Afghan Submarine Base

Monday, September 10

I am at a military base far far away, which is at an altitude of 7,000 feet—and surrounded by mountains. I don’t know for sure what to compare it to, but it seems a bit like Wyoming or Utah. It is basically a desert in the middle of mountains. The sunsets are beautiful, and as I write this at about 8 at night the sky is all black, with the stars almost bursting out of the black background. If I reach up just a bit, I can actually touch the Milky Way.

The effect is exaggerated in part because the whole base blacks out at night. Everyone walks around with their little flashlights, though some gomers actually have those strap-on-the-head Brookstone jobbies. Nice. I thought only Jim Steiner had one of those, and while he isn’t a gomer, every now and then he pretends to be. As for me, my flashlight went dead, and so I am carrying around my little clip of book light. Now THAT’S cool.

Every now and then the darkness is pierced by the glowing end of a cigarette floating by kind of like a lightening bug. It’s like ghosts smoking.

The beautiful night is offset a bit by the low roar of the generators all around. Helluva lot of generators for so little light being emitted. It is also just a bit chilly out, which I guess it gets in September at 7,000 feet. But all in all, a delightful evening.

As I have noted before, each time I am on a base, I am in awe of the men and women who serve. They are just amazing. Some of them came into the mess hall tonight directly from patrol, covered with dust and their butts dragging about 3 feet behind them. I just wanted them to sit down and I would serve them. I come here and it is like camping for a couple of nights, and I go back to a house—not a great house, but a house nonetheless. These guys are just on the hunt day after day, and it must be terribly monotonous—interrupted by sheer terror.

I met with the Commander Fernando of the PRT today, and he is knock-down awesome. Great guy. Perfect. Incredibly humble and open and gracious. We will be able to do great things with him.

The USAID rep here is a former Navy Seal and a medical doctor that has found his way to USAID. I need to get to know this guy—what a great story he must have.

By the way, the Navy is in charge of the PRT here. In fact, I was told that all but one of the US PRTs in the country are staffed by either the Navy or Air Force. The guys that brought us in from the plane today is based at a submarine base in Jacksonville. He is from Kokomo, Indiana, and had the appropriate reverence for my IU baseball hat.

So why is the Navy in Afghanistan? Well, it seems all the Army guys are in Iraq—that the Army is stretched so thin by Iraq that the Navy and Air Force have to backfill. I was reading the other day in the Post about the disagreement between Petraeus and the regional commander. Petraeus wanted more troops in Iraq, and the Commander doesn’t. Now I understand—Petraeus is trying to make progress in Iraq, and his boss is trying to figure out what he is doing with the Navy in Afghanistan. This keeps up, we will have bases staffed by the Coast Guard and Merchant Marines. After that, we will be calling up Boy Scout units to do this stuff.

Osama better watch his butt—we may be coming at him with a sub one of these days.