Quick Update

Things have slowed down in our part of the world, which is fine by me. I know it drives some of the Soldiers nuts. I enjoy the steady and quiet rhythm, the monotonous days. Ramadan (September) was active for the "enemies of peace" in eastern Afghanistan. I don't want to overstate this, because there is still a lot going on in certain places, it's just that our slice has been absent casualties for some time now, which I like very much. There is still a lot of indirect fire and IEDs, but my clinic numbers have dropped. I've also heard that the number of medevac flights have decreased significantly.

 

I think the cooler weather, football season, the World Series, the approach of the holiday season and the end of 2008 has lifted morale to a degree. There is still a lot left to do here (for all of us) but the change of the seasons makes the passage of time more tangible.

BAF was successful...

Back at my FOB after another sleepless night of waiting and waiting and then the Chinook, which is now a very cold ride as we slide into the fall. Flying through the high passes I observed that there is snow on the north facing aspects of the peaks. That's pretty cool. It will be a great ride through the mountains in January on my way out.

 

My BAF visit was successful. I got a brief taste of civilization and a little rest. I mostly enjoyed the bathrooms and showers in the hospital staff dorms, but I also got excited about the coffee shop, the big, open air gym (I would pay to belong to a gym like that), and hanging out with the other docs at the combat stress clinic at the hospital. Let me tell you, the Air Force really knows how to put together some nice living facilities in the war zone.

 

Other news: I found out that I have a replacement in the pipeline-- the person is going to the lovely Army Combat Skills Training in November and then will be joining us after the new year starts. I'm not 100% sure that they will be replacing me, but I was the earliest provider, so it would make sense that the first replacement takes my billet... That isn't notable news in itself, but it does mean that the end is approaching, and that's encouraging.

 

Being back with the USAF retarded my acculturation process-- just as I was getting acclimated to the Army and its mysterious ways, I spent four days with my Air Force brethren and got a shot of nicotine-and-obscenity-free air. OK, there was a little Army-bashing going on, which is unfair, but there is a big culture divide between certain elements of the two services. I am deployed with mostly scouts and infantry and I don't know much about the Army, but apparently that says it all. The fact that I am a member of the not-very-high-speed medical corps doesn't help either...

 

Don't get me wrong, these are good guys, tough guys, who do stuff I would never volunteer to do, but the charm of living with them has worn off. Jeez-- I just wish they would flush the toilet once in a while and maybe write some bathroom graffiti that consists of something more than: "I WUNT TO F^@K GERLS"

 

That was a slight exaggeration. Slight.

 

Keeping my spirits up and waiting for the snow!

More BAF...

Day two accounting:

 

11 hours of sleep

1 triple latte while reading Harpers

1 casual breakfast while watching Sportscenter

2 hours at the gym

1 clean, hot shower

1 hour on fast internet

2 James Bond movies at the "theater"

0 hours of work

 

A little respite

Ahh... back at Bagram Air Field (BAF) for a few days. I left my home FOB at 1am and arrived at Bagram at 4am after a freezing cold Chinook flight through the dark. I walked a few miles from the rotary terminal to my temporary lodging, and then drank myself silly with coffee. I had three cups of Air Force coffee (marginally better than Army coffee) and then went to the Green Bean (an actual coffee shop) and had a $4 mocha latte. Pretty good. Actually, just being in a coffee shop (imagine a faux Starbucks) was nice.

 

I watched one quarter of Monday Night Football (nice treat, but bad loss for the Broncos) and spent an hour or so talking with the other members of my unit who are posted here at the Bagram hospital. Wow! Being around Air Force people is great! I haven't heard the word "fuck" for about 15 hours now!

 

Being at BAF is great too! The internet speed is 10 times faster, the DSN phones don't have a 10 second lag, I have my choice of dining facilities and the bathrooms are clean. I think today I'll do some shopping, get a workout in, make some phone calls and then catch up on sleep.

 

My sleeping arrangements are adequate. I'm in a dorm room, taking up a bed by the door in a four person room. It's hot and stuffy in there but it's a clean, safe place to sleep for a few nights-- and there are non shit-stained toilets and non moldy showers for a change. It's the samll things in life...

It's enjoyable to walk around on pavement and concrete instead of dirt and crushed rocks.

 

I remember bitching about BAF when I got here in July. Now it's less crowded and cooler, and my perspective has been warped by living in Paktya province for the last three and a half months. I'm going to enjoy Bagram while I can and when I leave this time I will be reassured that I have the minority of my deployment left before me.

APA LETTER TO BUSH: NEW POLICY LIMITS PSYCHOLOGIST INVOLVEMENT IN INTERROGATIONS

Finally, my professional organization joined the rest of the medical community. It will be interesting to see how the DoD adjusts to this. I don't see how psychologists could have been that helpful anyway...


