The Long Road Home from Afghanistan

As we stacked hundreds of duffel bags and ruck sacks on the driveway just off Doughboy Loop, I remembered pretty vividly a group of Soldiers doing the same thing seven months earlier.

At that time, we were getting ready to head to Afghanistan, from where they were coming back. I wasn’t jealous, more excited to get into the fight. Now we’re on the other side.

We had been in transit, which for the Army means, “mostly waiting,” for more than a week. Our exit from the Afghanistan theater of operations meant some time in the Persian Gulf. The same cargo jet that took us first to Al Mubarak Air Base—the “Gateway to Kuwait”—delivered us down the road to Ali Al Salem Air Base. Total flight time of the second leg: 12 minutes.

The bus ride was longer than the flight, only by time. I was glad for it, because the seats were infinitely more comfortable, and I gratefully caught a nap. When we arrived, the western sky turned from tangerine to rust, and it was officially twilight by the time we get our bunks at a place called Camp Arifjan.

It’s strange how you can imagine fairly vividly a place you’ve never been, then totally forget your imagination’s version once you experience the reality.

If Kandahar’s environs reminded me of southern Nevada, then Arifjan reminded me of an old Las Vegas suburb. There’s even a Starbucks, an indication that we were getting closer to the comforts of the Western World.

The dining hall at Arifjan was about a half mile away from our barracks. We lived in Prefabricated Concrete Buildings (PCBs) and when you walk between them, the sound of rocks reverberates between the corrugated concrete walls in a laser-like sound. I know that lasers are soundless, as long as they make Star Wars movies I’ll refer to the sound of blasters as “laser-like.”

In our warehouse barracks—mostly during sleeping hours—we were continuously interrupted as our beds were right next to the door. It happened to be the world's loudest door, and Soldiers, who are famous for being able to sleep like Rip Van Winkle on a Nyquil overdose, are for some reason getting up at 5:00 am regularly now.

There is a distinct segregation between those American Soldiers in ACUs, and those of us in multi-cams. At least so it seems. They don’t mingle in the chow hall, and as they move around in packs, they act as differently as they look. The ACU wearers are deployed, too, but haven’t been deprived of as many creature comforts, at last this time around. They seemed more relaxed than I remember Soldiers back in Afghanistan. But we were the relaxed ones at Arifjan.

On my first full day there, I took a three-hour nap. On day three, another one. I suppose part of the grand plan is getting deserved rest after a tough deployment. There was a swimming pool there, and I was able to resist for a few days. But after my last long run, I decide to take the plunge, and I didn’t regret it. Went again the next day.

Monday morning was our final wake up. I walk the 300 yards to the shower trailer and enjoy the crisp Gulf air on my walk back, a cleaner man. I put on a fresh uniform, probably the cleanest I have worn since this my OEF service began, and get ready to go back the U.S.

My last meal in CENTCOM was a disappointing Indian affair, but we did do Chili’s on our second to last night, so the food rating was net positive.

Nineteen hundred hours finally rolled around and we found ourselves listening to briefs and waiting more. Customs was easy enough, and by 10:00 we were loading several tour buses—the nice kind like the one that brought us to Arifjan eight days earlier. SSG Etheridge was my Bus Captain. I will address him as Bus Captain for the duration of our Title 10 time.

We rolled out at 11:00, driving on dirt roads and through complex security chutes. We don’t pass a single power line. Everything here, down to the standard, brightly lit Chili’s, seems to be powered by diesel generators.

Kuwaiti police cruisers and National Guard gun trucks escorted us along the wide-open highways to the international airport. In the distance—way up by bus one—the flashers pulsed and illuminated the late night dewy fog, like a distant rave celebrating our departure.

I napped, and was rudely awoken at 3:00 am by an Air Force security dude who ushered us off the bus at a security checkpoint. Dogs sniffed away at the vehicles while we waited in the “Freedom Cage.” It was getting cold, but our exhaustion made us compliant.

Bus Captain Etheridge pointed out the Atlas Air 747 aircraft being loaded up that was ours. After getting our boarding passes, we finally met up with the rest of our crew at the aerial port of departure, or “APOD.”

It took way too long for the flight crew to reconcile their list with the number of actual, living passengers they counted on the airplane, but after some painful roll calls and grade-school-style accountability measures, they got it and we were off. Half filled to Germany, where we picked up the remaining load at Ramstein Air Base.

Somewhere over the eastern Atlantic we reached the 24-hour mark from when our travel out of Kuwait began. I slept in fits and starts, eating bad airline food whenever it was presented. At 4:30 Eastern, we touched down, and two and a half hours later had our bags.

But it wasn’t until midnight that those bags made it to our new home for the next couple of weeks. Fort Dix welcomed us with the same cold drizzle that I remember on March 23.

We will go through the rigmarole that First Army has devised to keep Soldiers gainfully employed while our warfighting wanes. And we’ll experience a serious downgrade in the quality of free food. And being so close without actually seeing our families yet will be challenging.

But we are back on U.S soil. And it feels great.

These Taliban Guys Are Mailing it in

Remember Baghdad Bob? The Taliban ought to hire him, what with their information office in such an embarassing disarray. 

Jonah Goldberg quipped "if you’re going to go down in a blaze of glory, why be stingy with the kerosene?" A corollary could be, "if you're going to turn loose the obvious propaganda, why not try to make yourself look at least slightly more competent than an ISIS finishing school drop out?" 

Here is a recent example from "Voice of Jihad," or some such other ominously-named Twitter account that speaks for the Taliban. 

The Islamic Emirate mujahedeen is reporting from Char-Chano district of Uruzgan province that, this morning a resident of Langar village of Char-Chano district by the name of Ramatullah son of Naqubullah which was serving in Tarin Kot as soldier with commander Mirwas by the effort of our recruitment commission repainted hi mastics and joined the mujaheddin.

He brought one motorcycle with him.

Stop the presses!

Maybe this is totally accurate (though I can neither confirm nor deny that anyone was repainted with hi mastics). But if it is, it's worse than not saying anything at all! 

For Heaven's sake, tell the enemy you're recruiting droves of dudes now without having to give away all the "Hygiene is for Infidels" t-shirts and Mullah Omar keychains. 

Who can seriously believe that any substantial number of Afghans are on their side when news about one measly recruit makes the front page? 

Oh! But he brought his motorcycle!

Baghdad Bob's pronouncements might have been met with derision and laughter by the invaders, but at least he put his heart into it. 

The Legend of the Kosovo Eight

Sometimes a one-hit wonder needs to let well enough alone.

We had a major hit back in 2009, when our group toured Kosovo. We were known then as the 69th PAD, and we were rockstars. Great leadership, energy, and moxie. The chicks really dug us.

