Thursday, September 22, 2005
So we wear long pants I took this photo of the Stables Restaurant in Houston a couple of weeks ago when I was down there with Rebecca volunteeering at Reliant Park. The sign said "So we wear long pants," a complete puzzle to me like the billboard we passed earlier that day asking Houstonians to report "Smoking Vehicles." I asked Rebecca if it got so hot there cars would spontaneously combust. She laughed and told me that, no, it didn't get that hot, and that "smoking car" was what the locals called cars that let loose nasty exhaust from their tailpipes. The pant leg thing was about cowboys, Rebecca thought, because they don't wear shorts. They're so tough they gotta wear pants! I called Rebecca today and talked to her dad who said they were headed north to a cousin's ranch to ride out Rita. Rebecca wasn't home, so I didn't get to find out what's happened to Steve and Johnie and Larry, if they were also evacuating for a second time in less than a month. I'm not as worried about Houston, perhaps naively, because they have so many more resources and stronger infrastructure than New Orleans. I expect they'll be able to get residents out or at least to proper shelter. All new construction since the late 80s (early 90s? I don't remember) have been required to withstand strong hurricane winds. And, of course, we should expect FEMA to finally act like a federal agency with limitless resources now that they've been shamed, rightly, by their criminally negligent behavior after Katrina. We can't expect anything more from Bush, naturally, and that's why he is still busy resting up from his hard work spreading chaos and disaster around the world instead of actually paying attention to what's going on in our country. The numbers keep getting grimmer in Iraq. Afghanistan is on the national radar for a moment, with the recent election and Karzai's call to have the ANA in charge of all major military operations. S has talked about how already the Ministry of Defense is in charge of ANA operations (and the American ETT soldiers accompanying them), which has been a disaster because most of the ANA officers bought their status with bribes and have little or no actual military leadership experience. This is made worse because many of the American officers are only slightly more competent and are nearly always disconnected from the reality on the ground. The ANA colonels and generals tell their American counterparts how competent and brave they are over tea (they are known for braggadoccio), and the Americans don't bother to check it out to see if what they're saying is true, leading to ANA/ETT missions without maps, plans, or logistical support, clearly a recipe for disaster. The Afghans' incompetence (along with the incompetence of many of the American officers) has led to the deaths of Afghan soldiers and the endangerment of the American ETT soldiers who work with them. Soon (only months from now! yea!), S will be able to write about all of this and in particular the egregious incompetence of much of the national guard leadership in Afghanistan. The national guard has been in charge of the last three rotations of ETTs, in theory one of the two most important jobs (along with finding al Qaeda members) in Afghanistan. If we are ever to leave Afghanistan, they have to have a competent, cohesive national army, and that is what the ETTs are in charge of creating. Right now the ETTs are still considered an afterthought, just as the plan-less missions some of them are being sent off on are dismissed by the higher-ups too. At this very moment, one of S's friends, an officer he worked with the first six months he was over there, is trying to find his way through an unexplored province with no map, no plan, and no logistical support, with only one other American and a platoon of Afghan soldiers with him. The American colonels said the Afghans were in charge, and didn't bother to look over the ANA's order. If they had, they'd have discovered it was a one-line mission followed by a blank piece of paper, giving the men nothing to go on but their own intelligence. More evidence of that great support we're giving our troops. It's wonderful to talk about this somewhat in the abstract, only possible because S is right here next to me on the couch, working on his own iBook. We're having so much fun together it's hard to articulate the pure joy I'm feeling these days. I'm so happy he's home, even if it is only for a couple of short weeks. I'm so lucky! 
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Last update: 10/2/05; 7:48:42 PM .
