Holidays and barbed wire

Today was a high risk day...that seems to have passed without the massive outbreaks of violence that were feared. The alerts were out because it was a celebration of both kicking the Russians out of Afghanistan and also a man that many Afghans consider to be their equivalent of George Washington. I visited his tomb when I was in Panjshir. Coalition forces felt that the symbolic statements that could be made today by attacking the troops or even suicide bombings targeting the public were a significant enough possibility that all civilian travel was prohibited.

Oddly enough, the Embassy felt like this would be a good time to take down the razor wire and start the replacement process that rings the perimeter wall. I found the timing odd, but it is great to have a day or two to look out over the walls and feel a bit more normal. In a PR move that I didn't think was the most brilliant, the Mayor of Kabul was invited over to the Embassy to hold a press conference about how the city is getting safer.

Peace...

Faces

I’m not sure if it is old prejudices about what Santa Claus and God were to look like, a fascination with wisdom and its gradual arrival with time, or the stories that faces can tell; but the ones on the men here, seem to hold a library of stories! I’m fascinated with the white beards, the head wraps, and the darker, wrinkled, and wisened faces. This may be the first place I’m really drawn to hear the stories of the older men instead of the women which usually seem to hold so many more stories.

Peace...

Since Easter Keeps Happening, A Post On Christianity

The more I read from this guy, the more I think he should go on one of those lists of people I'd like to have dinner with.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear ... Christendom adjusts itself far too easiliy to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now.

Peace...

Pirates...YARRR

Interesting to see all the articles coming out about the Pirates off the coast of Somalia. The root causes of the conflict seem to be stemming from a few different areas:

1. Fishing fleets from Europe that were coming down and illegally fishing off the coast and depleting the fisheries and impacting the communities livelihoods. Those communities saw pirating (if that is a verb) as a tax on the fleets that were taking away their jobs.

2. Western European governments have been paying the Italian mob to dispose of nuclear waste. That waste was disposed off the coast of Somalia-what better place that has no government! People along some parts of the shore started to get sick and were able to connect the radiation poisoning to the ships and they decided they would exact revenge by holding the ships captive and demanding money that would be used to reimburse families.

3. Other communities realizing that their poverty could be alleviated with some risk...but that the risk brought great rewards to the surrounding communities and so they supported the efforts of the pirates as they came back and distributed the wealth much like modern day Robin Hoods.

I'm not condoning the practice, but the dark pictures that have been painted in the mainstream media fail to capture the whole story. But, I'll give the Washington Post some props for digging deeper to get "...the rest of the story."

Peace...

Exciting Language from the British House of Commons

"This House recognises that for every dollar spent globally on conflict prevention nearly two thousand times as much is spent on defence and the military..." Maybe if we switched that for a decade or two, we could try what John Lennon was singing about some time ago. People certainly would complain about the lack of security, change breeds fear, but is the paradigm we are operating under really doing so much for us now? Just look at the headlines. If you don't see anything, do a bit more research. Look at the international, national, state, county, municipal, city, and community levels-we aren't knocking on the door of Nirvana with a stable, secure, and safe world.

Peace...

Facilitation Fun-from Wednesday

The weather here is great…though I’m glad I won’t be here in the middle of the summer. It is giving me flashbacks to days spent at summer camps without air conditioning and swatting flies left, right, and center. The first half of today was me facilitating the lines of effort for governance, basic services, and rule of law with a bird trapped in our small conference room continually going back and forth trying to get out. You have no idea how hard it is to stay focused and push a group when you have a small bird dive-bombing your head every 3 minutes.

I’m getting another round of ongoing headaches. Granted, I’ll never be able to empathize with those who get bad migraines, but whacking your head several times a day on door frames that are about 6’3” certainly isn’t a nice feeling. Apparently the problem is that things are built to speculation, but then the frames aren’t raised before the concrete is poured so everything is about 3-4 inches lower than anticipated.

Peace...

Mehtar Lam-from Wed

One of my team-mates lost a filling and will be disappearing tomorrow to head to a larger base so we’ll soon be a team of two for a bit. Hopefully we can hang on.
Last night, several dozen luminiere (spelling?) rounds went up from the 155 artillery battery. I’m still not sure if it was cool. I’ve never been into loud noises and they certainly were. Once up in the air, it looked like there was a massive streetlight flying through the air. Each one made me jump.

