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Protect and Defend.... what was that last bit?
As I've discussed before, we have a web filtering program here at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait that blocks our access to various sites based on categories.
I don't like, but understand, the use of filtering technology on government computers. I understand that pornography is banned under both General Order #1 and considered unprofessional in a public setting. Similarly, I am only mildly annoyed by the fact that the Army has chosen a system that prevents me from viewing web sites that are “Tasteless” or contain "Adult Materials.” Keep in mind that "Adult Materials" does not mean pornographic, porn get its own category. “Adult”, in this case means, as best as I can tell, “naughty” materials like sex toys and swimsuits (sites featuring these are blocked). I will argue that all of the personnel using these computers are adults (or 17 year-olds enlisted and deployed), as they are all members of the US Military or DOD civilian employees. Perhaps they can handle seeing the Victoria’s Secret catalog.
The system, Fortigaurd, blocks all sorts of categories it feels might be controversial (view them all here). I am used to the Army, in circumstances such as this, thinking that I need to be protected from my own immature, prurient ways. As I said above, I don’t like it, but I can abide it. What I cannot abide is wholesale censorship of legitimate (and legally protected) political viewpoints.
And that is what it does. Fortigaurd blocks the Planned Parenthood site, among others I imagine, under the category, “Abortion.” The site for the organization Veterans Against The Iraq War is blocked under "Advocacy Organizations."
Advocacy.
I won’t address in, this post, DoD’s new blogging policy – that is a different beast entirely, involving Operations Security and classified information. This is about information – incoming information. Advocacy is banned. Perhaps they've never read the Constitution. (It is rather long - like four whole pages, five if you include the amendments.) You would think, though, that someone might have at least gotten around to reading the first part of that last page. Censorship, especially against those whose job it is to “protect freedom,” is the worst of hypocrisy. To prevent servicemembers from getting information that you disagree with it is both shameful and unconscionable.
In my mind, in a free nation, this kind of censorship is tantamount to treason.
The News
Iraq suicide bomber kills 25 at Shiite-Sunni meeting
It's a good article about a shitty thing that happened in Baqubah, where I left last month. A lot of people were killed, Perhaps people I’ve met. It's surprising that no Americans were killed, especially considering the number that were there (the article doesn't say how many, but COL Sutherland, a Brigade commander was there, so you can assume he had a decent-sized entourage).
I’ve met Alexandra Zavis - she was embedded with my company in Baqubah. Her reporting, that I have read, has always seemed, better than most, to show the scene of what is happening. She understands the situation and the underlying issues that surround Baqubah and Iraq. My problem with this article, and others like it, is this: the quotes and the location are new, but the story doesn’t feel that way. The article feels like a cut and paste job of "Suicide bomber kills [number] at [denomination] [site]," followed by a recap of similar events all over Iraq. I don't blame Ms. Zavis necessarily for the lack of specifics, but instead the media environment that has become so saturated with this kind of story.
I understand that most people reading the article will be largely unfamiliar with Iraqi, let alone Baquban, geography, but a description that's more complex than "a mosque" would be much appreciated. I probably know some, if not many, of the people who were there. I've likely been by that mosque, depending on which one it is. A simple description, like Khatoon or Old Baqubah, or even just east or west would give informed readers a much more useful picture. I know that I tune out some of the specifics of stories about attacks in Baghdad or Mosul - I just don't know the geography well enough to make us of the details - but I imagine the people there would like to know more about the stories as well. Newspaper websites mediate length constraints, and make the addition of graphics and maps much easier to add to stories. Perhaps if stories about Iraq, especially about violence in Iraq, were less generic, people would read more than just the headline.
As brevity is the soul of wit,
I'll be brief. Looks like I will be heading out of Kuwait sometime in the first week, or so, of October. Not before then. That is all.
no. goddamn. words.
Gold Star Mothers, got you, okay, thank you -- Blue Star Mothers, Gold Star Mothers, all the mothers, yes. (Applause.) Every day is Mother's Day as far as your concerned, isn't it?
