Dateline: Afghanistan Archives

A Year in Afghanistan and Still Looking for a Good Answer

My tour is about up in this war that most Americans now say is unwinnable or not worth continuing. I agree and have no desire at all to continue making my personal contribution to this military effort. As a good soldier, using the list of seven Army values as a guide, I have done my part to bring security and happiness to the people of Afghanistan, although I don’t really feel like I’ve done much of anything beyond passing the time.

When I asked how things were going this morning, a soldier told me it was slow, since his main task was finding something to do. He did not relish the thought of another day to kill, and my mentioning that we had less than 60 days to go didn’t do much to cheer him. What we’re suffering here is shipping-container fever. The time we have left, combined with the heat and dust and smell of the sewage lagoons, becomes oppressive. Being inside our containers is as dreadful
as being outside them. I’m surprised more of us aren’t going crazier.

Perhaps as a way to mitigate my disappointment in being sent over here, my brother mentioned to me that wars have spawned a lot of good writing. Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway and James Jones are three guys who realized significant success in writing about wars. “Apocalypse Now,” “Full Metal Jacket” and “Saving Private Ryan” strike me as worthy works of art set during wars. I guess it’s all the tragedy, pointlessness, violence, bravery, glory and heroism that make war conducive to storytelling, but when I think about this war, the story that pops into my head is “The Shining.”

Specialist Thompson would be the guy to go insane in my little story, and everyone would know he’d be coming unhinged because his Facebook posts would become stranger and stranger. Maybe he’d take a picture of his lunch each day and post it.

“I had a hamburger today,” he’d write. “But my fries were soggy. Flaccid fries make Specialist Thompson a sad soldier.”

He’d be sent down to the mental health folks, who would give him some happy pills and recommend to his chain of command that the firing pin be removed from his rifle. Thompson would start washing down his happy pills with Listerine. One day he’d finally decide that he’d eaten his last soggy fry, and, in a happy pill haze, he’d take off across Kandahar Airfield and die of thirst. He’d be found propped up in a bunker with an expression of profound boredom on his face.

There may be an American soldier out there on the border with Pakistan fighting hard and living life as if his next breath could be his last, but I don’t think so. If Americans were dying in fierce, savage battles, I’m pretty sure we’d be hearing about it. Deaths on either side always get a story on the Associated Press site. Plus, a friend of mine went up to some remote fort one ridge this side of Pakistan and said the few days he spent up there were the best of the deployment.

The food was good, he said. The cook put seasoning in it and it had flavor. The thin air was clean and clear, and it got chilly as soon as the sun set behind the mountains. There was mild threat of possible violence, but nothing real. To me, it sounded like he hung out on a military dude ranch where the guests get to wear body armor and were issued pistols and M16s with loaded magazines. Now, the place my friend visited is supposedly the most dangerous part of Afghanistan, yet it doesn’t sound too dangerous, does it?

I have a feeling that the truly savage battles are being waged among the American commanders in the conference rooms, on the telephones and over Outlook Express. Don’t get me wrong — Afghanistan is a hostile place, but on the scale of human conflict, this is a silly little exercise costing a mere $500 billion or so and, as of May 16, only 1,959 American lives. The stakes are low here, and so I’m sure the political fights inside the military are especially bitter, which makes Operation Enduring Freedom more of a “Catch-22” kind of war.

Whatever it is, I’m tired of it. Each of us will get an award for serving in Afghanistan, but I will not feel any pride that might come from having done hard work and great things for my country. My satisfaction will come from having been here as ordered and from having made the best of it. And when people ask me what I did during the war, I’m afraid I won’t have much of an answer.

Sgt. Mike used to live in the Colorado Rockies and hopes he will never, ever see Afghanistan again. This marks the final episode in Dateline: Afghanistan.

Reality Works Its Way Into A Delusional, Optimistic Mind

I’m crossing the line separating positive attitude from self-delusion. Ever since I got over to this magical, wonderful place, I’ve reminded myself to be grateful for the things I’ve had and the relative peace I’ve enjoyed. I’ve kept my contemptuous feelings to myself. I’ve maintained faith in my leaders. I’ve kept my doubts suppressed. I’ve uttered only the rare discouraging word. I’ve stayed in my lane and not concerned myself with the apparent pointlessness of my deployment in support of this worthwhile, effective American effort. I know in my heart that without me and my positive attitude, the Afghan people would suffer as Operation Enduring Freedom ceased enduring and the Taliban claimed victory.