A certain COL Cooper didn't have much use for us, except for s few silly command photos and slices of Anthony's pizza (that he got by crashing our pizza party), but we got pretty big audiences with our photos, videos, and the mother of them all, The Guardian East magazine. Think of it as our White Album.

The magic and Glory came to end end around December 2009. The band fell apart, each of us going our separate ways. The leader, CPT Jonathan Masaki "Mahalo" Shiroma got promoted and went on to a solo career. MSG Paul Wade also left, then there was no keeping us together.

One member (He Who Must Not Be Named) departed before we finished touring. SGT Pepper, Swatts, Smith, Samudio, and I went home to fading memories of our greatness.

Our bassist and rhythm guitarist-- Samudio and Smith-- found new band to tour with. They played much bigger venues, like RC- East in Afghanistan. Places with crowds much bigger than we could have dreamed in Kosovo.

Kosovo was intimate, like the club scene of the Beatles' early Liverpool days.

But Afghanistan? Tough. Samudio came just after Kosovo. The man re-classed to get here. That's Army-speak for, he went to school to learned a new trade so he could deploy with a combat unit. So he's one of the few triple-qualified military police/ public affairs Soldiers in the Army. I'm pretty sure he volunteered just so he could make a cool documentary, but carried a big gun and saw combat.

Nevada Jack Smith went to a different state to get on an Afghanistan deployment. It was Hawaii, so we can't give him too much credit for sacrifice, but they did deploy to RC-South where things were a bit hairy. Less coffee and yoga back then.

Swatts went on to a tour in Iraq, which was probably then like Afghanistan is now. But these places are always risky, and it was no Kosovo. the pressure was high. It was the big time for all of them.

I bring this all up because I get teased for having it easy. Guilty as charged. I would not wish for combat action, and every time I here someone in operations tell me they're having a boring day I reply, "Good. Means we're doing our job."

Most deployments for most Soldiers are not year-long versions of Lone Survivor. They are more like bad vacations.

And public affairs Soldiers have it particularly easy. We complain about not having enough compact discs and limited access to YouTube. I wouldn't do any other job in the Army, though, unless of course I was ordered to. But no one orders us not to complain, because it is what Soldiers do best.

But these guys volunteered for the fight. That's the mark of a true warrior.

As our good captain (he is a major now, but he will always be "commander," to me) put it in more or fewer words:

Whether you get into a gunfight or not, whether you primarily reside on a FOB or go out of the wire everyday, you wear that uniform in support of our operations overseas. You should be proud of what you have done and our nation thanks you for it. I personally am proud of you in your respective roles in OEF. You have stepped up to do something very few other Americans your age have. 

I should also mention that MAJ Shiroma did a previous tour in Iraq, where his job as a HHC commander and PAO did not spare him the horrors and stresses of modern combat.

 am enormously proud to have played with these guys, and I respect them for standing up to fight. I think of them often as I enjoy iced coffee inside the wire at a relatively safe Bagram Airfield.

Man, the band should really get back together.

They Laid out the Red Carpet for Me in Bagram

Travelling to a new base is a lot like a vacation. Except it's not fun, and you have to carry your own bags. And you always depart or arrive in the middle of the night. And you are responsible for two weapons along with your bags.

So it's not like a vacation at all, come to think of it. The flight on the C-130 is exquisitely uncomfortable. Net seating doesn't recline, the roar of the motor isn't muffled, and I am wearing 25 pounds of body armor and have 45 pounds of carry-on on my lap.

We land early that morning and lug our over-sized bags up two flights of stairs in our conex tenements.

I learn that Prax is sharing a room barely big enough for one with two other Soldiers. Of course neither of them have any idea that she is coming. It must be really fun to wake up at 0500 hours to discover you have a new roommate. With four bags.

I also have four bags. And I also have two roommates. I wonder who is more annoyed-- them or me. Prax, at least, gets a wall locker. I get my lap again.

Two days later we are beginning to settle in. BAF is huge, but we don't realize it quite right away. The main drag is called Disney. A nod to the reach of American culture, I assume, like "Hotel California" (a large tent where transients stay). We feel sheepish on discovering that it is name after a Soldier killed here in a heavy equipment accident in 2002. SPC Jason Disney was a transportation specialist from Nevada. The street signs take on new meaning, to us, at least.

On Sunday we get a longer tour, and some introductions, from a broadcaster on his way out. He takes us to the US Army Corps of Engineers compound and a nearby villa that is used for jirgas and other high-level meetings. We stop and smell the roses—the first we have seen since leaving the U.S. Then we visit the guys in "Dustoff," the operational name given to every medevac unit I have ever met. It seems, I don't know, ironic, that American troops occupy these structures built by the Soviets 30 years earlier.

We also drive by the secret prison that has been the source of some controversy. It looks like every other secret prison I have seen.

It is much cooler up here. And I feel more comfortable, as the weather probably mirrors the Wasatch front almost exactly. I don’t sweat unless I mean to anymore. The food seems better, too, but that might just be because it is different.

By the fourth day at BAF, one third of the occupants of my little unit has left. Suddenly I am like the wealthy gentry of US Forces – Afghanistan, what with my own wall locker and a bottom bunk. My other roommate, an Army captain, is in the same spot nearly every time I step into the room—legs in a sleeping bag, sitting on his bunk, typing away on his laptop. He says he is leaving soon, so I assume he is sending off hundreds of emails to friends and family eagerly awaiting his return. I’ll have to start doing that soon, I guess.

A new assignment brings new opportunities, and so I begin a new workout regimen. The gym is quite inviting—a new hardened structure that makes me feel like I might be paying $69 a month if I were back home.

Our office is hardened, too, which means that during a rocket attack we don’t have to evacuate to one of the hundreds of bunkers outside. We came under such an attack the other day, but I just kept working merrily.

It’s a strange time to be here, at the world’s largest forward base. Americans are leaving in droves, and all the talk is about Resolute Support and how NATO isn’t doing anymore combat and how it’s really great that we’re giving the Afghans a bunch of MRAPs. It’s great not because the equipment will help them in their fight against the Taliban, but because giving them the vehicles makes the U.S. seem less wasteful.

Speaking of waste, we should be here about seven more weeks. Then we get to travel again. Back to the U.S. It’s like vacation, except…

Remember Keating: A Five-Year Retrospective, Part 6

This is the final part in a six-part series. Read Part 1. Read Part 2. Read Part 3. Read Part 4. Read Part 5.

Three Medals of Honor have been awarded in connection with COP Keating, two from the final battle. As the highest honor a soldier can receive for action in combat, these awards ratify the ways the soldiers fought. In essence, they legitimate the way they organized themselves. That organizing activity was heavily influenced by the Warrior Ethos.