- My Commander in Chief
Perhaps. A tad. And now, sarcasm.
So, perhaps I came across a little to angry last night. I still do think that Kuwait should be a hardship tour, not a combat tour, but I was definitely angry when I posted. Tonight, however, makes up for it - You see, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are here, and I believe they're putting on a show right now about 150 meters from me. So, you know, I was wrong. It's all cool now.
On to other news - I can't view Indietits because the web filter the Army is using here says that it's "Tasteless." I let Jeph know - and this was his response. (Look for today's strip - I can't)
Finally: Use the comments, people. I know there are some of you lurking out there (like the ones in Chicago or Beaumont, Tx or Richmond). Comment. If I say something a little crazy (like last night), ask me about, tell me I'm crazy, etc. If you have questions about me, my time here, the weather, my current weight or anything else, ask them. The comments are for more than just Elizabeth. In fact, I'll even give you all a topic.
Over a short distance, a cheetah can outrun a Stryker. Discuss.
What. The. Fuck.
I just walked from the gym here. It's a nice, large gym with lots of good equipement, and I have lots of time to use it, so I'll likely be going twice daily whilst I'm here. On my way there I passed a lot of people just sort of hanging out at some tables and there was a speaker system set up playing country music. Nothing too odd, but it reminded me a lot of parks in Walnut Creek at night in the summer - nothing to do, so you hang out and bullshit, without, to use a cliche, a care in the world. Not what I expect in the Army, but I'll deal.
As I left the gym, though, the music was still going, and the area in front of the speakers had become an outdoor dance floor, with couples slow dancing, like a fucking high school dance. These people are all dressed in civilian clothes - a thing my guys haven't worn in over a year, short of very brief periods on leave - and they're are working tax free and collecting combat pay. Most of the people on this FOB don't carry weapons, half of them don't wear uniforms. I'm sure they provide vital services to the war effort, but it rubs a little that those people dancing get the same benefits and wear the same combat patch as my men who sifted though rubble and trash for the body parts of their friends in Baqubah.
It means austerity
I’ve begun to appreciate the sense of asceticism this place requires. I’ve never thought of America as decadent – at least not in a bad way – but the, if you will, Spartan lifestyle has some appeal. This is not to say that I am living like a monk – I have my computer, DVDs, AC, when I wrote this I had my own room – but compared to the life I’ve been accustomed to, this place is a major change.
Part of it is the level of free time. This refers much to Baqubah than Taji, Baghdad or Kuwait, as I haven’t been to busy outside of Baqubah, but while we were still doing combat ops, we’d be out for several days at a time, O’d be walking with about 100 lbs of gear in 115 F heating, eating crappy, or at least unappetizing food. The dearth/lack of internet, TV, phones, distractions makes you think more, has made me write more. Like camping or rehab, my time here has allowed me to appreciate what I had in the States, and realize that I didn’t need it quite as much as I thought I did. The combination of near constant GI pathology and mediocre food, along with natural exercise has made me lose weight – which I now need to work to keep off, hence the gym.
I've said privately that I wish I was set to be here longer. I was conducting combat operations for only two and a half months. About long enough to really get the hang of it and then stop. I kind of hoped for Iraq to be my forty days, or fifteen months, in the desert. I will not be complaining too hard, obviously, but A huge reason I wanted to come over here was to learn about myself. I've done that, but not to the degree I had hoped.
Much more on all this later.
Roundup
First, a link buffet.
- An amusingly, slightly biblical look at the big situation in Iraq by Kevin Drum at the Washington Weekly.
- A good look at the conflict in Baqubah, before I got there, from an enlisted perspective. Less politic, and more visceral, Alex is in my Battalion, and though some evidently doubt it, he is a real guy in 5-20. Army of Dude is his blog.
- A friend of mine, who is also Horton's platoon leader writes about this deployment and his previous one. He wrote them in the form of Letters from Iraq.