Not many soldiers share my ersatz optimism.

Take Koala Bear. He’s an angry Koala Bear and has about as negative an outlook as a guy could have. His favorite utterance is: “This is fracking bullwhip!” Koala Bear uses “This is fracking bullwhip” as if it were his greeting of the day we offer when he passes officers.

Koala Bear: “This is fracking bullwhip!”

Officer: “Fifty lashes!”

Another soldier told me he wonders how Koala Bear keeps from killing himself.

“If I were that mad and irritated all the time, I’d be suicidal,” the soldier said. “I couldn’t live with myself if I woke up feeling that miserable every morning.”

I have put special effort into not being pessimistic, even though there’s been good reason for pessimism. Every time I have felt myself getting close to using Koala’s greeting of the day, I’ve just calmed down and told myself there’s no reason to get too worked up over much of anything. We’re sitting around on Kandahar Airfield while the higher-ups fabricate jobs for us to do, and that’s our lot for the next three months. We’ll be filling our time with military make-work projects.

And since we have nothing all that important going on, we’ve been engaging in some serious rumor spreading and verbal backstabbing. I had managed to remain beyond such childishness until the commander called us together for a bitch session one afternoon in early April.

It was a great morale builder (delusional optimism), especially when he asked for people to let fly with our complaints. Me, of course, I had nothing to complain about, because I’m loving all the busy work and the great things I’m doing for the people of Afghanistan, but a specialist named Ouch got up and said she was sick and tired of hearing all the rumors. She was especially sick of hearing the one about her roommate and one of our new officers. I hadn’t heard anything about this rumor until Ouch spread it in a public meeting in front of the whole company. I thought it was fantastic the way she complained about the spreading of rumors before laying that beauty on us.

I liked this particular rumor so much and became so enamored with the idea of rumor propagation that I made a little video about it and put it on YouTube. Ever since the bitch session, no information is too baseless for me to pass on, especially since the commander spoke to each platoon separately and told us that the rumors had to stop. He ordered us to stop spreading gossip. He does have some power as a Captain in the United States Army, and I’m definitely thinking that all of the rumors will have come to an abrupt end thanks to his force of will. See? Delusional optimism is powerful stuff.

“Brilliant, Sir,” I told myself. “Your order is sure to keep everyone quiet now.”

The order was so effective that I immediately produced another rumor video about a soldier and a female navy medic. It’s all true. I swear.

My delusional optimism seems to be working its way right up the chain of command. The military’s star-wearing leadership still seems to believe that we’re making good progress here, and I have to say that I agree 110 percent. Enemy military forces can still carry out 18-hour operations in Afghanistan’s capital city. Whatever we’re doing here, we need to keep doing it because it is working. Slow and steady wins the war, I always say. Imagine what our generals could accomplish with their wished-for combat power and another ten years.

I will continue doing whatever we are doing here, but substantial cracks are forming in my optimism and just in time, too. My re-enlistment window has opened up. I can sign another contract, and I quake at the thought of agreeing to another three-and-a-half years. A well-timed dose of pessimistic skepticism is saving me. I can lie to myself only so much.

Sgt. Mike once worked as a newspaper editor in the Colorado Rockies. He’ll be wrapping up his service in Afghanistan soon and eagerly awaits a return to civilianism in spring 2013.

Army’s Odds Cut Both Ways

Soldiers watch another day end in Afghanistan. Most will see 330 sunsets, give or take a few, before heading home.

A year ago, when our company commander told us that we’d be deploying to Afghanistan, one skeptic said: “I’ll believe we’re going to Afghanistan as soon as we start rolling down the runway.” I had reason to hope that the whole thing would be called off, as it wouldn’t have been the first time the Army had cancelled something on me.

Army leadership gets fired up sometimes, and it can formulate some wonderful ideas for things the soldiers can do. Like, “We’re going to do a company ruck march on Thursday,” an officer might declare on Monday. As the plan percolates down to the platoons and the teams, the complications begin piling up to the officer.