SSG (Ret.) Clint Romesha.

Properly understood as a tool that soldiers use to enact and make sense of their environment, the Ethos is a powerful instrument in combat. The actions of the soldiers in battle of COP Keating illustrates as much in several ways. While soldiers act during combat, they do so without carefully rationalizing those actions. Instead, they look for validation after the action. The language of the Warrior Ethos gives them material to make the necessary meaning.

None of this is to say that the American soldiers had not been combat effective until 2003, when they were enlightened with a breakthrough mission statement. But to dismiss the power of the Warrior Ethos is to commit two major errors. One is to ignore the overwhelming superiority of U.S. combat performance relative to the nation’s battlefield enemies. The other is to ignore the fact that the current force is regarded as the greatest fighting force of modernity.

Certainly many factors contribute to the effectiveness of soldiers in combat, but to take the extreme position that the Warrior Ethos affects it in only a minor way to is take the position that words don’t matter, that what trainers tell Soldiers don’t matter, and that soldiers are merely components in some mechanistic, post-human form of warfighting.

That claim defies the human dimension of battle, and the centrality of human relationship in organizing in it.

The above was adapted from a paper I submitted in a doctoral seminar in organizational communication. The paper was titled, "More than Mere Words: Enacting the Warrior Ethos in Combat."

Quotes from the Soldiers are taken from The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor by the eminent Jake Tapper. References to enactment, sensemaking, and other social psychology ideas are mainly from the various works of Karl E. Weick. 

Remember Keating: A Five-Year Retrospective, Part 5

This is the fifth part in a six-part series. Read Part 1. Read Part 2. Read Part 3. Read Part 4. Read Part 6.

Five soldiers were pinned down in a Humvee on the COP. The insurgents who were firing a seemingly endless supply of small arms rounds and rocket-propelled grenades had obviously studied how to disable the Americans’ best positions.

The soldiers—SGT Justin Gallegos, SGT Vernon Martin, SGT Brad Larson, SPC Stephan Mace, and SPC Ty Carter—understood they might die trying to escape, or would certainly die if they remained in the truck. Planning their egress, they made their move. Gallegos, Mace, and Martin were all hit immediately. Carter and Larson ran back to the truck. Mace was wounded by both RPG and small arms fire.  As he lay on the ground, bleeding and more exposed than ever, Mace tried to crawl on his elbows toward the Humvee. Carter saw him about fifteen yards away.

SPC Ty Carter

"I’m going to go get him," Carter told Larson. "No," the sergeant replied. "I can see him, he’s right there," Carter insisted. "You’re no good to him dead," was the reply from the senior soldier. They argued, and Carter continued to plea. Eventually, Larson consented, and Carter went out again to administer aid. The two soldiers carried Mace back into the Humvee under fire, and later to the aid station.

Perhaps the most conspicuous, and romanticized, element of the Warrior Ethos in the popular imagination of "leave no man behind." Carter’s persistence and selflessness would earn him the Medal of Honor; at the presentation ceremony, President Obama described Carter’s actions as "the story... of what our troops do for each other," explaining that "he displayed the essence of true heroism— "not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost."

"I will never leave a fallen comrade" expresses two truisms that make soldiers more effective in combat: one, they have received training aligned to social cohesion that helps them enact it, and two, they are imbued with the trust that makes the enactment natural. Both phenomena are evident on the battlefield in cases like Carter rescuing Mace and in the anecdote that began this paper.

Mission Statements serve to focus purpose and create organizational unanimity of goals. In this way, they help an organization allocate resources to for “translating organizational objectives into a work structure so that time, cost and performance parameters can be assessed and controlled.” . In the Army, soldiers are systematically trained to leave nobody behind. While the ethos of rescuing fallen soldiers is not new, its inclusion in a written mission statement as the ultimate line of the Warrior Ethos has encouraged the Army to explicitly incorporate it into large programs, such as Combat Life Saver, begun in 2007.

Perhaps a more elemental dimension of the leave nobody behind ethos is the trust that it instills in soldiers. Sociologists refer to trust in military action as social or unit cohesion, and its power is well documented. Interestingly, trust comes from drill—time spent on organizational action—by unit members acting together. Perhaps counter intuitively, then, drill and rehearsal don’t have as primary benefits preparation for a particular course of action, but to instill trust. Wong, et al., found that soldiers feel empowered to do their jobs when they believe that their team mates support them and will keep them safe.

Trust on the battlefield runs deep, as evident from Romesha’s emotional recollection of his own decision during the Battle of COP Keating. In an interview with Romesha on the eve of the Soldier’s Medal of Honor ceremony, Tapper asked about the importance of the Warrior Ethos:

"Tell me why it’s so important to you that the enemy not get their hands on a dead American soldier. Why does that thought bother you so much?"
Romesha: "Cause they’re ours. I mean, to give closure to the family, you know to have their son one more time. We’re not going to leave someone behind. Never gonna do it."

Perhaps this sentiment precedes action, to some degree, but it is justified and intensified after action. Carter didn’t have any particular fondness for Mace, but said in hindsight that he had to risk his life to save his team mate because they were both soldiers.

It was the ethos in action.

The above was adapted from a paper I submitted in a doctoral seminar in organizational communication. The paper was titled, "More than Mere Words: Enacting the Warrior Ethos in Combat."

Quotes from the Soldiers are taken from The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor by the eminent Jake Tapper. References to enactment, sensemaking, and other social psychology ideas are mainly from the various works of Karl E. Weick. 

Remember Keating: A Five-Year Retrospective, Part 4

This is the fourth part in a six-part series. Read Part 1. Read Part 2. Read Part 3. Read Part 5. Read Part 6.

"I will never accept defeat."

The enemy had breached the perimeter at COP Keating. The officer in charge, 1LT Andrew Bundermann, a 24-year-old graduate of West Point, stepped outside of the operations center to see his camp overrun and in flames; hundreds of enemy fighters still advanced toward them. He decided the Americans would have to consolidate their position and abandon the outer parts of the camp. "We need to fight this out; we need to hold our ground," Bundermann told his first sergeant and SSG Romesha. "F--- that," replied Romesha. “We need to retake this fucking camp and drive the f---ing Taliban out."

Bundermann’s idea to consolidate was probably the wisest, rationally. It was calculated. By all accounts, Bundermann was a good officer; His superiors said that he managed the battle effectively. But it was Romesha’s emotional response, a reaction based on refusing to give up what some members of his team had already died for. It was grounded in ethos.

