Kabul, International

Exactly two weeks ago I uprooted from my home for the past half-year and proceeded to march, robot-like, through the redeployment gauntlet.  The thought of that transition served as a beacon, pulling my through the confused haze of my last month in theater.

But it arrived without fanfare.  All the parts clicked into place - my replacement was, to my relief, eminently more qualified than me - leading to a transition that felt more mechanical than celebratory.  I should have expected as much, of course.  I was on the staying end of that equation countless times during my tenure, but I thought my emotional timbre would be different when I was the one leaving.

My road to hell will get a little longer with some closing good intentions: I intend to write again, soon, here, to wrap up this experience, to capture some stories and smiles, before I conclude this experiment.  But it's going to wait for some wandering days and weeks crossing this wonderful country of mine, getting reacquainted with what most people call "normal life".  Some time will let that conclusion write itself.

I was incredibly lucky to make it home for Thanksgiving, and it couldn't have been more appropriate.  I'm incredibly grateful for so many things, but none more so than for family and friends who cared enough to smile with me (and for me), to be scared with me (and for me), and to give me a soft place to land.

Three surviving veterans of World War I laid wreaths at Verdun today.  You think 90 years dull memories like that?  20 million dead, another 20 million wounded.  Wait, let me try that again.  That's more than 40,000,000 casualties, more than the entire population of California.  After a deep breath, soak in the World War II numbers: 72 million gone worldwide, without counting the wounded.

You think I'll be able to grab a beer with one of those old-timers at the VFW some day? Swap stories?  He might talk about mustard gas, bloody trenches, fire-bombing or 300 days of constant battle.  I'd talk about 180 days of ... moderately heightened anxiety?

I'm not being flippant: amazingly brave troops here and in Iraq have visited hell and returned with distinction (and scars), some still work there, and many never made it home.  I can't pretend to understand what they've been through, what hope have I to comprehend losing generations?

I thought being out here might help me get a better handle on conflict, comraderie, maybe even courage ... maybe it got me just close enough to see how little of that I would ever, ever understand.  Happy Veterans' Day.

From 0500 I sat transfixed, watching history unfold on satellite TV.  I watched a person capture a vision of the best my country is, and the best it can yet be.  He will be tested.

Those who know me well probably realize I was rather less circumspect in person ... there may have been some jumping around involved, also cheering.  Luckily our new president is possessed of calmer temperment than some of his deployed future subordinates.  Here, I'm (uncharacteristically) speechless, so I'll borrow from a wonderful friend of mine: "here's to new times and new hopes."

The weather's been downright tolerable lately, to quote my Dad. So I was thinking it possible I might get a couple shots of the city one could take in without choking. I laughed out loud when the "clear" landscape shots turned out like this:

Not exactly crystal ...

Regardless, they're not pictures of blast walls or Hesco barriers, so I'm content. Here are a couple more from near the king's tomb, about whom I have every intention of writing. In fact, I've been planning for weeks to post a little history lesson up here, only to be foiled by a tenacious inability to a) distill such a thing into this small space, or b) find a way to wax convivial about 30 years of war without driving my ever-dwindling readership for the hills. An effort for another day, for now more pictures:

Forgive the non-sequitur: Kabul has a one-room museum dedicated to their seemingly eternal de-mining effort. I can't concisely capture the bevy of emotions this little place engenders -- thrilled a museum survives here, hopeful it will grow from its ultra-modest beginnings, crushed that unexploded ordnance and pictures of maimed amputees are historical centerpieces. The curator's earnest, memorized English introduction just about put me over the edge. Just outside, surrounded by Kabul's ubiquitous, haphazard construction, they have a static-display airplane in which they let kids sit ... "they've never been able to sit in a real plane." Thought they deserved some quick pics:

Even the Smithsonian had to start somewhere.

An old colleague just rolled into town. He rotated out a month into my tour here, and he's already back -- one of the countless rotation philosophies practiced by the 40 countries here. Anyway, the point is, I was so glad to see him I could have kissed the bastard. And not two weeks ago I watched a good friend roll home, shaking with relief he was out of the mess I'd imagined him in.

I'm wrapped up in it all, coming in or out. I'm an impassioned idiot, not always displaying fine motor control over the ol' emotional extremities, but I wouldn't trade it. Reckon it's never too early to appreciate people and places, and hopefully not too late. I still have a few weeks to go, so forgive me if I rerun a similar episode in November.

Thanks to old friends for sage advice and comfortable laughs. Thanks to new friends tying me in knots, teaching me, testing my limits. Thanks to those who work for me, and to those for whom I work, for tolerating a wired kid who doesn't know any other way to play the game than as himself. Thanks to this city and country for hosting this mercurial mission and giving us a chance to take one small step towards "better", and thanks to people back home for not forgetting we're out here trying to sort our way through this tragic tangle. Thanks to those who read this nonsense, and thanks to those who skip it for something better.

I've been swimming in molasses, maybe just treading water, on the downhill slope of this adventure -- but merely avoiding self-pity and looking forward to highways and happy meals doesn't satisfy. I appreciate the opportunity, and I'm lucky to have it, shame on me if I waste a day of it wallowing.

See you all soon, but not before I get you some more pictures

I'm still here, still kickin', still (reasonably) focused on tasks at hand.  I have a colleague who calls me on a regular basis, speaking in urgent tones about whether I've sent my info to the right people to schedule my flight home ... tough to keep everyone's eye on the ball.