WASHINGTON—The American Psychological Association sent a letter today to President Bush, informing him of a significant change in the association's policy that limits the roles of psychologists in certain unlawful detention settings where the human rights of detainees are violated, such as has occurred at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at so-called CIA black sites around the world.

"The effect of this new policy is to prohibit psychologists from any involvement in interrogations or any other operational procedures at detention sites that are in violation of the U.S. Constitution or international law (e.g., the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture)," says the letter, from APA President Alan E. Kazdin, PhD. "In such unlawful detention settings, persons are deprived of basic human rights and legal protections, including the right to independent judicial review of their detention."

The roles of psychologists at such sites would now be limited to working directly for the people being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights, or to providing treatment to military personnel. The new policy was voted on by APA members and is in the process of being implemented.

For the past 20 years, APA policy has unequivocally condemned torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, which can arise from interrogation procedures or conditions of confinement. APA's previous policies had expressed grave concerns about settings where people are deprived of human rights and had offered support to psychologists who refused to work in such settings.

Noting that there have been credible reports of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees during Bush's presidency, APA called on the administration to investigate these alleged abuses. "We further call on you to establish policies and procedures to ensure the independent judicial review of these detentions and to afford the persons being detained all rights guaranteed to them under the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture," Kazdin wrote.

Army meatballs and red wine

I joked with Colleen that this blog should become a wine and beer tasting blog in January... I know that's potentially a bad joke give the association between redeployment and alcohol abuse, but I have to admit that a glass of some big juicy Cabernet sounds amazing-- especially Mondays, which is pasta and meatball night here.

This is good news if you like red wine and you're a smoker:

A study from Kaiser Permanente researchers published today found a strong link between red wine consumption and a decreased risk of lung cancer in men. The researchers studied 84,170 men ages 45 to 69 who were part of the California Men's Health Study. They found lung cancer risk is lowered an average of 2% for each glass of red wine consumed per month. The greatest risk reduction was found among men who smoked and who drank one or two glasses of red wine per day. They had a whopping 60% reduced risk.

The only things I've had in the last three months that have been remotely alcoholic have been one overripe banana and one can of non-alcoholic Heineken. However, I know that Army personnel occasionally get busted on the FOB for alcohol possession-- they get vodka from the Afghans who work on the post. This is a Muslim country, but apparently in addition to opium, heroin, and marijuana, there is readily available alcohol as well. Maybe I'm naive but I've been surprised that both drug and alcohol use is as common as it is here.

What's funny (and vaguely related to the rest of this entry) is that if you smoke opium and get caught you will be sent home faster than you will if you charge your rifle and shoot it at another Soldier (and miss). Is that funny?

Yes, sometimes I feel like I am stuck in a penal colony.

That could lead to another entry about Army recruiting, but I'll stop now.

Beautiful Children

Back from another mission to the south. This trip reinforced my secret opinion that I am a wasted resource being deployed to these far-flung outposts. I spent three days doing absolutely nothing, apart from walking around making small-talk, advertising that I was there and available. It was a small outpost and the medics had a few Soldiers in mind when they thought of who might benefit from seeing me, but no one sought me out for consultation.

On the fourth day of doing nothing productive I hitched a ride on a convoy that was headed back to my home FOB. As usual for this country, it was painfully slow and bumpy, banging along at 10mph over terrible roads. Driving slowly through villages I am astounded by the beautiful children here. Most of them are dark haired and dark eyed, but some are light or red haired and blue-eyed. The little girls are clothed in brightly colored gauzy clothing, the boys in plain white, tan, or brown loose fitting shirts and pants.

At one point in a small village a dented Toyota sedan pulled onto the road and inserted itself between our gun-truck and the 5 ton truck behind us. Our gunner called out that a car had pulled into the convoy, which is an unacceptable breach of security. A crowd of school-aged girls minding two or three toddlers were standing around off to the side of the road, giving us thumbs-up and staring up at the huge armored vehicles. Our driver braked hard and slammed the truck in reverse, suddenly accelerating backwards to force the car off the road and out of the convoy. I watched the dark eyes of the nearest child widen and her mouth tighten in fear as she picked up the small toddler at her feet and twisted around, shielding the child from imminent threat. I was struck by both her obvious fear and her beauty. She was absolutely beautiful in a way that seemed so familiar.

When the Toyota pulled off the road, intimidated by several thousand pounds of armor and the matte black barrel of a heavy machine gun, we reversed direction and proceeded to crawl up the road. The girl relaxed slightly and placed the child back in the dust. As she disappeared behind us, her face remained in my mind and I wondered what her voice sounded like, whether or not she went to school, if she had ever danced to music, if her parents hugged her and told her they loved her. I thought of my daughter.