1LT Andrew Bundermann and SGT Brad Larson

Romesha’s decision didn’t really make much sense in the moment that he made it. Nevertheless, his two superiors—Bundermann and 1SG Hill—agreed and proceeded to devise a counterattack. It was profitable only in retrospect, but it was an action borne of the dissonant and chaotic.

Organizing in combat is about men and women who seize those dissonant and surprising moments to direct action.

Whether Romesha’s instinct was resultant of systematic training or traits he brought to the Army is beside the point. The Ethos is articulated and reinforced in training and throughout Army activity, finding its way even into the citation for the Medal of Honor that Romesha was awarded in 2013:

"Undeterred by his injuries, SSG Romesha continued to fight and upon the arrival of another soldier to aid him and the assistant gunner, he again rushed through the exposed avenue to assemble additional soldiers."

Enactment helps us understand the process by which the individual acts in these chaotic situations. Romesha and his teammates formulated a plan to defeat the enemy, now inside the wire. But plans and goals seem to pose a counterexample to the retrospective conception of enacting and organizing. Remember that meaning and justification are used to create order from chaos, to maintain micro-stability during disruptive moments. One remedy, then, is to change the future tense of plans to future perfect tense. "I will never accept defeat" becomes, "I will not have been defeated." In this way, enactment becomes a way to avoid thinking about the disruptive nature of an alternative future. It allows the actors to avoid considering what the world would be like if he had to inhabit it as defeated actors.

Ethos allows soldiers to formulate such plans against all logic. In combat, sometimes logic reigns—as when Black hawk Medevac helicopter pilots refused to land at the COP for over 10 hours because of the intense fire (though a senior officer in the brigade told me a few days ago that that decision may not have been the right one). But as soldiers try to recover some form of stability and order during battle, they tend to organize under ethical considerations rather than rational ones. Refusing to accept defeat is one such consideration.

The above was adapted from a paper I submitted in a doctoral seminar in organizational communication. The paper was titled, "More than Mere Words: Enacting the Warrior Ethos in Combat."

Quotes from the Soldiers are taken from The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor by the eminent Jake Tapper. References to enactment, sensemaking, and other social psychology ideas are mainly from the various works of Karl E. Weick. 

Remember Keating: A Five-Year Retrospective, Part 3

This is the third part in a six-part series. Read Part 1. Read Part 2. Read Part 4. Read Part 5. Read Part 6.

The mission-first primacy of organizational action helps soldiers prioritize, focus, and execute. It was at the heart of adoption of the Ethos, and was "based on an understanding of what is most important to least important in the context that all specified and implied tasks must be performed."

All organizing occurs in contexts that are chaotic and open to multiple interpretations, and combat is only an exemplar of such a context. Thus, organizing involves the systematic reduction of equivocality .

SGT Joshua Kirk

Making sense of events requires a fair amount of post-decision validation. Equivocality can rear its head before or after a soldier commits to an action. After an action, like the decision by SGT Francis to keep fighting with broken ribs, must be validated in order to make sense of it, especially because it was a social act.

Inherent in enactment is the assumption that there is no single, objective reality to which actors can compare their activity. Reality is contingent and contextual, making decisions about the most important and most social things difficult. For example, less than 30 minutes into the battle at Keating, SGT Josh Kirk was struck in the head by a bullet, and was losing blood quickly. CPT Cordova, the ranking medical officer at the outpost, treated Kirk for several minutes while his condition deteriorated. Then,

After many minutes of trying to keep the sergeant alive by breathing for him with the squeeze bag, Cordova looked down at the floor. They would have to perform CPR on him all day to keep him alive, taking two of the four medical staff out of commission. Any other day, they would have done it without question, but not today. The wounded were already stacked up, and more would be coming in.... At 6:45 a.m., Cordova pronounced Kirk dead.

The Ethos helps actors validate actions that are otherwise difficult to justify. Commitment "marshals forces that destroy the plausibility of alternatives." In organizing, and especially in combat, there is little advantage to considering alternatives once an action has been taken. Intense actions, we find, enforces this tendency, and when actors validate intense actions, they often find unexpected and attractive meaning therein.

The language of the Warrior Ethos is highly flexible, rendering itself meaningful to a vast universe of action. It also promotes the social aspect of finding meaning, and encourages soldiers to commit. It is a linguistic tool that helps soldiers make sense of the nonsensical in battle.


The above was adapted from a paper I submitted in a doctoral seminar in organizational communication. The paper was titled, "More than Mere Words: Enacting the Warrior Ethos in Combat."

Quotes from the Soldiers are taken from The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor by the eminent Jake Tapper. References to enactment, sensemaking, and other social psychology ideas are mainly from the various works of Karl E. Weick. 

Remember Keating: A Five-Year Retrospective, Part 2

This is the second part in a six-part series. Read Part 1. Read Part 3. Read Part 4. Read Part 5. Read Part 6.

SPC Mark Dulaney shook SGT John Francis. "You good? You alright?"

A rocket-propelled grenade had sent Francis flying and he landed on his back. "Can you get up? Asked the specialist. "I think I got some busted ribs," replied the sergeant. He did, in fact, have five of them. "Should we go to the aid station?" asked Dulaney, a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

"F--- no," said Francis. "we gotta keep fighting til this s--t’s over."

In combat, effective soldiers take the initiative, military speak for staying on the move and on offense. Military culture, in fact, privileges decisiveness, sometimes to the detriment of the organization. COP Keating was, after all, under attack because senior army leaders to long refused to seriously reconsider the decision to build an outpost in Nuristan.

But just as action supplies the necessary material for cognition, commitment supplies incoherent groups the material for organization. The ways in which individuals develop a commitment is important for understanding how they act. Further, an examination of how soldiers put into action the first statement of the Warrior Ethos reveals some of the dimensions of how they make sense of the organizing going on around them.

Karl Weick is a social psychologist who has profoundly influenced the way organizational experts are now understanding how people communicate in high-tempo and high-risk situations. Nearly all of Weick’s ideas about organizing can be traced to a set of experiments he conducted in the late 1960s, when he invited participants to conduct a complex task with the promise of monetary reward. Those participants who were deprived of their promised reward subsequently rated the task more interesting.

Thus, the experiment and his analysis reveals quite a bit about why individuals act and follow direction—in other words organize—and how they find satisfaction in that work. Weick’s experiments had a "person [make] a clear commitment to the task, a commitment whose full content was not grasped at the beginning." Thus, action became the independent variable.

Weick calls commitment a "reference point for sensemaking." Fundamental to sensemaking in organizational life is the notion that action is almost always social. Thus, acts become "interacts" between and among actors. The anecdote above was an interact between Dulaney and Francis. Commitment, then, usually invokes the social.

