would be a bad
thing. The military doesn't budget well. It is a government operation.
It is inefficient and poorly manages its money. If it were a
corporation, it would go bust within 5 years. I think that a little
belt-tightening, if managed correctly, would not go amiss. Now, there
is no evidence to support the idea that we WOULD manage budget cuts
correctly. Much more likely, people would still get their $600 office
chairs, but at the same time they wouldn't be able to afford
ammunition for the troops in the field. It's one of those things, the
people who have the greatest claim to financial gain are not
necessarily those who are most in need. But that tends to be true
across the board, right? It is one of the faults of the capitalist
system. (Which as we all know is the worst system around, except for
all the other ones.)

And the money that we do have, the money that gets spent on big ticket
items and black ops budgets, that kind of stuff is really well spent.
Have you seen the electromagnetic rail gun the Navy has now? Have you
heard about the anti-laser? Military Research and Development gets a
bad rap, and a lot of the time deservedly so. There is a lot of money
spent on projects that never see the light of day, a lot of money
spent on vaporware. But when we do have a winner, it tends to change
the face of warfare. Generally, anything published here:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/ is worth looking at.

And our Special Forces, the guys who are out there in the mud, really
facing down the big challenges, those guys are funded pretty well, and
will continue to be. They are out of a different pot of money
all-together. (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/go-inside-the-56-billion-black-budget/)

The guys who you would be worried about are the Marines on the ground.
The grunts are always the ones who haven't enough money, who have the
old equipment and the worst deal. But they have that now, they had
that in the boom-times of the past 10 years. Partially it is good
strategy to keep those guys unhappy. They are incredibly innovative
with what they have at that point. Partially it is a morale issue. A
happy Marine is a bitching Marine. But partially it is just that even
with all the money you could possibly spend, there is never enough
money for war.

And I am not sure that there should be.

Ultimately a finding issue comes down to an issue of priorities. It
comes down to an issue of value. It comes down to an issue of
investment and returns. What is the benefit at this point? Is war
bringing us a valuable return? I am not sure it is. Let's say that we
wipe out the insurgent base in Afghanistan. Let's say it happens
before the intended pull-out date. Let's say that we leave Afghanistan
in as-good, if not better condition than Iraq. What will that have
achieved? What will that do for the US economy? What will it do for
the morale of the people?

The world at large can see the pie-graph of democracy increase, but
will it change the burnt-baby ratio in Afghanistan? Will the Jay Leno
man-on-the-street interview be less frustrated? I am not sure it will.
I think that maybe that's partially the fault of the military. We
spent our money on our chairs when maybe we should have spent it on
something more important. Maybe we wasted our profitability and
capitalism is right when it takes away a little of our budget.

For more of the Afghan Updates, or any I failed to send you, please
visit: http://dustintheeverything.blogspot.com/?zx=ee6fac97810abcfc

Update 17

So, I am just going to go ahead and assume that everyone is watching
30 Rock and wildly enjoying it. If you're not, you're missing out.
Whatever your personal feelings about Alec Baldwin, he is a timing
machine! And with that random statement, it's time for another Update!

So, this week has been rain central here in Afghanistan. We've had
more rain this week than I've seen in the whole time I have been here.
(How do they officially measure rain? Gallons per square foot? Gallons
per inch? Inches per gallon? Or is it in metric? Hexaliters per
centipede?) There are puddles that could probably qualify as ponds.
Some of the tents have flooded, though so far the tent I live in has
been safe. There has been thunder and wind and general storminess. But
one of the things that I was kind of expecting hasn't happened.
Whenever you see rain in arid areas on nature documentaries there is a
sped up film of grass growing afterwards and vistas of new vegetation
and animals that sleep underground for 11.5 months out of the year
waking up and shaking off their hibernation. (That last part might be
an exaggeration, but I'm not quoting or anything.) But here there is
just a lot of sandy mud and a stagnant smell.

When I was really little we rented a house in Chardon, OH. It had an
old stone basement that smelled like stone and damp, a mildew, cold
smell. The entire base smells like that basement.

I DID see a bird this morning though. It was a sparrow-ish kind of
flappy-winged thing. It was chirping like crazy and for a second I
thought about the birds in Rikki-tikki Tavi and how they flapped
around and freaked out when the cobras, Nag and Nagina, were around.
Then I looked around and realized that any cobras would be floating
belly up in one of the ponds and trudged on back to my cot. Having a
literary childhood is great in certain circumstance, but in others it
is just kind of depressing.

What other big news do we have for the week? I'm within 3 pounds of my
weight goal. This will get a little complicated, but I'll try to
explain. All of the scales here are metric, so my goal weight is 84
kilograms, in uniform. And the uniform weighs about 8 pounds. (That's
boots, two knives, a belt, whatever is in my pockets and the whole
deal.) So, right now I weigh 85.6 kilograms, which is about 3 pounds
from the goal. And the goal will put me at 176 pounds, without the
uniform. I'll be at about what I weighed in high school. When I left
for training I weighed between 210 and 220 pounds. It's a big change.
I've definitely lost the weight in the least healthy way possible,
mostly from not eating, but it's cool to have achieved it. 33 years
old and I weigh about what I did at 18.