My latest challenge: clearing the cobwebs out of my braincase in preparation for a short-notice GRE.  My most ambitious self-improvement plans have fallen victim to my copious human frailty, hopefully I can scrounge together a few ounces of willpower and do a little (gasp!) practice.

So credit's tight and the Dow just took its biggest point-drop in history.  I'm thinking of asking for my pay in Afghanis -- I imagine the brisk opium trade will probably keep my adopted home currency afloat as the dollar dives into "wheelbarrows-full-for-a-loaf-of-bread" territory.  It's odd to feel isolated from turmoil when you're in a place like Afghanistan ...

To preserve my remaining windburned shreds of sanity, I've chosen to hide from the legions of cable news talking heads ranting ad nauseum about the current state of the U.S. presidential "horserace".  My friends and coworkers can attest to my continued  ... ahem ... engagement on the issues; but for the past few weeks I've tried to maintain a state of quasi-content tunnel-vision, focusing solely on tasks at hand, my next meal, and making it to the gym.  But today, friends, I was yanked by the conscience out of that reverie with the arrival of my absentee ballot.

It's a game of highs and lows, this democracy thing.  I'm nursing a proud little spark of optimistic relevance, a modest rush of existential and civic engagement, from filling in those blocks.  But I'm also bracing myself for lurking cynicism, the "what does it matter" that comes with being one citizen in 300 million, corraled into mudslinging, emotional, crackpot politics and a clunky, arcane electoral system.

Better to be engaged, though, than to languish in apathy.  It's a dirty, frustrating game, but the only one in town.  Get out and play.

I'm sitting on FSB Herat, a large base near the most prominent city in western Afghanistan, having now completed the combat-tourist's dream of setting foot in each of Afghanistan's five regional commands.  I'm academically aware this is a place with countless facets, landscapes as diverse and varied as its cultures -- but my untrained senses are often overwhelmed with a seemingly everpresent haze -- a windswept, desolate patina.  Sadly, strategic planners didn't take the view into account when they plotted most of these operating bases and supply routes.  And years of drought don't help.

However some corners of this place, literally and figuratively opposite my current location and which I've never visited, escape that stereotype: the air is clean, rivers have water, and there are colors present other than "khaki wasteland".  Ironically, though, this is also some of the most hard-fought and unforgiving terrain here.

Points for anyone who can square this view with the conflict that runs through it

All the best to the RC-East spartans that grind out their nights and days in valleys like that.  They're working hard, s'pose the least we can do is give them the nice views, and thank them for the pictures.  We'll have to figure something else out for those poor bastards in Kandahar and Helmand.

I just spent September 11th, 2008, in Kabul, Afghanistan.  Seven years since we watched the the towers collapse on a TV screen in my college dorm common room.  And here I sit, a dizzy tourist in the sick, enormous and complex geopolitical, historical, cultural and religious landscape that gave birth to that catastrophe.

Ostensibly we're here as part of the solution, but it may take me years before I get a handle on those implications.  For now it's enough to try to get a little perspective, a hard enough task given the blizzard of politics, talking points and competing interests.  I've been looking through some numbers, gazing half-focused, maybe hoping to find constellations to navigate through thoughts of devastation, or reconstruction, or responsibility, or justice, or vengeance.  A lot of estimates with a lot of methodologies, and maybe it just dehumanizes the whole thing.  All I know is I'm past capacity trying to understand a fraction of it.

9-11-2001, 2,975 fatalities in the attacks, including over 500 from 90 other countries.  19 hijackers, 15 from Saudi Arabia, 2 from the UAE, 1 each from Egypt and Lebanon.

2 wars in 7 years, hundreds of thousands of troops cycled through.

4,136 U.S. military deaths in Iraq, 176 British, and 129 combined from 18 other coalition countries.  Between 946,000 and 1,120,000 Iraqi deaths between March 2003 and August 2007, including militants, about 4% of Iraq's 2002 population.

949 coalition military deaths in Afghanistan, including 581 Americans.  Tens of thousands of Afghan deaths, including militants, across a wide spectrum of analyses.

The cost of both conflicts could exceed $3 trillion dollars, in addition to the economic effects of the 9/11 attacks themselves.

It's the seventh anniversary of the "day after," and I'm not up to the task of tracking where all that blood and treasure has brought us.  Thinking peoples' analysis runs the gamut from "worse than when we started" to "the verge of victory."  It's brought me to a granite-hard bed in a fortified tin can in the dusty capital of a crippled state, remembering that day seven years ago when we were all asking ourselves in stunned, sad confusion, "what happens now?"

Hey.  Apologies for my inexcusable delinquency in updating here.  I actually have something I've been meaning to post about - a little ambitious, so it's still stewing.

I'm fine.  Busy at work, busting my ass at the gym, listening to a lot of music and stuffing the leftovers into a tiny little emotional box.  Not unhappy, not bitter, just indulging in a wee bit of non-chemical emotional anesthesia.  Planned a road trip for when I get back, I'm wondering if I started rolling some forward-looking snowball that'll pirate my attention from work at hand -- or if it'll just keep my morale up.  I'll let you know.

Coping mechanisms are a bizarre and interesting thing to behold.