When soldiers say (or think) "I will always place the mission first," they are equating the mission with the team. In one respect, it absolves the individual of responsibility and makes it easier to deal with the mental and emotional load of combat.

The commitment pattern is heavily reliant on language. By looking at action as a cause, we are free to speculate that the way soldiers express their commitments might also be the result of action. Sharing and socializing commitments is enabled by organizations that focus on language . The consistency and variety with which the Army employs the Warrior Ethos makes it more likely that commitment will be shared and understood in common ways.

The most superficial reading of the Battle of COP Keating makes plain that these guys were committed to the fight.

The above was adapted from a paper I submitted in a doctoral seminar in organizational communication. The paper was titled, "More than Mere Words: Enacting the Warrior Ethos in Combat."

Quotes from the Soldiers are taken from The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor by the eminent Jake Tapper. References to enactment, sensemaking, and other social psychology ideas are mainly from the various works of Karl E. Weick. 

Remember Keating: A Five-Year Retrospective, Part 1

This is the first part in a six-part series commemorating the Battle of COP Keating. 

Half a decade ago the war in Afghanistan raged on in climactic fashion: 

On 3 October 2009, Soldiers of Bravo Troop, 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry, repelled an enemy force of 300 Anti-Afghan Forces (AAF) fighters, preserving their combat outpost and killing approximately 150 of the enemy fighters. US forces sustained eight killed in action and 22 wounded, all but three of whom returned to duty after the attack. The Soldiers distinguished themselves with conspicuous gallantry, courage, and bravery under the heavy enemy fire that surrounded them.

—Excerpt from AR-15-6 Investigation re: Complex 

Attack on COP Keating - 3 Oct 09 Executive Summary

COP Keating from above. Photo by 1LT Brad Larson

Throughout the day I'll post five additional vignettes about the battle and its implications for the Army, all taken from a paper I submitted in a graduate seminar on organizational communication. 

As U.S. Forces continue their withdrawal, it is important to remember those who have borne the heavy costs of standing up a democracy in such an inhospitable place. It is important because we still have a mission here, and that mission will require much more resolve than during the years of fierce fighting and American casualties. It is important also because the U.S. Army will fight other wars, and lessons wait to be discovered from those already concluded. 

Read "Remember Keating: A Five-Year Retrospective, Part 2."

Embracing the Suck: Depression and Deployment

Why are combat deployments so depressing?  You're talking to an expert, not because I am severely depressed (this post is not a "cry for help,") nor because I have extensive psychological training, though I did sleep in a military barracks last night.

I have claim to expertise because I think about these things a lot and I write about the things I think about.

During overseas War on Terror operations, a common mantra has been, "embrace the suck." It encapsulates much of the deployed experience. A good friend of mine even wrote a book with the title. He hopes that it "will provide [the reader] with strength, courage, wisdom, and faith plus a little bit of humor and hope to get through each day while deployed."

Why do readers need some courage and hope to get through deployments?

"Embrace the suck" is an idea elegantly loaded with prescriptive value, but has no diagnostic value. Whether it's the tidbits of inspiration in the book or the idea that suckiness can be lovingly accepted and held, ETS helps Soldiers soldier on, as it were. But it doesn't help those Soldiers' families and friends understand exactly whence the suckiness comes.

That's where "My Public Affairs" comes in. Here are five reasons why deployments depress.

1. Isolation from family and friends

First, being away from home, for most people, sucks. There is a class of Soldier that likes being away from home. This is strange. As in, not normal. It might beg a larger discussion, but one of the policy reasons for sending us over here nine months to a year at a time is to prevent disruptions at home. In other words, the Army deploys precisely to make it more likely that people can lead normal lives with their families most of the time.

Communication with loved ones is hard for Soldiers away from their families, and the disruptions are intense. It is compounded for those with children-- the absence can often be wrenching for me, as I see snapshots of my two boys growing and developing in spurts. Trying the optimistic tack-- looking forward to a time when I'll be with them and will get to enjoy their energy and love, makes the present even harder.

2. It's a small, small world

Another reason that a deployment depresses the soul is the limited people and geography. Forget the suckiness of seeing little more than the same dozen buildings every day, traversing the exact same path to get to the laundry or to a meal. The work we do is mostly routine and monotonous, and makes the world feel even smaller. For the vast majority of Soldiers, work in a war zone is anything but glamorous. It's assembly line labor. Even the guys who go out of the wire usually patrol the same road every week or visit the same small Afghan village. Or guard the same entry control point every night. In public affairs we write the same stories... just change the names.

It's not terribly different from the work a lot of Americans do. But Soldiers don't get weekends. We can't go to a new restaurant tonight just to mix it up. Often, at home, I'd grab a book and head to the coffee shop for a few hours. Here, I'm just going to see that same people I'm trying to take a break from.

3. Everyone sees (and cares) what you're up to

That brings to mind the distinct lack of privacy. Here, there are very little alone time, and no "alone place." Everything from sleeping to showering is done in the company of others.

For a lone wolf like me, living under the microscope for so long is withering.

It goes without saying that there is no sex on a deployment. For accuracy's sake, there might be sex happening out here, but it is punishable by fine and demotion.

4. It's hot

There are other factors to the suck. The heat is inescapable at times. It's dusty. The only basketball court is concrete and outdoors. No McDonald's. No good steak. No a lot of things. The mission seems murky or unattainable. Many Soldiers confess to very low levels of satisfaction in their work.

There are a million little things for me and every other human being that can add up to a big thing.

5. Big Brother doesn't requite your love

But by far the biggest factor in The Suck is the Army itself. Working under the weight of a tired, uncompassionate, unforgiving, relentless bureaucracy can figuratively suck the life out of you. I have written about this many times before.

The deployment cycle begins with excitement and motivation, followed by bouts of frustration and constructive defiance. After the inevitable defeats, Soldiers lose the energy to defy and create, entering a period of lethargic resignation, like to cruise control. Toward the end, some Soldiers begin the surrender phase. If you've ever read the final paragraph of 1984, you'll know what this looks like.

He was not running or cheering any longer....  The long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain.... But it was all right, everything was all right, he had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. 

Winston Smith embraced the suck. And then he was dead. Of course the killing that the Army does is only metaphoric. It kills the creative spirit. And I know that there are "resiliency" tactics to combat feelings of defeat to Big Army Brother. But those tactics drain mental and emotional resources. They cause stress. The body and brain can only cope for so long. About a year, as it turns out.

The all-important fifth phase of the deployment cycle is the elation of returning home.

Let's hope I can hold out that long.

Is America Wasting Blood and Treasure in Afghanistan?

Some are fond of calling it a "boondoggle." Others call it "meddling." Those are the charitable descriptors.