For instance, getting all the soldiers to participate poses a problem. A soldier can abuse the Army’s health care system, feign an injury and obtain a physical profile that absolves him or her from certain physical tasks that he or she may not feel like doing. And, so, as soon as news of the ruck march spreads, many soldiers will pull up lame, go over to the health clinic, complain of lower back pain and return with a “no ruck marching” profile. And then there are guys who, though issued a ruck sack, suddenly don’t have a ruck sack, and you can’t ruck march without a ruck sack. Within a day or two, it becomes clear that only a fraction of the company will be going on the ruck march.

And then the officer will learn he has a meeting on Thursday. Plus he has the 30 or 40 “injured” or ill-equipped soldiers to deal with and a stack of paperwork to complete detailing the entire plan — route, emergency medical services, water supply and on and on — for the ruck march, which starts to seem like more trouble than it’s worth, and he winds up canceling it.

Thus far in my military career, the Army’s threats of action and activity have turned out to be hollow about 60 percent of the time. With that in mind, I prayed that the deployment would become ensnared in some hideous FUBAR SNAFU that would keep us in the States. My prayers were for naught, and late last July, we were inside a 767 as it started its takeoff roll on the way to Afghanistan.

Once we arrived, however, the hollow threats began anew. We were threatened with going up to Bagram. That didn’t come to pass. We got threatened with some training on the range that would help prepare us for combat, which we didn’t do. We got threatened with a mission on the worst Forward Operating Base in the country, and we wound up on one of the best. It gets to the point where I can’t take any plan too seriously unless, of course, I happen to like the plan.

We’ve been threatened with an early trip home. The company was ordered to spend a year as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, but it’s looking as if the deployment could be cut short by a couple of months. Not too long ago, the commander sent out his Warning Order telling us to be “off the battlefield” by the end of a month, which I am unable to disclose lest some bad person use the information to attack us. The order was fantastic news, and we began speculating when we’d be back in the States.

I was so optimistic that I had already been in touch with a friend and made some plans to drift size-10 Drakes — that’s what ought to be hatching when I’m planning to be on the river — over trout somewhere in the Rio Grande drainage. I haven’t booked any tee times yet, but I’m thinking about some of the courses I’d like to play. I checked the minor league baseball schedule to see when the Round Rock Express would be at home.

Beneath my optimism lies a dense layer of military reality. My mood soured when word spread that we’d likely wind up staying for the full year and my plans started going down the drain. I got hacked off at the Army before accepting the fact that I should have known better than to make any plans at all.

“It’s all good,” I had to tell myself. “Be patient.” I can handle fishing more gently and casting smaller dry flies on a finer tippet. The golf courses will still be open, and the baseball season will still be underway. Living in shipping containers and tents and having to hike to the bathroom has become routine.

I can’t suppress a sense of urgency, though. The more time we spend here gives some officer more time to cook up a great plan for us to take part in next phase of the war against the Axis of Evil. I just want to get out of here before we get threatened with loading our trucks and heading west where I can start writing a column called Dateline: Iran.

Sgt. Mike is an ex-Rocky Mountain newspaper editor. Dateline: Afghanistan appears monthly in MG.

Military Failure Leads To Personal Success

In the civilian world, getting fired pretty much sucks. You lose your income and get a big bruise on the ego. Worries turn into fears as your reservoir of cash evaporates. Toothaches become a major menace. The wounded self-esteem takes time to heal, and you find yourself reassessing your value to the rest of the world. Occasionally, getting canned will have a silver lining, but on the whole, it’s an obstacle and a handicap. In the military, on the other hand, it can be a good career move and a definite way for improving one’s quality of life.

In my younger days, I was full of ambition. I wanted to be my own man, writing great things for an ever-expanding audience. I wanted to stand out and open the world’s eyes to the truth. Of course, such a life is a continuous struggle. Being remarkable required a good deal of arrogance and a sincere belief in my utter uniqueness and, dare I say, superiority, to the average folks who constituted the unsophisticated rabble, the very rabble that went to work on me, knocked me down a few notches and introduced me to the humiliation of being fired.

Having been knocked from my position of exalted highness, I came to consider the possibility that contentment could be found as a standard-issue, conforming member of the rabble, and what better way is there to join the rabble and learn conformity than by enlisting in the United States Army?

As the day to leave for basic training approached, I prepared to become a sheep. I quashed any ambition to be outstanding in any way. I would do whatever the Army told me to do, no matter how silly, humiliating or moronic it happened to be. I would strive for uniformity and give up any sense of my own specialness. I would seek out opportunities to be average.

