Ben Stien's Latest Column

I have never "darkened the door" (to use the antiquated parlance) of E! online before as I find celebrity worship distasteful and that is essentially all they're about. Ironic that they would run a column that essentially questions the validity of their existence.

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

A sample of the article:

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model?

Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.

A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq.

Part of why I am out here doing this is to serve as a role model to my future children and to my nephews so that they better understand the responsibilies we have as the more fortunate to help those in need. Its nice to see this viewpoint validated by others.

A tip 'o the hat to my grandmother (Memaw) who forwarded me this link. And to think, most people's grandparents just forward last year's urban legend emails! ;)

Stay tuned...I'm working on my Bagram to Jalalabad convoy journal entry! Coming soon.

Journal Entry: Limbo

You’d have to be in the military to understand just how painful it is to get just about anything done. A simple trip to the rifle range requires hours waiting for buses, waiting for ammunition to show up, waiting through repetative, briefings from the range detail, thirty minutes of actual firing, waiting for everyone else to finish and finally waiting for the buses to show up again. Its like baseball: Hours invested for minutes of action. Now take that axiom and apply it to a one-year tour-of-duty in a combat zone and you start to get a glimpse of the amount of patience required to be a part of a two-hundred-person armed junket across the planet. I’ve actually amazed myself at how much patience I seem to have compared to many of the others. It must’ve been all the hours of downtime in Basic and AIT that imbued me with a tolerance of mind-numbing waste because I certainly didn’t have it before. According to the veterans this is the most inefficient, poorly-run mobilization anyone of them has been a part of. I have to admit, there is something offensive about spending two months preparing for a deployment. This one happens to be a full year, but that’s still right at 15% of our active time spent preparing for something we should already be prepared for by doing monthly drills. Its enough to make you want to write your congressman.

We (finally) left Ft. Bragg last Saturday afternoon…could’ve been evening. Its weird. I have no idea of what day it is. If its Friday, it’s the 17th. If its still Thursday, then I guess it’s the 16th. All the travel and time spend in small dark planes and tents – who knows. Basically, we’ve been in-transit for about a week and stand to continue in this status for another few days at a minimum. Operational security prevented me from discussing where I was when I was there but now that its after-the-fact I can say that we flew from Ft. Bragg to Shannon, Ireland and then on to Ancirlik Airbase, Turkey, terminating in Manas International Airport outside of Bishkek, Kyrgykstan. The airbase was what you might expect: An unsightly, utilitarian mess of Conex boxes, tents, port-a-poties and dusty gravel road and walkways. But, ah the view outside the wire was breathtaking. Its too bad we weren’t allowed to leave the grounds. The force protection measures we have to endure are certainly one of the expected disappointments of participating in modern war. My assumption is that the reasons for severely limiting our interaction with the public here is a mix of political concern over terrorist actions directed at our personnel and the vast cultural differences and sensitivities that are required in this area of the world where scores of people die in riots over percieved offenses toward their religion. Truly the calculus of cultural-exchange is dramatically different in this area of the world – in this kind of war. With every loss of American life a weapon turned on the public will and with polls showing that will eroding as the months go by, it is quite impossible to expect a post/theatre commander to make any but the most prudent policies regarding force protection. Any incident no matter if accidental would end up painting those responsible for the policy that “allowed” it to happen as cavalier with the lives of American soldiers. A career-ender to be sure. So we err on the side of covering-your-ass and cultural exchange suffers as a result. It’s a sad reality.


Layover in Kyrgystan

Still the beauty was remarkable! I’d never seen a mountain over 20,000 ft. before. I was told by a local that the mountains behind me in this picture are 100km away! Their imensity was awe-inspiring. Whenever I started to get a little stir-crazy, I’d only to go outside and stare at the horizon for a while. I was a little sad to leave such a beautiful place without getting to know the people or explore those sites that make a country what it is. I wonder how many Americans are coming through these countries having technically visited but having never really been there. Again, its dissappointing as I see one of the immutable long-term positive effects of our “adventures” here to be the inevitable personal exchanges and understandings that come with any type of human interaction. To mitigate such interaction stifles that understanding. I suppose its somewhat necessary for now. I hope that changes.