A sizable faction refer to our Afghanistan intervention as an "invasion," and "occupation," and the worst kind of neo-colonialism.

Do they not know that the Afghans want us here? And overwhelmingly so?

The United States led the 2001 invasion in order to topple the Taliban regime, which it did quickly and decisively. NATO was pulled into a longer commitment partly because of the elusiveness of Osama Bin Laden and the resilience of al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

Now the country is on the brink of a breakthrough. It is fashionable for people living in the comfort and security of the West to belittle prospects in central Asia, but they neglect to account for the enormous progress Afghanistan has made. They also forget that a vast majority of Afghans want peace and liberal political arrangements.

Of course they could not guarantee it one their own. Their military is far too weak, their economy anemic, and their enemies determined. But every day, thousands of Afghans put their lives on the line trying to secure freedom from the barbarians.

Would those in the West who mock ISAF's mission and Afghanistan's possibilities abandon those patriots? "It is a waste of money," the critics say, as if the beheading of a pro-freedom mullah is just a matter to be reckoned in dollars and cents. As if the plight of the elders from Nuristan, who recently appealed to the government in Kabul for help to rid them of the "scourge" of insurgency after militants massacred 1,110 people there would result in the U.S. misspending money.

Is it a boondoggle to help people escape this vicious gangsterism?

If, with a snap of fingers or flick of a magic wand, the Taliban could be eliminated, then even the most ardent anti-interventionists would probably agree to it.

But these things must be fought for.

Nothing worth fighting for is a waste.


(Photo by SPC Nevada Jack Smith)

American and Afghan Alike—Honoring the Fallen

Pashtun names-- a dozen or so this week-- blare across the screen.

They represent personnel of the Afghan National Army, National Police force, and local police who have died in duty during the last few d
ays. I could pronounce some of the names if I tried, but I don't recognize any of them.

Still, they are my comrades. A two-star general, the one who commands all ISAF troops in southern Afghanistan, orders us to stand as we pay our respects. We honor the fallen of ISAF-- including American troops-- if there are any.

One American has died in our regional command this month. That means Afghans are taking the brunt of the insurgency. And while a dead American Soldier will always be a harder loss to bear than one from another country, Afghan KIAs (killed in action) are recognized as a sacrifice just as sacrosanct. 

The presentation that announces the troop deaths reads,

Soldiers do not fight because they hate what's in front of them. They fight because they love what's behind them. 

I can't pretend that American Soldiers would admit to loving Afghanistan enough to die for its freedom. But some of them have died, and all of us know the risk. And here we are.

We will soon leave, and these Afghan patriots who are fighting barbarism will continue to fight. To those back home who say that Afghanistan is a hopeless cause, I say you should meet some of the people who are willing to lay down their lives for a more civilized future. They have hope.

I haven't met many of them. But I have seen their names. I know what they did. And yes, I honor them.

Cheering for Death

I watched a man die the other day.

I presume he was a man, though I can't be sure. He may have been accompanied. The deceased was/ were last seen driving/ passenging a pick up truck, just before it was blown to smithereens by a Hellfire missile.

In my job I sometimes get to see these "events of interest," a perfectly understated description of vaporizing another human, on the big screen in the operations center.

They are, indeed, interesting. Fascinating, even. My recognition of the drama of snuffing out another man's life so easily does not translate into sympathy. I am remorseless about enjoying the "strike" as a spectator. It elicits satisfaction, often elation; at times, laughter.

I have a high degree of confidence that the targets were really bad dudes, and needed to be vaporized.

Of course, other may disagree. I'm not going to get into the argument about weather drone strikes are moral or not. Though in a combat zone-- particularly after a supposedly friendly soldier killed one of our highest ranking officers by shooting him in the back-- morality is a very loose concept.

What is more interesting to me is how satisfying it is to watch these killings. Like an amazing football play, it is more meaningful and memorable if seen live. "I was there," we are able to say, and with more pride if our gazes were fixed in the moment. A replay is just as exciting, but less genuine and valuable a memory.

Like sports, we pick our teams, and root for them zealously. We ascribe a sort of good-evil dichotomy to the players in the field. The formulation is exaggerated in war.

If they surrendered tomorrow, there would be no hard feelings. But they have deigned to meet us on the battlefield, so their evil deeds are punctuated with the hubris of thinking they can match us in combat; that somehow they can elude the far reach of our surveillance and weaponry. It is slightly disappointing that they never had even a millisecond to form the beginnings of a thought of regret or the realization that they had lost.

Perhaps warfare is becoming more virtual. An expert in virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, says,

We tinker with your philosophy by direct manipulation of your cognitive experience, not indirectly, through argument. It takes only a tiny group of engineers to create technology that can shape the entire future of human experience with incredible speed.

Maybe the speed of a Hellfire, but not too quickly for me to watch on TV.

They The Builders of a Nation

How similar are pioneers of American West lore and deployed US Soldiers?

I've never crossed a vast plain pulling a handcarrt, so I can't for sure say. I've driven through Colorado and Kansas on the I-70, though, which was definitely a trial of my faith. It felt like a three-month journey.

But the question is a serious one, and I've been posing it to Soldiers over here who have ties to Utah or know the story of the generation of '47. Many seem to think there are comparisons to be drawn, and I agree. But for a different reason.

The old Mormon hymn, which gets sung but once a year, might give us an idea:

They, the builders of the nation,
Blazing trails along the way;
Stepping-stones for generations
Were their deeds of ev'ry day.
Building new and firm foundations,
Pushing on the wild frontier,
Forging onward, ever onward,
Blessed, honored Pioneer!

Many service members see a parallel between military service and what the Utah pioneers did because of the work ethos and willingness to sacrifice.

I see an analogy between us for the reasons we work. Military members in Afghanistan are nation building. The effort here is nothing less. Kandahar Airfield and the dozens of other NATO bases sprang up because people worked their butts off to build them. Why? Well, setting aside the motivation gap between strategic planners and tactical elements, the short answer is to put Afghanistan on a path toward inclusion in the world.

It's not always popular of course in elite circles-- which might include multi-culturalists, academics, right-wingers, and anti-militarists-- to claim a right to build a nation, but that's what we're doing. And Afghanistan wants us to-- overwhelmingly.

The massive counterinsurgency enterprise here is armed nation building, and I am proud to be a part of it. The people I serve with do so voluntarily. Afghan churchgoers might one day sing, "blessed, honored, Warrior!"

Partners in Democracy—and the Pictures to Prove it

I am a democrat and a counterinsurgent.