Even though I sacrificed my constitutional rights when joining, the Army liberated me. I had no worries and no concerns. I was responsible for myself. As long as I could get up, get shaved and get dressed on time, the Army was happy with my performance. I was a good soldier, apparently, and shortly after finishing training and getting to my post out in the regular Army, it wanted to promote me. With extreme ambivalence and a measure of dismay, I went through the motions and became a sergeant. Along with the rank, I received five soldiers to take care of and a big pile of equipment to sign for.

Here in Afghanistan, I led my team out to our FOB and got our gear set up, and it was a serious pain the neck. But in line with my pledge to do whatever the Army told me to do, I went along for the ride and carried out my duties only to return from two weeks of leave to find that I had been fired and replaced.

I was stung and angry, and I have to admit to having a bit of resentment for the staff sergeant who used to be my boss. “What a clueless idiot,” I catch myself saying when I hear the guy’s name. I felt the same shame and the fear I felt the last time I got canned. I was ready to battle to get my job back and prove that I was up to the task of leading a group of recalcitrant soldiers on our mission in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. I wanted to prove my indispensability to the Army’s effort. How dare it not recognize my brilliance!

All this from the guy who pledged to be sheepish and average.

And so, with a little time to cool off and settle down, I decided that getting fired was very much preferable to retaining my status as a team leader. I held on to my pay grade, and the money appears in my account two times every month. There’s been no interruption in my dental or health coverage. I get three hot meals a day and a place to live. I still get 30 days of paid vacation every year. When it comes time to return home, the Army will pay my way. And, best of all, I have been absolved of responsibility. The gear is gone and the soldiers are someone else’s problem.

Meanwhile, I can get back to achieving the military goals I set for myself: being the most subservient, unremarkable, sheepish conformist I can possibly be. Success will be mine!

Sgt. Mike, a former mountain-town newspaper editor in Colorado, expects that some measure of his ambition will return by the time he’s honorably discharged in 2013.

Acceptance of Civilians’ Gratitude Perpetuates Military’s Myth

A while back, the Army sent me home for two weeks of rest and recuperation. At the airport in the States, we marched down the concourse to applause, and the USO folks were there to welcome us back with a “thank you” and a handshake. I’ll accept all the adulation I can get. I mean, it beats the hell out of being spit on, but I felt a twinge of guilt.

My role in Operation Enduring Freedom has been sedentary and intellectually enriching. I’ve put away one Economist magazine a week, an Atlantic and a Mountain Gazette every month and still have had time to watch five seasons of “Weeds” and read a lot of novel-length books. Add to that a daily reading of the AP wire and writing a little bit here and there and you’ve got a guy serving his country as an editor or an English teacher, not as a slayer of men.

So, when my time for a plane ride home and a vacation came up, I had to suppress a desire to raise my hand and point out that there had to be someone more deserving of a trip home. Someone who had put his own life on the line four or five times a week while ending lives with his rifle. But, hey, who am I to question the Army and its methods? If it believes I need a two-week vacation, by god, I’ll just have to take it.

At home, anyone who discovered my membership in the United States Armed Forces thanked me for my service. The lady at the checkout at the grocery store. My new chiropractor. The minor-league hockey club gave me a nice discount on tickets. Some soldiers get a little torqued at all of the appreciation people express. They get peeved because those offering the thanks don’t know what they are grateful for. I imagine some folks offering their thanks to a young soldier get a bit of a rude surprise when their gratitude goes unappreciated.

When I get thanked, I maintain my humility and give a humble “You bet. It’s an honor to serve.” It makes the thankers feel good, while not giving up anything that might be used against me or the rest of the soldiers in the Army soaking up the myriad benefits of military service. Often, I feel like I ought to be the one giving thanks.

“Thanks for paying your taxes,” I might say. “Thanks for your selfless contributions to the United States military and for making this vacation possible. The eyestrain is starting to get to me, and I’ve needed to get back to reload the Kindle on a more reliable internet connection. I had no idea that I would exhaust my supply of words before the deployment was even half over.”

Of course, a hard military day comes along every so often. Installing gear and getting a computer and phone network up and running requires a significant amount of effort and time, but, once it’s up, work days are filled with sending out
reports, performing light maintenance and killing time using one’s chosen method. YouTube is popular, if a bit slow. Video games absorb many a soldier’s time. My primary weapon against time is electronic print. I’ve had far more harrowing days editing a daily newspaper — both in magnitude and in multitude — than I’ve suffered here in the middle of a war.