Second, for all those who seem to be intently awaiting it, I am in Kuwait. It's a nice FOB, old (about 15 years), lots of food and entertainment possibilities. However, we are stuck in a shitty tent, which on its own is not so bad, except that I just went from a single bed in my own room and a tent with WIFI respectively, to the top bunk in a small, dusty tent with mediocre AC. Also, there is a large, bright florescent light that hangs over my head. But, I complain too much. Very nice gym. More later.
What I did on my Summer Vacation
I got to take a pretty cool helicopter tour of Baghdad several days ago.
I’m sure any number of you will defecate masonry upon hearing this – largely due to your media-fed misconception that somehow flying in Iraq is way more dangerous than driving around – but I flew over Baghdad twice, during daylight, without a single problem.
The reason I’m staying Kuwait longer than the rest of the Brigade is that I will be managing part of the property paperwork for my company. Right now I am signed for 20ish Strykers (I don’t recall the going price for a Stryker these day, but it’s well over $1 million), and will soon be signed for all of the communications gear for the Company as well. All told I’ll be responsible for upwards of $40 million worth of gear – all personally signed over to me.
As part of this detail, I had to attend (“had to,” in this case, means that I was required to by persons higher ranking than I, not that it in anyway related to my ability to accomplish my mission) a meeting on a different FOB in Baghdad. I knew the FOB already, as it was where I waited for my flight to Baqubah, back in June. Since the two FOBs, Taji and Liberty are so close, just across Baghdad, and as I’ve said before, flying is faster and safer than driving, we took a couple Blackhawks.
Considering it was Army transportation, it was remarkably hassle-free. The birds arrived on time and we loaded up quickly. On the flight over to Liberty I sat on the outside facing forward (there are two rows of four seats, one facing fore, the other aft), which, whenever I’ve been on a Blackhawk in the past was a great seat to be in – good view, a little wind in your face. This time, instead of flying with open doors, we flew with closed doors, but without window. This, evidently changes the aerodynamics fairly significantly, turning that seat into the end of a 200 KPH wind tunnel. With eye pro and eyes closed I was still streaming tears out the sides of my eyes. Inconveniently, even if I had been able to see, my seat was on the wrong side to see much of the city. I was facing out to the country. Pleasantly, it was morning, and the air was still in the 90s, which when it is blowing at you 200 KPH with a little moisture, is quite comfortable.
We had our meeting, sat around, walked around, were generally bored. I got on another Blackhawk (or perhaps the same one) and began my trip back – this time with an inside seat, facing rear. This time though, I could see the city – pretty well since we were flying under 200 feet. This flight lasted a while longer as we made a stop along the way, and I could actually see during the entirety.
My entire experience of Iraq proper has been in Baqubah – a small city north of Baghdad that, before the war, acted a sort of a retirement community for former Ba’ath party members and high-ranking soldiers in the Iraqi Army. It is a much smaller city that lacks freeways or many buildings over four stories. Baghdad is huge – when I was in the center, it spread as far as I could see, crisscrossed with freeways, taller buildings and impressive mosques. As a whole, it looked different than any city I had seen before, but taken as pieces, it, like almost all modern cities I’ve been in, it was very familiar. It had parts of Los Angeles (short, sprawling, smoggy, on fire) a little Albuquerque (heat, surrounded by conquered desert) and little bits from others I can’t place. An interesting city, a city I wish I could have hung out in a bit more, lived out in, worked in, driven through, seen up close. There’s always ’09.
Yeah, that kind of idiot
I was sitting on the bus here that takes us to the main part of the FOB. We live a ways off to one side of Taji, and it’s a rather long walk to the DFAC or the PX (or the MWR). I was sitting there, listening to the radio (the fairly decent rock station that AFN puts out), and two or three guys behind me start talking about Muslims. Reduced, their comments were undisguised ignorance and bigotry. I have seen a good number of people here who have started to hate almost all Iraqis, but as ignorant as that is, I have rarely seen prejudice that generalized – at least not in person.
