WELCOME TO KANDAHAR(KAF), A-STAN

Welcome to Afghanistan. 365 days to go. GAME ON.

* NO PIXS YET-Working on that-soon come ;-)

The C-130 did it’s corkscrew approach to Kandahar Airfield (KAF) -it felt like being on a rollercoaster ride. Our plane was a mixture of Army and Air Force soldiers-as the plane began it’s swan dive toward the airfield-an Air Force soldier threw up on the floor. I just had to piss but couldn't leave the bench.-This is a safety measure to avoid possibly getting hit by missile or a rocket. The plane then accelerates and does a hard landing. We landed without incident as the C-130’s big behind opened up. The searing southern Afghan midday heat rushed in to great us. I flashed back to Oliver Stones's Platoon-where Charlie Sheen is getting off the plane in Vietnam and is passing soldiers heading back to the big PX-they stare at each other-the wizened watching the cherries go off to their destiny. Well-there was none of that-there just the blinding, blistering hot concrete and the hustle and bustle of a military airport. I had my flip camera going recording the moment of getting off the plane. Everyone was shits and giggles as we all looked around. Profusely sweating in our full battle rattle(combat gear). The low slung mountains in the distance were a dead ringer for Arizona ‘s Valley of the Sun (Tempe/Phoenix metro area and vicinity) - for which I call the Devil’s Oven(sorry Ma-just calling it as I sees it ;-) A local national-who reminded me of the fey dude in Beverly Hills Cop(expresso with a twist) greeted us and directed us to a nearby waiting, hot cramped bus. Did I mentioned how dusty it was? They call the dust out here moondust-fine like powdered sugar and it gets in everything! Anyway, we’re on the bus and the dude-I’ll call him Pannio-is trying to talk to us over the loudspeaker with the radio-blaring the BBC. A few times we had to tell him turn it down and then talk-he had a thick accent to boot. After driving around the airfield in the stifling bus-we finally found out where we had to go get our gear that was loaded on the C-130. We were then ferried to the main terminal that is called “the TLS” Taliban’s Last Stand. I quickly called it the “Alamo” -anyway-back in the day when the Taliban was running things-this terminal was theirs until the Allied forces drove them out. There’s still bullet riddled walls around the cheap plywood construction of office space. Walking through-I wondered how many Taliban caught a dirt nap for this piece of real estate. I wonder if they are enjoying their heavenly maidens. Let me digress for a minute about Mr. Talib. I call him that because I don’t believe in calling a worthy adversary a hajee/towelhead or a sandn***** or anything that I have heard used in this corporation to demonize the enemy. Taliban in it’s proper context -is term applied toward anyone studying at the madrassas(Islamic religious schools)-Talib-is Brit slang. I call him Mr. Talib because his simplicity in fighting coalition forces through the use of IED's Improvised Explosives Devices has accounted for 80 PERCENT of US coalition casualities. Mr. Talib is not stupid at some level on their organizational food chain. He is committed -like the Viet Cong/NVA in his beliefs and like Malcolm said,"By Any Means Necessary". He hides behind his interpretation of Islam-just like some of our extremist Christians in our country. Same game, different face. Mr. Talib has learned the fine art of bombmaking. No matter how big or how tough we think our MRAPS(armored trucks) or sophisticated mine clearing equipment is, Mr, Talib finds a way to make a bigger IED to blow that shit up. He's now taking a page from Timothy McVeigh's playbook and using fertilizer and various chemicals and plastic containers to make the BOOM BAP. Recently I had a counter IED class and was chilled by the ingenuity of how he uses cigarette packs, discarded batteries, bric a brac to make bombs and it's components. Not to mention, Afghanistan is the second heavily mined country in the world. The Soviets laid mines by the millions while they were here and left all sorts of munitions behind after their 10 year stay ditto the Mujahideen/warlords-in their turf battles throughout the country against each other and their Soviet landlords -so hey-use what you got(and oh yeah, we got a ton of them here too-so no one is truly without
sin). What's crazy is that the Italians are/were the largest supplier of mines -they don't care who they sell them to. Design asthetics is truly in their DNA and the mines that they produced to sell to anybody who would buy are ill works of death by design. Mines that have "portico/doric stylings" to keep them buried and deliver more bang/bounce to the ounce. The Soviets were smart to map out their mine fields and we have a legacy of that but the Mujahideens simply planted more mines and didn't put X marks the spot-so if the Mr. Talib doesn't get you-then some old shit will. One just has to go out to the countryside and see indigenious/UN/NATO markers for where them Boom Baps lie. Or most sadly it's the people: the children/the elders with missing limbs or farm animals with missing limbs. We had a crash course in spotting telltale signs of roadside bombs but at the end of the day-there's only so much you can do. If it's your time to go, then it's your time. Don't matter if your in a war zone or living in quiet/sleepy town USA somewhere. Death has a quota to meet everyday.