Soldiers somewhere in Afghanistan are working hard and making big sacrifices to further American interests, but I don’t really know where. You’d think the odd report or rumor of actual military action would come along, but we don’t hear much of anything. And there must be soldiers who are feeling proud of their accomplishments and who have a sense that they are a part of a worthwhile campaign, but they must be fairly modest as well, because that’s not a sentiment I have heard expressed yet. There’s no motion or movement or action here. There’s no push to take a strategic piece of land or break through an enemy’s fortifications. There’s no progress.

When my tour is over, the military map of Afghanistan will be the same as it was when I arrived, which causes my guilt and my desire to shield stateside civilians from the truth of my wartime experience. They’ve been sold a myth about the heroic American soldier. Supposedly, I’m over here toiling away battling terrorists. It’s better to allow the illusion, and that’s why I accept their gratitude. Thanking me makes them feel good. Why ruin their warm, fuzzy feeling?

I once exposed a myth to a fly fisherman and have regretted it ever since, and so I allow the military’s myth to persist. I keep my opinions concerning the Euro crisis and my belief that “Deliverance” was a damn good book to myself.

Ex-High Country dweller Sgt. Mike is just finishing up “The Shipping News” and will be tackling his next book, Joseph Campbell’s “Myths to Live By,” once he gets through his double-issue, year-end Economist. Dateline: Afghanistan appears monthly in MG.

Defending America or Deploying the Toys?

It’s hard not to think that every conflict the United States enters has as much to do with trying out all the toys as it does about furthering American harmonization around the world. The Army has miles of motor pools full of tanks, self-propelled artillery pieces and whatever other vehicles the Army has managed to stick a gun to. The Air Force has hangars full of rippin’-cool jet fighters and bomb droppers. The Navy has missile launchers and torpedo shooters docked in harbors. Assuming the other services are like the Army, all of that equipment sits, doing nothing except being maintained, and few things bore a military mind like maintenance.

Back in garrison, Monday is maintenance day. We all report to the motor pool, get our Forms 5988 and perform Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services on everything with an engine. Of course, none of the gear has started, stopped or been used at all since the previous Monday, but we are supposed do the checks as if it had just returned from a trip to combat and back. For the most part, though, everyone’s bored out of their minds and so long as nothing’s terribly amiss, the Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services is nothing more than a walk-around and a peek under the hood.

The weekly ritual does serve a real purpose. When you really need your military vehicle to start, you need it to start on the first try, but when all the soldiers do to their equipment is make sure there’s no leaking fluids and the lights work, they get disinterested, and the boredom of continual, pointless maintenance works its way up the chain of command until everyone wants to gas up, load the magazines and see what all the machinery will do. And that’s where a place like Afghanistan comes in.

Our Army is set up for fighting formidable opponents, or at least ones who will build up defensive fortifications, deploy infantry and tanks and then stand and fight. That’s what was so great about Desert Storm. The Iraqi military set itself up and then waited for the U.S. military to come and destroy it. We got to see all of our cool weapons in action, and one must admit they did seem to work just as the Grumman, Boeing and Lockheed salesmen said they would. Ever since, though, there’s not too many armies lining up to be destroyed, and so we must make the best of the opportunities that present themselves.

It’s got to be frustrating for a lot of military men to be stuck in Afghanistan where the enemy is so small and disorganized that the United States military finds itself hilariously undermatched. Generals have budget requests to defend. They want the newest cool weapons American salesmen are having the engineers cook up, and so the Army’s men — from general to private — have a knack for taking relatively trivial dangers and massaging them into existential threats.

My team has been sent to a Forward Operating Base, or FOB, in eastern Afghanistan. One night, there’s a threat of enemy action. My soldiers each get a part of the building to guard. They borrow some night-vision gear from one of the other units and get outside to take up their positions. Things are tense on the FOB, but nothing really happens. No soldier on the FOB fires a single shot, nor are any of them fired upon. After an hour or so, the threat is judged to have passed, and we gather for an after-action review.

“We really need our own night-vision goggles,” one of them tells me. Those things are mission-essential equipment, he insists.

“Yeah,” another chimes in. “I don’t want to get shot by some guy I can’t even see. You need to tell the company that they need to send us night-vision gear.”