One of the guys started off using a sort of Manchurian Candidate argument about interpreters that, no matter how long a soldier had worked with a terp, no matter how much you had trusted that person in the past, that because they were Muslim they could turn on you at any time. He actually said that there must be some gene (yeah – gene – yeah), some switch that gets flipped and they all, all Muslims, would turn on you. Would turn in to suicide bombers and insurgents. One even argued that there was nothing they could do about. I wasn’t really sure which sickened me more; the bigotry or the ignorance.
I was getting more and more pissed off by the pure extremist idiocy of these soldiers when they added another component to their arguments – the Antichrist. This – along with Hitler, the ender of all rational arguments – dropped from one of their mouths without so much as a flinch from the other two. The two agreed, if not explicitly, and continued talk about this, agreeing that the Antichrist was alive and was definitely a Muslim (despite all the “knowledgeable” authorities and literature espousing the belief that the Antichrist is a Jew). Despite how angry I had been at them, despite all the ignorant, idiotic, bigotous bullshit that had been spewing from their mouths seconds before, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
Obligitory, but related, Kung Fu Monkey link - here.
Like Gameboy, only bigger.
I just played Tetris with forty men, two forklifts and two shipping containers. I did all that at two AM. I just had the most fun I’ve had in Iraq.
The most painful part of redeploying to the states is the constant packing, paperwork and repacking. We have to make sure everything will fit inside the shipping containers (aka milvan, conex), then, starting at nine at night, we have to lay it all out on the ground and wait while the US Customs inspectors look through it all to make sure that we are not smuggling back illegal items (porn, alcohol, dirt [I shit you not], animal parts, human remains, embargoed merchandise [Cuban cigars], weapons, etc). Then, under their watchful supervision, we reload all of the equipment into the containers, seal them up and leave them to be loaded for their journey, by way of Kuwait, to the US.
We laid everything out, it was inspected, and time, tonight, came to load it all back up. Around this time the First Sergeant left, leaving brief instructions with various squad leaders on how to make the load plan happen. Aside: this, in and of itself, is not a big deal. Squad leaders, especially after over a year in combat, can most likely handle themselves and make things happen. The problem with leaving like he did was mostly that there was little centralized leadership – which is where Staff Sergeant Buenteo (my senior NCO and acting Platoon Sergeant while SFC Howard is away) and I came in.
Once all the boxes and bags that were going into the conex were packed, we went to work. We had loaded a good number of large boxes called conex inserts (continently shaped and sized to fit well inside conexes), but when loaded these boxes, about five feet by four by three or four high, are rather heavy – not liftable by hand. One of my guys suggested that we steal a small Bobcat forklift that was sitting, unused nearby. About two minutes later, another one of my guys was at the wheel (with the appropriate safety equipment, amazingly enough) lifting and moving inserts around. Once we started with those we began to load smaller boxes, crates and other items. I directed, with Sergeant Buenteo, from inside the conex, hopping from box to box and hauling things up to me. By the end I had climbed up on the piles several times, grabbing stuff, throwing it around, moving bags and boxes to better spots. I was holding the last bag up as we closed the door, and I had to pull my arm as they it closed.
Sergeant Buenteo had moved over to start the next conex over while I finished up the first. I finished and moved over to the other conex which was about half full. The Milvan required a little more gymnastics, in the end necessitating that four of us crawl over the top of the inserts, through a space perhaps two feet high, to the back and push a wall of inserts forward because the forklift couldn’t get at them.
We finished the last conex after two thirty in the morning. I kept joking with people “That was fun. Let’s do it again tomorrow night!” which of course was wry because we have three more conexes to load in the coming nights. But it was also true. Near the end of the first conex, I realized I hadn’t looked at my watch for two hours and didn’t realize it was one thirty. It was exciting to actually be doing something physical (yeah, split infinitive, I don’t care), not paperwork. It was a fun challenge, trying to find a place for everything. It was fun working with all my guys and other soldiers on a task that we could accomplish. It was also at night, so a fair amount cooler. I had a hell of a lot of fun.
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