A sobering reminder was getting my third set of dog tags to tie in the laces of my boots if the good Lord decides to snatch me up and there's nothing much left of me.

Being here for little over a week, in some words is not describable. The 5 senses are kinda on overload. At the moment, I'm living in some type of shelter tent with other soldiers -part of that Obama surge -awaiting assignment for more permament quarters. There's wifi internet access, pizza hut, subway, Afghani rug and trinket shops along a sandbox like boardwalk, laundry service-decent dining facilities, gym, a starbucks like joint called Green Beans a Tim Hortons and various multi national base exchange stores(We are a NATO base). All these creature comforts amidst the searing heat/dust/grime and the constant reminder of war as fighter jets/predator drones/apache/chinook helicopters take off around the clock bringing the pain, the relief or delivering the grief of dead ones back to the world. My day starts at 430am. 8.5 to 10.5 hours ahead of friends and fam in different time zones. The mornings are freezing and the days blaze. Outside the wire(base perimeter) lies a beautiful country of textures/contrasts in spite of war. Mr. Talib wants to be Tony Soprano-he wants to keep the women in check and go back to them old timey days of old-he wants to reap the profits from that Poppy and finance his ambitions. but somewhere in the middle is the people -poor like their sistern and bredren in other parts of the world and caught between bombs and bullets-collateral damage. NATO is what we fall under but we are shouldering the load-via USAID(United States Agency for International Development) and giving our military industrial complex livelihood-a fucked up dichotomy. All around KAF and A-stan itself-are all these capital improvement projects in effect-American/Asian/European money-hoping that one day-A-stan will get stabilized but what also a fucked up part of this equation is Pakistan. Pakistan is that loose cannon-who looks the other way while taking our money. We are not leaving A-stan anytime soon and our European allies are feeling the heat of their people growing discontent with their sons and daughters dying. At some point how much will enough be enough? I think that Iraq and A-stan will be a soldier's tour of duty like Korea or Kosovo all under the guise of fighting global terrorism and capital market expansion...Well it's Friday night and I am in my "gabespace" created by draping mosquito netting over my top bunk and creating my tent on the bottom bunk. No incoming mortar attack announcements -causing you to grab your weapon and hit the bunkers. We had one last thursday night-a buddy of mine shared a bunker with a motley crews of fellow Americans and Europeans. All had the causal air of "here we go again". I didn't hear anything hit but Mr. Talib likes to remind KAF he's still out there-close and possibly closer than we like to think. More about that later...there's a lot to reflect on and I will bring it to you all over time. But I just want to say-is don't be afraid for me-I am in the eye of the hurricane. It's not a walk in the park by any means and I certainly don't know what lies ahead but I must focus on finding the good moments everyday and living each day one day at a time. Let me get this out of the way: I carry all of you in my thoughts and if anything should happen to me-know that I made the attempt to live a colorful, engaging , inspiring life and hope you will find a way to do the same. Signing up and doing a bid for the Army during wartime is not for everybody ;-) nor is it something I relish but I have surrendered to the Now, the present and I am at peace.