They were playing up the “danger” in hopes of getting more toys. The automatic rifle with 800 rounds of ammo wasn’t enough. I was disappointed in them; junior enlisted men acting as if they were a crew of three-star generals testifying before a congressional committee.

“Here, ser’nt. Check out the stars,” one told me as he handed over the scope so I could judge for myself the vital role it would play in defending freedom. I put it to my eye and looked up.

“Wow,” I thought, “that is pretty cool.” The sky lit up with stars the way it does high in the mountains on a moonless night. I considered the argument I’d have to make for the commander.

“Sir,” I’d begin, “apart from the astounding, mind-expanding astronomical observations we’d be making with the night-vision gear, don’t forget that we are at war out here against a sneaky and deadly enemy who will stop at nothing to kill American soldiers. Our ability to see in the dark could make the difference between victory and defeat.”

He was unconvinced. May he be promoted many, many times.

Ex-Colorado High Country resident Sgt. Mike wishes the Army could settle on a less-hostile playground. Meanwhile, he’s eating lots of carrots.

Oddly, Soldiers Celebrate Winning the OEF Lottery

Before coming to Afghanistan, the guys who had already served a deployment or two told us what we could expect. The greatest danger we would face — apart from being run over — would be indirect fire, or IDF, attacks. We are a support unit that hangs out inside the wire and behind the walls with all the gear, and so we don’t face ambushes or any other sort of traditional military threat from a guy with a rifle, but they, whoever “they” are, can and do shoot rockets at us. The chances of being hit are pretty long: “It’s like winning the lottery,” one sergeant told us back in the States.

While the odds of becoming a victim of a rocket attack and the odds of winning substantial sums of money in a government-operated gambling scheme may be similar, the final results differ somewhat, and, every time I hear the rocket alarm, I cringe. When they hit, the warheads — depending on distance — sound like a car door being closed if the blast is far away or a big heavy door being slammed shut if it’s closer. If you’ve been out on avalanche-control day, you know the sound. The alarm makes a haunting noise and then, once the siren stops, a pretty British female voice comes on and says “rocket attack, rocket attack” in a truly delightful way, as if we’ll all be heading out for a spot of tea later.

And to call these events “attacks” gives the “attackers” way too much credit. An attack implies some sort of coordinated effort aimed at attaining some sort of objective. An attack has military significance and is planned so that it meshes with the overarching strategy of the entire campaign. Attacks involve large numbers of personnel and substantial amounts of materiel. Based on the above criteria, our so-called rocket attacks occupy a spot on the mischievous — rather than military — scale about four rungs up from kids shooting bottle rockets at cars.

The military minds in charge of the base have cooked up a detailed procedure for responding to rocket attacks. The rules are very serious, and the copy I am most familiar with is taped to the doors of the stalls in the latrine, which ought to indicate the preposterous position our Army has maneuvered itself into here in Afghanistan. The mighty United States Army defending itself against the local pranksters by posting its defensive tactics in the crapper.

We are to lie on the ground for two minutes when the charming voice tells us we are under attack. Then we are to move to the nearest hard structure or concrete bunker and wait for the all clear announcement from the same charming voice. We can find ourselves standing around in the bunkers for an hour or more. There is a procedure for those in cars and yet another procedure for those in armored cars. The Army covers all bases.

As difficult as it can be to take the “attacks” seriously, it’s just as easy to feel a real threat, especially when the shells fly overhead and explode less than a thousand yards away.

The closest call so far was a rocket that hit about 30 yards from our platoon office. The warhead exploded in front of two vans in the street. No person sustained any damage, but the vans were mortally wounded. Their spilled oil stained the ground black. The shrapnel sliced through their painted skins, and a combination of concussive force and flying metal broke their bodies, which sank, lifeless, on their flattened tires. The emergency response team arrived, discovered it was too late and had the vans hauled off to a boneyard somewhere.

You might guess that my fellow soldiers and officers may have felt a bit cursed. Perhaps they were shaken by the close call and thought themselves lucky to be alive. Maybe they felt scared and on edge as they realized that this place is full of people trying to kill us, however ineffective their methods appear to be. The hours after a close call seem like a good time for some sober reflection on the fragility of our lives, the severity of our situation and the dangers we face.

Instead, my fellow soldiers were celebrating their good luck at having a rocket explode 90 feet away. They would all win the Operation Enduring Freedom lottery and qualify for a Combat Action Badge! Giddiness dominated everyone’s emotions as they composed their sworn statements attesting to the fact that they fell under enemy fire.