A monumental effort has been made by the West to ensure that this Afghanistan election business comes off smoothly. (Mission fail, so far. What appeared to be a major victory for democracy, NATO, and the Afghan People has become a circus. )

The latest in that effort was seeing the ballots safely to Kabul, where the venerable Independent Election Commission would conduct a thorough audit. I'm not going to get into how the commission performed up to this point, or why the runoff was necessary. That story has been told elsewhere. Here is a good version.

The armistice that Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated between the two candidates included the provision that ISAF would transport the ballots to Kabul. That meant that every zip-tied box needed to be taken to the regional command hubs (Kandahar Airfield in the south) to be flown by C-17 to the capital.

When John Kerry speaks, NATO generals listen. We tripped all over ourselves to make sure that it happened.

In they came a couple of morning ago. Armored trucks? Nope.

Jingle trucks.


Ten of them. 7,000 kilograms in total of boxed ballots. The Afghans unloaded them onto US Air Force pallets. NATO troops stood watch and guard. Civilian contractors tied them down and loaded them onto the aircraft.

And I took pictures. Moving pictures, even.

Unfortunately, the images are not releasable (Except for the jingle trucks-- no ballots were in view; ballots are like porn. We have to censor  anything that appears to show ballots).

Seems like a great story, right? ISAF does its part to ensure an objective and thorough vote audit. The observers from each of the opposing campaigns and the IEC were there to confirm that ballots loaded were ballots actually submitted last month-- untampered.

ISAF personnel were not even allowed to touch the bins. At one point a C-17 made a routine turn on the tarmac to get on the runway. Its jets roared and spit out a hurricane in our direction. Strong gusts of hot air and exhaust bellowed toward us-- and the stacked ballots bins. Over they went.

The airmen who were overseeing the palletization went to the rescue (Mission First!) but were ordered away. The Afghans had to re-stack them, lest a point of contention be raised during the recount.

One day I will show you these pictures that prove the ballots-- or what appear to be ballots-- made it from the outlying districts all the way to KAF and onto a jet. One day, long after the next president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is chosen, irrespective of the actual vote count, you will see the pictures that prove I was there.

Doing my part for democracy.

The Value of a Life

Tracking taliban twitter feeds can be illuminating. Groupthink is a very real danger, and I often get optimistic-- overly so, perhaps-- about the degree to which Afghans support democracy. So enemy chatter can be a healthy balast against listing towards one way of thinking.

When I came across this picture in one of the feeds and it made me a little angry. I'm sure it was designed as anti-Western propaganda. The underdog factor has is a powerful one.

But what does the photo really say?

The US routinely spends around $60,000 on a single Hellfire to kill an insurgent fighter. Yes, "insurgent" in the singular. It is not uncommon to fire multiple Hellfires at a single bad guy, plus the rounds of rockets and 30mm gunfire. Plus the cost of getting aircraft in the air-- fuel, pilots, and the support staff to monitor and approve air strikes.

It might cost the US $200,000 to kill an insurgent, and that figure is probably conservative.

On the flip side, we spend much more than the graphic indicates on protecting our Soldiers. For starters, the NATO Soldier pictured doesn't have a combat helmet, eye protection, or night vision equipment, which gets you into four figures easily. Add in the cost of all the military activities meant to give them advantage, like birds in the air, eyes in the sky, and quick reaction forces on standby. We insure our Soldiers' lives monetarily, and spend untold monies on providing adequate lifelong medical care.

The caption that accompanied the graphic asked the rhetorical question, "what will hitorians say about this war?"

Well it seems clear to me. They'll say that, while the Taliban often fought doggedly against heavy odds, they simply didn't value the lives of their fighters like the West did. Looks like the Taliban puts the value of a life at just north of 500 bucks.

And that probably summarizes well why we fight. Thes West values the lives of individuals, and a more tolerant government in Afghanistan would too. 

Leading through Communication, Marine Style

It was beautiful in its simplicity.

Yesterday, on a routine training exercise (as routine as anything can be in a combat zone) I watched a young Marine captain direct a handful of aricraft as they delivered dozens of rounds of ordnance on a helpless rock in southern Afghanistan.

It wasn't the explosions that made the greatest impact on me, but the captain's calm and crystal clear style of communication.

Everyone followed his orders-- it was obvious to me that he had complete control of his team, the Georgian troops who were with him to ensure security of the training site, the Army aviation observers, and our small public affairs attachment.

As we marched a few hundred meters from the infill site to our designated training area, Apaches flying protectively overhead, I couldn't help but marvel that I was actually here. Over the past 12 months I have read extensively on the Afghan War, about how men have fought and died doing pretty much what I was doing at that moment. I  wasn't under any delusion that an attack was imminent-- Kandahar is now as secure as any place in Afghanistan. And, well, the Apaches. But it was a moment of mindfulness about how acutely real my situation was.

At any rate, my assignment was to document the mission of this Marine captain. His precise task is less important to the story than how he led.

It is cliche to note the importance of communication in military operations. The tragedy of cliche is that it represents a truism that has lost all meaning. Communication couldn't be more important when you are dropping ordnance from aircraft. Yet to most Soldiers, to communicate well means talking louder and longer.

The Marine captain proved otherwise, doing basic things that resulted in smoother operating.

He repeated things that weren't clear.

He asked those he worked with to restate what he said.

He asked his subordinates to explain to him what they understood their tasks to be.

He asked seniors if they understood the terminology he was using.

All this he did while choreographing some complex airstrikes with pilots he couldn't see and probably never met. Perhaps he did this precisely because of the complexity of his tasks, because he neither saw nor knew the those men who were blasting away at the mountainside.

He was also very calm, and I never saw him so much as sneer at one of his men for saying the wrong thing, for asking a question, or for taking too long to think about how to formulate an aswer.

If he wasn't so busy at fighting the counterinsurgency, I'd ask him to write for "My Public Affairs."

(Photo by Marine Cpl. Joseph Scanlan)

Darth Vader and the Sith Counterinsurgency

I love cointerinsurgency. I think the word just sounds cool.

It conjures up images of night raids, secret assassinations, psychological operations, and CIA-style covert destabilizing.

It's really more mundane than that. The US Army and Marine Corps just updated their counterinsurgency (COIN) manuals, highlighting the fact they the powers that be think it will be relevant for a while. A brief read through the publication brings back bad memories of high school civics.

The Army lists some well known historical countersinsurgencies-- the British attempt to quell a revolution in its North American colonies in the 1770s, the US government's smashing of native Americans tribal rebellions, and my favorite, Darth Sidious' quest to rule the galaxy in the face of a tiny rebel alliance.

It was the worst counterinsurgency disaster in the universe. And we can learn a lot from it.

You know what the Emporer's biggest mistake was? He didn't develop a sustainable ideology that could motivate his followers after his death.This was probably the downfall of the American Indians, too, come to think of it. That and the counterinsurgents had lots of superior guns, nor were they as interested in addressing "core grievances" in the spirit of 21st-century COIN doctrine.