Later, in Gardez City, a small black-eyed boy ran alongside the truck, waving to us and holding his thumb up. In his left hand he delicately grasped a kite made from sticks and discarded thin blue plastic. The surface of the kite was ragged with holes and it was small, maybe 12 inches across. But I could tell by the way that he carefully held the kite that it was precious to him. For a kid in the US it would have been nothing more than a piece of trash. I couldn't help but see my son running after us, his small hand holding a favorite toy.

Seeing beauty and echoes of familiarity in the Afghans keeps my mood and outlook moderated to some degree. The anger and fear fades when I look at those kids. This seems to last only as long as the relative calm and mundane progress of days is uninterrupted by death and destruction. When the loud and messy reality of war reasserts itself into my life, those darker emotions roll over me. By virtue of being confessor and psychologist for dozens and dozens of Soldiers, I know I am not alone in this.

Being able to maintain a consistently rational and humanistic perspective is, I think, impossible for me. To completely rise above prejudice and irrational anger I would need to let go of my fear of death, and let go of my attachment to my life and my hypothetical future-- become some kind of selfless warrior.

This darkness that overwhelms rational thought is something I didn't understand before this year, even though I am getting only a small taste. I think this may be one aspect of what separates combat veterans from everyone else. There is something visceral and crude that crawls up your spine and sits on your soul.

Earthquake

Last night I woke after 3am to my room shaking. I came out of a deep sleep and wondered what was causing the movement. It moved the building, wood creaking, and rocked my cot back and forth. My sleepy mind slowly ruled out wind, someone shaking the building, and a rocket attack. It was kind of soothing and surreal, and then it stopped and I fell back asleep. Here's the link.

Football

Another convoy, another five day trip to a different camp. I rode with the route clearing package-- a huge convoy of vehicles led by specially designed vehicles that find and either safely detonate or deactivate IEDs. These are National Guard guys and I like them. The huge convoy rolled for three hours to the next FOB and then stopped on the road while my vehicle drove a side road to drop me off inside the perimeter of the FOB. Not VIP treatment but as close as it gets for me...

This is my second trip here, so they know me. I get to stay in the same room, the same cot. Not much happens. I'll make myself known, walk around and be social, give the people who need or want to speak with me the chance to come out of the woodwork before I leave.

This afternoon I sat down in the MWR in an overstuffed chair and watched 45 minutes of the Colorado Buffaloes getting beaten by Texas (recorded and re-broadcast on the Armed Forces Network) and then I watched Sportscenter. It was nice. It felt "normal" but it left me feeling a little sad, a little wistful for October back home and watching football on Saturdays or Sundays.

I brought two novels, a non-fiction book on parenting, a stack of magazines, and a handful of movies. I should be able to settle into a schedule of sleeping in until 7am, drinking coffee (I also brought a pound of coffee), working out, and cleaning up by late morning. My "business hours" will run from lunch to late afternoon and then I might sneak in another workout, eat dinner, and retire to a night of reading and DVDs.

Not bad work if you can get it eh?

Am I turning into a bigot?

September is gone and that's a good thing. It was a bad month around here for everyone. Ramadan left a foul taste in my mouth. Sometimes I worry that my experience in this Islamic country will permanently bias my view of Muslim people. Killing in the name of Allah seems so barbaric and primitive, but then if you look around here you can't tell what century it is anyway.

It's easy to just give up cognitively and emotionally, and take a position that we should just leave them to cut each other's head's off the way they have always done. I go back and forth between this perspective and something more fitting of an educated child of the West. Even so, I have a new understanding of where the old stereotype of the crusty Vietnam vet who hates Asians comes from. It's illogical, but hatred finds good purchase in the frightened mind.

Being here has made me more forgiving of my own country. For all of our faults and our war-mongering ways, there are cultures out here that are darker and much more brutal. Yes, we are greedy, wasteful, and slightly imperialistic. We are arrogant too. But some of these people (Mullah Omar, Jalaluddin Haqqani for example) are way scarier than Sarah Palin or even Dick Cheney. The way females are treated, the whole beheading thing, the rate at which blood is spilled in these countries, the extreme and absolute interpretation of religion. Evil is relative.

I'll kiss the ground of the good old USA when I get back (metaphorically—airports are unclean) and I'm sure this experience will have changed my civic and political perspective. A conglomeration of anger, pride, and renewed patriotism. I know that this service will have made me a better citizen.

That said, I'm getting out of the military in about 270 days. I'll throw a party.

Which one is the real Left Captain????