After nearly a week in Manas and several delays, we shipped off in the dark of night to Bagram where I now reside for another indefinite period of time.


On The Way

Our ride was uneventful, as was one of the other two flights. Unfortunately, one of our groups was turned back in mid-flight due to mechanical problems. So, we play the waiting game again here at Bagram. At least it’s a game I’m getting pretty good at…and the horizon at Bagram is even better! There’s got to be a metaphor in there somewhere. At least this time I get to eventually leave the wire for a nice tour of the countryside…weapons at the ready, of course and IEDs potentially around any corner. Its no joke, this is a dangerous place but the general consensus is that progress is being made – that the Afghans are much better off for our efforts and that with the upcoming elections in September, we are all moving in a hopeful direction. I’m proud to be a small part of making their future a bright and prosperous one.


On the Way to Chow in Bagram


Bagram Digs

As soon as the rest of our unit reunites with us we can pick up and start the move out to our respective assignments across Afghanistan. Our PRT team got some bad news though –we’re losing one of our more knowledgable and experienced NCOs. There was some last-minute restructuring of the battle-roster due to the upcoming national parlimentary elections and his services were deemed to be more useful elsewhere. We’ve still got a great team but I’ve lost a like-minded ally and its going to make this year more challenging than originally thought. Then again…I’ve come to appreciate a good challenge.

Journal Entry: "Mobilization Recap"

As its been nearly six weeks since I’ve made a journal entry and our departure is immenent, I figure its probably time to do a nice “mobilization recap” entry to preserve the recent weeks for the posterity’s sake.

Camp Roberts was actually quite fun for me. Nestled in the rolling hills of California wine country, the scenery was pastoral and serene and the topography made for some challenging runs.


View of Camp Roberts, CA

I got lost a few times in the back roads both literally and figuratively speaking causing me to end up running for almost 90 minutes on one of my jaunts. The mobilization process itself consists of various formal and informal (a.k.a. “hip pocket”) training events and what is known as “SRP” (Soldier Readiness Processing). Trying not to be cynical about SRP would take the patience and mental fortitude of the Dali Lama himself. (12th son of the Lama…flowing robes…striking) It took me a while to figure out why we were being forced to sit through the same Sexual Harrassment, Equal Opportunity, Anti-Terrorism, Force Protection, Ethics and other “briefings” (there’s nothing brief about them) over and over. At times the speaker was even the same person with the same films and death-by-Power-Point presentation as before! You see, each command has an SRP checklist and in their infinite wisdom never bother to consolidate lists with their higher or sub-commanders. I am part of 321st CA Brigade but at present “attached”to the 492nd CA Battalion for deployment. Both are under the 351st CACOM which is going into theatre “attached” to the 82nd Airborne Division. Each of those has an SRP checklist and it clearly doesn’t matter to either of them what redundancies exists. Apparently, looking for ways to make things more efficient doesn’t occurr to anyone. Its truly mind-boggling. Another sociological doctural thesis subject just waiting to be written: Inside the Collective Bureaucratic Mindset. Add the training redundancies and the medical, dental, financial, legal and identification stations that are performed in the same repetative manner and you have a recipe for some fairly frustrated soldiers. Still, we’ve had some fun with it. I’ve invented an Equal Opportunity mascot named “Harvey the EO Donkey” – as “E-O” kind of sounds like a donkey braying. That’s spread like wildfire and now whenever we get the inevitable EO brief, half the taskforce starts braying when the guy puts the first Power Point slide up. Another bit we’ve been goofing on lately is this hyper-paranoid anti-terrorism video hosted by John Glenn. We’ve come up with so much good content on that one that we’ve just about decided to write a script and make our own version of it. Here’s a sampling:

John Glenn: “So you’re probably asking yourself, ‘Gee, John Glenn! How ridiculously paranoid should I be about terrorism security?’ Well, remember the last time you were stoned out of your mind in the grocery store at midnight? About TWICE that paranoid.”