But the Indians weren't homogenous, and they weren't motivated by imposing their culture or way of life on the counterinsurgents. The Emperor should have known better. As ruthless as he was, he needed to develop some sort of program, complete with trappings of orthodoxy-- songs, chants, oaths, symbology-- that other totalitarians learn on the first day of Opressive Government 101.

Yes, yes, Sithism is a belief system, I suppose. The nerds will have to elaborate here. But there was no apparent attempt to indoctrinate the masses into that belief system. To the contrary, it appears that some of the senior officials in the government were distrustful of it:

Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebel's hidden fort...

So the emporer didn't cultivate a belief in his ideology, and he didn't develop a coterie of competent loyalists who could carry on after he departed. I mean, even if the Rebel Alliance didn't destroy the Death Star while he was aboard, the guy was old and frail, and he would have died soon at any rate, right? What was his plan for continuing the Empire? (And was the Empire evil mainly because it lacked representational government, or because a bad dude was at the head of it?)

Darth Vader, we learn, was really good inside. Sure, he had some questionable tactics. Choking out underlings who failed to share isn't something I could imagine David Petraeus having done.

At any rate, the Emporer was a poor leader, at least bad at managing a counterinsurgency. Somehow he motivated vast numbers of military officers and bureacrats to do his bidding, but presumably that machinery was mostly in place before he disbanded the Galactic Senate. He did not transform government and society, he merely exercised a coup. And be badly misred the insurgency that never let him establish a foothold of real power.

If Emporer Palpatine had taken the time to read the updated Army Field Manual 3-24, he would have realized that he ought to have pursued a shape-hold-clear operation. After areas are cleared, good counterinsurgents move into a build-transition operation. There is scant evidence that imperial forces did anything right in any of these phases.

A proper "shape" phase would have included information operations to cut off the insurgents from the support of the people. Were there any siginifcant development projects on Hoth after the Emperor seized power? It appeared that the economy shrank between the periods of Episode II and Episode IV. How about rule of law efforts on Tatooine? Blowing up Alderaan didn't help endear the empire to the people, I am sure.

An armed state is one thing if the quality of life for large majorities of the people, but a large security apparatus is merely oppressive when information operations and economic development are left completely out of the picture.

The Empire did conduct adequate clearing of insurgents, but it never followed that up with building security and transitioning the governing capacity to local civilians.The civil affairs piece was entirely ignored, and public affairs was taken for granted.

For their part, the rebels conducted a nearly picture-perfect insurgency. Obviously lacking the resources of the government, they used small guerilla attacks and informal networks to harass government forces. In the style of Paul Van Ryper, they employed primitive communications and weaponry when appropriate ("an elegant weapon for a more civilized age").

But they also went for high profile attacks, forcing the government to spend too many resources trying to protect their interests instead of rooting out the insurgency with a direct approach. A footprint as large as the Death Star-- fully operational or not-- was obviuosly going to invite attack after attack until the rebellion was thoroughly stamped out.

Of course, the entire affair is proof that insurgency/ counterinsurgency is valent-neutral. That is, it's impossible to tell the good guys from the bad just by the label.

Maybe one day I'll leave the ranks of counterinsurgent and join a cool insurgency, but only if there is a really hot princess up for grabs. Who's not my sister.

The Taliban's Last Stand

There is a very curious building here at KAF. On official maps of the installation, it is labeled "TLS."

Taliban’s Last Stand, is what it refers to. And it fits. The night we arrived, it was the first building through which we passed. Not the most comforting welcome, since it’s as decrepit as any building could be without getting condemned.

It is of brick and stucco construction, with arched ceilings. There is still evidence of a fire or an explosion, and part of the roof is destroyed. It is in general disrepair, with no indication that anyone wants to do anything about it. Yet, it serves as a passenger terminal for folks coming to this bastion of Americna military power.

There are even pocks on the outer walls that look like they took rounds in a firefight. The name and the lore gives the impression that there was some final, Alamo-style battle at this place before the US finally drove out the enemy and established its foothold in southern Afghanistan.

Journalists refer to the place with bravado to show their bona fides. People arriving here probably all assume that it was only recently attacked and hastily convereted, as if the war is still imminently upon them.

I tend to be skeptical about stories that sound too cool.

So I did some research.

It is pretty well established that the Taliban maintained nominal control over Kandahar, including the airport, up until December, 2001.

Kandahar, in fact, was the base for the Taliban. Al Qaeda training site called Tarnac Farms, just a couple kilometers south of the air field, was certainly a holdout for bad guys, and it is rumored that 9/11 may have been planned there.

But what happened at TLS in the opening stanzas of the War on Terror? The building surely looks like the Alamo in many respects, only more weather-beaten. The apparent bullet scars, the crumbling brick, the soot.

Here's the story, according to reporting done at the time.

Mullah Omar had an office in Kandahar City, it was the center of the Taliban's poltical base. Naturally the US and our allies (Hamid Karzai and Gul Agha Sherzai in the south) wanted to take the city.

Sherzai was attacking from the south, approaching Kandahar. Karzai was attacking from the north. By early December, he was in a town called Tarin Khost, about 60 miles outside the city. The allies were rolling, and Karzai began surrender negotiations with the Taliban. 

A Taliban delegation went north to meet Karzai, where they finalized surrender terms on December 5. That same day, in Bonn, an international conference named Karzai the "Intermin Chairman" of Afghanistan.

Mullah Omar's facilities had been bombed (perhaps TLS was one?). Those bombs had a lot to do with getting the Taliban to think about surrendering, I assume. But they were also buying time to escape. By offering surrender, many leaders were left to pack up and pop smoke.

According to an unclassified KAF fact sheet, Kandahar Airport "was severely damaged when it was captured by the US MArines 26th MEU in mid-December.... TLS still containts vivid reminders of the first minutes of that famous battle of the Taliban Last Stand."

So far as I can tell, there was never an engagement between US or NATO forces and the Taliban at this particular site. It seems the nickname was derived from the fact that the enemy used it as a base and it was near the area-- Kanadahar City and Airport-- that they gave up last.

Of course, it is evident that the building took heavy ordnance, though whether the enemy was stubborn, brave, or curious enough to see what Marines small arms fire was like after living through a JDAM blast is undocumented, as far as I have been able to tell.

At any rate, Karzai took Kandahar. He probably got to TLS and realized he didn't want it. The capital was promptly relocated to Kabul. 

Now we are here holding down the fort. This will be my last stand.

Note: this was updated 28 AUG to include the paragraph that cites the unclassified KAF fact sheet.