Being shot at seems a strange thing to celebrate, but everything seems a little strange in Afghanistan.

Ex-Colorado High Country dweller Sgt. Mike, still with no Combat Action Badge, hopes his string of bad luck will continue.

Out of the Turret, Back In The Saddle

Army bomb plows, which make Afghanistan's roads safe for cars. Most of the time.

Take a look at Southwest Asia on Google Earth, and you’ll notice that nearly all of the roads end at Afghanistan. One would expect that our finest West Point graduates would have noticed Afghanistan’s dearth of roads and harkened back to the pre-car era of military history to see what they could learn about conquering a roadless land with resistance fighters roaming around on it. Students of American history will recall that the Army has already done this once.

While the generals have considered putting le cheval back in the cavalry, all indications point to an inability to limit their reliance on the car. Of course, we aren’t talking about the Griswold’s Family Truckster headed to Wally World, but in general, the Army’s cars have four wheels and an internal-combustion engine and, just like the Truckster, they require roads for best results. The car has become the enemy’s favorite target and the Army’s biggest pain.

Accidents involving cars and attacks on cars appear to be the main causes of death and destruction to the Army. We don’t train on martyring jihadists, identifying suicide bombers or befriending the natives. We train on surviving car wrecks.

In Texas, we went through rollover exercises as part of our standard training regimen. Once our deployment orders were official, the Army again trained us how to extract ourselves from rollovers. Once we arrived in Afghanistan, we practiced escaping from a rolled vehicle one more time. They strap us inside an un-fun amusement park ride meant to approximate a military automobile and spin us around until we hang, inverted, from our five-point harnesses. Sometimes the instructors introduce fake smoke to further compound the misery and mayhem inside. We must release our harnesses, fall the few inches to the ceiling (the helmet breaks the fall) and then figure a way out.

We get trained on identifying the explosive obstacles the enemy lays out for us along the few roads that exist. We walk along scale models of roads rehearsing our search for the danger signs. Freshly covered holes, “ant trails” hiding a wire, culverts and roadkill all point to the presence of an improvised explosive device.

The defense of cars looms large in our commanders’ minds. They have large trucks called MRAPs, which are heavily armored and armed with a remote-controlled .30-caliber machine gun. To the front end of these, the Army attaches a large wheeled apparatus like a plow. It rolls rather than scrapes along the road, and, instead of pushing obstacles out of the way, it detonates them, making the roads safe for the Army’s cars.

Not only does the Army protect the cars, it has to protect its soldiers against its cars, and it does so with the reflective safety belt.

Soldiers in Afghanistan brandish weapons, ammo and the ever-present reflective safety belts.

Here on the base, our reflective safety belts get more wear than our body armor and our Kevlar helmets. A trusted friend witnessed no less than two dozen first sergeants down at the base’s boardwalk the other night inspecting for reflective safety belts, which seems an odd expenditure of senior enlisted energy that could go towards, say, winning the war, but it just proves how critical the reflective safety belt is to the Army’s effort. Rifle, ammo and reflective safety belt are the primary tools of the military trade in Afghanistan.

The Army brays about fighting an unconventional war on a non-linear battlefield, but all it can do is follow lines on a map in its conventional, motorized way. Every attack makes the Army more defensive. It pulls its head further into its armored shell and hopes that another layer of steel on its cars will make the roads more passable. Rather than becoming light and unpredictable in its movements, the Army has spent the last decade adding weight to its heavy, dense methods.

Instead of more engines and mechanics, we need more horses and stockmen. Rather than poking their heads from a turret, our cavalry soldiers ought to be sitting tall in the saddle. Our convoy commanders should be replaced with muleskinners. This is the wild, wild Southwest Asia out here.

With the right marketing strategy and the typically generous military contracts, the Army should have little trouble recruiting anyone with warm, nostalgic feelings for the 1800s. The Army’s cavalry units could have a booth at the National Western Stock Show in Denver this January. What cowboy could resist the chance to go back in time, put a six-shooter on his hip and get out here on the roadless frontier and show the world how the Afghanistan was won?

This war needs a little less armored obstinacy and a little more ranch hand ingenuity and horse sense. The information age’s mechanized, industrialized warfare just ain’t gettin’ ‘er done.