And another:

John Glenn: “Remember, if you’re at a bar and a beautiful woman approaches you, she is a terrorist. You are a loser so don’t fool yourself that she’s just an innocent girl who finds you attractive. She is a Taliban operative and should be knocked unconscious with a dull object as soon as possible. Now of course, I’m an Astronaut. I get approached by legitimate women all the time. You might say I’ve had plenty of ‘Tang’ in my day and I’m not talking about the orange drink, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I still am on my guard for possible al-Queda operatives trying to blow up the moon or some other heinous, freedom-hating act.”

And this comic jewel:

John Glenn: “Look to your left. Now look to your right. Now slowly turn around without being obvious. NOW QUICKLY LOOK TO YOUR LEFT AGAIN! …You’ve probably just seen a terrorist!”

You get the idea. By the time you’ve seen this video four times you’d be getting slap-happy yourself.

After three weeks at Camp Roberts, we shipped out to the other side of the country - back to Ft. Bragg, NC for more SRP. Yes, more. Noone has really been able to give a good reason we did mobilization readiness on BOTH coasts but the conventional wisdom seems to sugggest that some Congressman from the district that Camp Roberts is in is responsible. Overall, the training has been decent if not somewhat too force-protection centric. I’d say only 5% of our training time has been Civil Affairs-specific which is a little frightening given the fact that many of our officers did a two-week-long branch-transfer course and have no other civil affairs experience besides that. As hard up as the military seems to be to get officers into CA, you’d think they’d start allowing direct commissions from the qualified enlisted ranks. Oh, well I guess that’d make too much sense. Although, I’ve devolved into a bit of cynicism about the mobilization process, I’m as excited as ever to get into theater and get to work. I’ve got a great team with a good mix of experience and intellect.

Being back at Ft. Bragg has been both good and bad. On one hand, there’s so much more to do, but that can be counter-productive to say the least. Many of the soldiers have gone out every night and I’ve gone out too often myself. Its nice to blow off some steam now and then, but I crave my alone-time too. Once folks realize you’re fun to hang out with they want you to go every time. Its great to feel wanted and I do have a hard time saying no when people single me out for an emphatic invitation. Still, all the partying has a tendency to get me off my game and out of my mission orientation somewhat. I’ve done about half the language studying as I’d have liked but its important to get to know the team too, so I rationalize it that way.

Ship-out is just days away and I am as excited as I’ve ever been about anything. About the only downside will be not communicating with my wife, friends and other family as easily and with as much frequency. Still, I’ve been training for this moment now for the better part of nine months and I’m ready to get to work. Whatever happens over there, I will make a difference. I will do some good at some level. When I get home next year, I will have left behind many people that think better of my country for my efforts at the very least.

In Our Memory

Finally, a bit of bad news. About two weeks ago, a dear and highly-valued member of our unit passed away enroute to the Middle East in support of our Operation Enduring Freedom rotation. Lt. Colonel Albert Smart was a kind, intellegent and hard-working man with an infectionous enthusiasm. Those who knew him can count themselves blessed. He will be missed.

The Army Combat Uniform (ACU)

We just recently were issued the new Army Combat Uniform. The Army is slowly phasing out familiar woodland-camoflauge Battle Dress Uniform (BDU) after nearly a quarter-century of service. The rest of the Army is getting them sometime next year, but Special Operations forces and some other selected units are deploying with them now.


(click for hi-res image)


(click for hi-res image)

I've only been wearing mine about a week and they'll never get me to go back! The best part is although the boots haven't changed much in design, the fact that they're suede means no more boot shining! And we here in Special Operations are authorized to wear the Oakley Special Forces Assault Boot. Its like having on Air Jordans! After wearing mine for a couple weeks I've started to get the feeling back in the tips of my toes that I lost wearing the old issue boots for the last eight months.


Military.com and Global Security.org have some decent articles on the ACU for those interested in learning more.