School work is the other big thing this week. I'm taking 4 classes
online. I've been really surprised lately at how little sense of humor
anyone that I am taking classes with brings to online forum. We mostly
do our class participation by posting little comments, like on an
old-school BBS. In Writing class there was this huge conversation
about plagiarism and how important it is to avoid it. One of the
topics that everyone had to comment on was, "Avoiding Plagiarism,
Personal Tips." Everyone was supposed to give examples of how they
avoid plagiarizing. (I know, this is a 300 level class, this is what
you pay for when you pay tuition. The college system is a total scam.)
Everyone is posting these tips like: "I like to make sure that
anything I copy from another source has a reference within the paper."
I wrote, "Am I the only one who wants to copy someone else's answer?"
I got 6 responses telling me that that would be plagiarism.

We're about 2 months out from coming home now, and everyone is very
excited. They keep talking about how it's so close to getting home. I
keep telling people, it's another 3rd of the time. I try to remind
them of how long the first 3rd took. But no one is listening. They are
sending home all of their gear and acting like it is only a matter of
days. I am sympathetic, but I really think it's a mistake to give over
too much of your thought to leaving, we still have more to go and if
you don't want the final 3rd to feel the longest, it's best to embrace
the time we're still here.

I was sent this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/15/AR2010011502203.html
A friend of mine knows the guy and describes him as having "gone
native." It's an old fashioned idea, and one that we kind of don't
think about anymore. Back in the day, British Empire times, it was the
height of embarrassment to have someone go native. But now, I think
that we almost approve of it. It's one of those things, like commandos
and guerilla warfare, where it's good if we do it, but bad if someone
else does. I think that it's one of the interesting facets of losing
the whole honorable warfare code. We still have things that we think
of as really bad, but mostly only if other people do them. I told my
friend that, given the Afghan sexual proclivities and their strange
pedophilic leanings, I'd be afraid to go too native.

Sort of a bits and bobs week, nothing that big happened and nothing
too shocking to report. I'll see if I can have a more comprehensive
topic next week. What with the rain and all, it was pretty quiet.
Thank you to everyone who Facebook'd or Gmail'd me a happy birthday,
it was much appreciated!

For more of the Afghan Updates, or any I failed to send you, please
visit: http://dustintheeverything.blogspot.com/?zx=ee6fac97810abcfc

Your 16th Update

From a concerned reader:

Owen, given your state of mind this week, I was not surprised you looked back for previous writing.  However, people are interested in and curious about what happens in Afghanistan.  It is getting to be mundane for you, but is not for us.  Except for what you tell us, we haven't got a clue.  We would like to have a clue.  We are depending on you. 

Could you explain a few things in some detail? 

1.)Could you explain the process that brings wounded soldiers in and also the process that brings civilians in. You mentioned it once, but briefly.  I know they get blown up and somehow they end up on a table being repaired.  What happens? 

2.)Is there ever any word after they go off again? 

3.)The people you work with; how do they get there? 

4.)You are at a British hospital; why, and how does command work there? 

5.)Who's in charge and how are decisions made?  I am sure there are strategic matters you cannot relate, but ordinary things are fascinating to us here. 

6.) Do nationals work on the base? 

7.) Is it really so boring for your compatriots that tarot and Ouija boards seem good to fill the time.  Has that passed, yet? 

8.) Who are you working with? 

9.) What kind of people do what you do? 

10.) I note that it raining there this week.  What is the dust like after the rain?  Does it almost solidify like wet cornstarch or is it like mud? 

11.) What animals are there?  Do you see any living things other than humans? 

Seriously, there is so much we don't know and cannot conceive of.  Even comment on something like the article you sent out today - does it connect to what you do?  I imagine it means fewer civilian casualties, at least. 

12.) Am I right? 

13.) Do you ever patch up Taliban? 

14.) What happens to them? 

Consider asking for questions, too. 

So, as Vampire Weekend would say, I Stand Corrected. It's time for another Update.

I will do my best to answer the 14 questions there, and their implications. (Truth be told, both due to seasonal malaise and my innate rebellious nature, I am tempted to make them my grade-school minimums, 1.) Yes, 2.) No… etc. I will not go that route and will use complete sentences and everything. My Mother would be so proud!)

1.) When we were in England and they explained this part to us, I thought that it was really clever. It's and interesting system. There are two different helicopter teams that go and pick people up. One of them is medically extreme, they are fitted to do everything shy of surgery in the air. The other is more militarily extreme, they are set up to do minor medical care, but they are outfitted to go into hairy areas and pick up the wounded while also laying down suppressive fire. The folks that work these areas, both flight crews, are pretty impressive. They get to see some crazy things, as well as more of the Afghan countryside than most other military folks here.