Once an ink-stained nuisance, Sgt. Mike now does more before 0700 than most people do all day.

Send in the Boosters, Deploy the Granolas

An aerial view of mountains in Afghanistan taken from a U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules transport aircraft April 23, 2008, during a cargo mission launched from Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Author: Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway, U.S. Air Force.

I caught a news story on 774 ABC Melbourne’s website: “A Queensland man who is believed to be the first Australian to conquer Afghanistan’s highest mountain says parts of the war-torn country are ready for a tourism revival.” I read this and realized that the United States is going about this whole Afghanistan problem all ass-backwards. Afghanistan needs less explosive, lead-projectile-type power and more pretty-picture, flowery-language persuasion. You know, promotional brochures racked up in local visitors’ centers, where friendly, knowledgeable staff keeps the coffee fresh and the restrooms clean.

For 10 years, the Pentagon has managed to maintain a low-intensity conflict that seems to kill just enough soldiers so that the people back home feel obligated to continue supplying replacements but not so many soldiers that people become fed up with the whole shootin’ match and pull their support. It’s a tricky balance, and you have to hand it to our military leaders, forced into ending one conflict, yet still able to maintain their operational tempo by having an Afghanistan up their sleeve.

While the generals and those who sell them giant mine-resistant trucks with bullet-proof windows and curtains designed to emasculate the shaped-charge energy of a rocket propelled grenade embrace no-win military quagmires, one must accept the possibility that mine-resistant trucks with their jingling drapery and bullet-sprayers have proven ineffective at winning the heart and mind of the average Afghani. In fact, the United States Army just doesn’t have the people skills to lead illiterate subsistence farmers onto the path good, Christian military men expect them to tread.

Many young military men, and many old ones, hold Afghanis in contempt, calling them “hajji” with disdain and disrespect. Military men are xenophobic and possess undeserved superiority complexes. I can hear them singing “America! Fuck yeah!” They possess simple and narrow minds. I have no confidence that any soldier can win a heart or mind of any Afghani.

The Army kills people and destroys buildings. If it’s not killing people and exploding stuff, the Army becomes a big shoulder-shrugging, head-scratching lummox. Friendly persuasion is not its cup of black Afghan tea. The Army is all tactics and no tact. My unit has been in the Stan for a month, and other than displaying our strength in numbers, our main contribution has been to add a considerable amount of money to the national debt. The Army does not quite know what to do with us. We sit in a stack of converted shipping containers, staying out of the heat and killing time. I imagine myself an insider-trading convict serving a minimum-security prison sentence.

I’ll take my air-conditioned shipping container over supplying some ax-grinding Afghani with an American infidel to kill any day. The order “draw fire” is one I hope never to hear. But shouldn’t we have something to do? Are we going to get out here and do our part to win this bitch so we can get home? The sedentary nature of our deployment causes me to doubt the Army’s stated goals and to wonder whether there may be a more-effective corps for winning the war and promoting a warm, fuzzy feeling toward American citizens. This is, after all, what we want.

The United States Army, the most bad-ass killing organization on the face of the Earth, cannot win this war. The Army lacks the deft touch required to win hearts and minds. The United States needs to put the Army away and make Afghan service compulsory for every cheerful soul — be they volunteer or paid — behind the counter at every visitor bureau and chamber of commerce within 50 miles of the Continental Divide. United States policy should be aimed at undermining Afghani resistance by fomenting a tourism revival.

Afghanistan needs less armed, armored Americans and more rich, rugged Americans wearing stuff from REI and The North Face. Afghanistan needs to position its mountains as alternatives to the over-crowded and over-priced peaks in the Himalaya farther to the east, and it is going to need help. Who better than some eager booster with years of experience flogging some desolate, economically desperate county in Wyoming? On their tours of duty, these boosters will not only promote American tourism in Afghanistan, they will promote American tourists to Afghanis.

Ten years of shooting and killing and surging has failed to transform Afghanistan into an American-friendly democracy. What a surprise! What human would befriend another human carrying a loaded weapon and dressed in a crab suit of bullet-proof armor? But put a guy in a Patagonia pullover and a pair of Merrells with a wad of cash in a village at the base of some 7,500-meter peak, and the Afghanis just might change their tune.

Once a journalist, Sgt. Mike serves in the Army and has a hard time thinking of himself as a legitimate military target. Dateline: Afghanistan appears monthly in the MG.