2.) Actually very, very rarely. Believe it or not, once these guys get to where they live, the last thing they want to think about is the time they spent unconscious and miserably in pain in-country. Very rarely we'll get a letter from someone's parents.

3.) The folks coming in to work and those that are airlifted out after treatment here go by fixed wing aircraft. (Planes) There is a flightline on base that is where we flew in, that initial impression I had of Mad Max-style wildness, that's over by the flightline.

4.) The British Hospital is very much owned by the British. There is a Commanding Officer, new now that the new crew of Brits has arrived. And a British, what we would call Executive Officer, or XO. They call him their 2IC. (2^nd In Command) They are pretty nice Officers who have their own agendas and plans for the Hospital. We were specifically warned, before getting over here, that any suggestions we have, as Americans working in with the British, should be posed as questions rather than suggestions. It is a tricky relationship. As far as our detachment is concerned, we have and American Commander (O-5) who is the OIC (Officer In Charge) of our detachment. She is a surgeon and a really good one. I'm going to try to avoid using any names, but she has done some cool things before she came here. She was on the team that helped to design the Mobile Trauma Bay, which was an idea that came out of the initial stages of combat here. It was basically a huge 7-ton truck with a trailer on the back that contained a mobile surgery unit. The plan was that it would be up-armored and travel around, from battle-site to battle-site, dealing out healthcare. It was neat idea, but ultimately unworkable. It was too big and heavy to travel easily and too large to be anything other than a terrific target. One of the nurses that I worked with in Okinawa was an initial designer on the project. That's one of the things that people forget about warfare, there is a great deal of innovation and invention that is part of it. That Mobile Trauma bay is a great concept that we could potentially use one day. It's in the idea-bank and ready for the future. Anyways, Our OIC, then there is a Senior Chief, our Senior Enlisted Leader. He's a good guy.

5.) Well, as far as the Hospital is concerned, it all goes through the British CO. There really isn't a whole lot of decision making for the Americans, and as far as strategic matters are concerned, we are not a strategic asset. We're a support asset.

6.) They do, It's an interesting thing. We have what we call LNs (Local Nationals) all over the place. I think that I mentioned once that the US policy is that anything that is to be purchased, officially, should be purchased from an Afghan source if at all possible. So LNs make and serve our food, they are our cleaners and maintenance folks. Oddly, there is usually an Indian fellow that oversees, but the Afghans are the workers.

7.) The spiritualism phase seems to have more or less passed. I am glad for that. And yes, it is incredibly boring. I probably can't express it adequately, but there is NOTHING to differentiate days. That combined with the 11.5 hour difference with the States puts us in an odd limbo. We work and sleep and watch and re-watch TV shows. Our families are all experiencing yesterday, which makes today feel like it isn't real. The most mundane and minor things become a huge deal. I got a board to put under my sagging cot this week and it has been the source of about half of my conversations.

8.) Hmm, this one I will refer to that photo I posted a few weeks back. I am avoiding names, to protect the innocent, so that'll have to cover that one.

9.) Well, this one is tougher. The people who do what I do are a cross-section of wildly competent and wildly incompetent. I work at nights; I'm the only one here on my particular schedule. This fosters an incredibly alienated feeling. I tend not to be lonely, but I do tend to feel alone. It makes things difficult. I do not share anything with anyone, which means that I feel very, very disconnected and apart. So, the people who do this job are people who are different than I am? Or maybe that is just the nights speaking. I generally like people who work in military medicine, so they are mostly likeable? But then, I mostly like people. Maybe I'll just refer this to that photo, too. The kind of people in that photo, that's who I work with.

10.) This one is kind of interesting, The dust turns into sand. That's what it does when it rains. It's nicer than the sand in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Gitmo is the only place I've ever been that smelled really, really bad when it rained. I was always surprised, since it is ocean-surrounded, how bad it managed to smell in a rain storm. But it smells good here when it rains. The air is charged with positive ions and you can generally detect a spring in people's steps. It also gets warmer when it rains. I have no idea how that works. Are there any meteorologists reading this? Can you explain? Can someone forward this to Dick Goddard?

11.) There are no animals at all here. I occasionally see a hawk in the sky, really far away. There are a few feral cats. That's it.

12.) You might be right. It's hard to tell what the cause and effect of strategic planning is when it comes to casualties.

13.) We DO patch up Taliban. But beyond that, I really can't talk about it.

14.) Wow, I REALLY can't talk about that.

Does anyone have specific questions?

For more of the Afghan Updates, please visit: http://dustintheeverything.blogspot.com/?zx=ee6fac97810abcfc

Another non-Update

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/i-flattened-afghan-villages/

This is just a fascinating story about what is going on, for those who
wonder if we're winning.