It is nice to be out where the good food is. Pecan pie every day! Unfortunately, only strawberry milk here, no banana flavored, but really, how can you complain? This place is active, there were probably 30+ helicopters coming in and out yesterday with shipments, my team, war-fighters, etc.

I’m located in a pretty valley, ringed by snow-covered mountains. This is the 3rd place I’ve been though that is down below surrounding areas. Not that the bases are at risk for being overrun by a hoard of the Anti-Afghan Forces, but, most get shot at occasionally and that is much more easily done from above so why don’t they set up bases like mankind for millennia on top of high points? Here a lot of the insurgents are “economic insurgents” that are paid to launch attacks but do so only half-heartedly, shooting briefly from behind rocks, ducking for cover, and then making their way back home.

Peace...

Happy Easter (Orthodox)

It made for some interesting moments at the headquarters for ISAF (International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan). The Greeks were celebrating with beer and cigars as we were meeting with Australian and American Colonels. That wasn't particularly noteworthy, except soon, they decided to start dancing about 5-8 feet from our meeting outdoors around a picnic table. It was hard not to get cracked up!

Peace...

Other Tragic Regional News

Over 1,500 farmers in Chattisgarh, an Indian state, committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today.

Fun with the Elements!

So, last night, I was working late...and my bed started shaking. I didn't notice at first, but then it started to register that my bed was shaking side to side. There was a big going away part last night and I wondered if someone had bumped into the trailer. They aren't the sturdiest of things, then I remembered the sandbags...and decided there wasn't any way they could have moved it like that...especially not for it to happen over and over again. So, this morning I learned of a 5.1 earthquake! Wow. I've felt tiny tremors a couple of times in my life, but if I didn't read or talk to someone about them, I'm not sure that I would have ever noticed them. This was much different. Tragically, it killed 19 people in Nangarhar province...

Peace...

What I'm Doing Part II

So, I shared a bit ago about my work outside of Kabul. That is only about half the time I'm here. Granted, some of the time in Kabul is spent preparing the documents and trips out to the provinces, but most of the time here at the Embassy compound, I'm working on a large variety of activities. Every sector has working groups and I'm at least attending if not working on some of their activities. These include the following (yes, this will be a boring one-you can go watch one of the videos I post later if you want something interesting!):

UNAMA civ-mil working group (NGOs, Coalition Forces, and UN staff all attend to deconflict some of the problems and set up guiding principles as to how everyone can share the same space)

The rest are all within the US Governmental organizations:
Elections Working Group an example of some of the work is we prepared guidance for all the USG entities in the country on the steps they need to consider and start to take to support the Afghans.

Agricultural Policy Group

Special Committee on Rule of Law where we put together a list of ongoing activities and a request to Holbrooke for funds etc.

Governance Policy Group

Illicit Finance Strategy Team which is new and still establishing a work plan

Economic Policy Group

We put forward issues raised at the provinces to the working groups to help establish guidance on policy, priority, or implementation issues. Each of the groups is attended by all of the agencies and is responsible for all the programs and activities in the country. So for example the Economic Policy Group discusses everything from the IMF and World Bank to the fiscal and monetary considerations, the advisors to the ministries, to the approach to economic development out in the provinces.

Feel free to ask questions, I'm tired and probably did a lame job of spelling this out!

Peace...

One more article about work in DC...

WORLD AFFAIRS
A-Team in Blue Suits

Iraq showed that the U.S. is better at breaking things then fixing them. A new unit aims to change that.

By Adam B. Kushner | NEWSWEEK
Published Apr 11, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Apr 20, 2009

The United States bumbled into Iraq without much of a postwar plan. There were too few troops to secure the country, and the U.S. authorities often lacked the civilian experts to get things up and running again. So key jobs fell to inexperienced Republican apparatchiks or just about anyone theCoalition Provisional Authority could get its hands on. That's how 20-somethings with no experience in finance wound up running Iraq's $13 billion budget (their names were plucked from a job-application page on the conservative Heritage Foundation's Web site) and setting up Baghdad's new stock exchange. Embarrassed by the disasters that resulted (and by grumbling from more-experienced hands), U.S. officials eventually realized they had to come up with a better system for training and deploying seasoned civilians in future conflicts.

So was born one of Washington's wonkiest, most mockable and most important new agencies since 9/11. Known as the Office for the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, its goal is to become the civilian equivalent of the U.S. military's Special Forces. "We went into Iraq and Afghanistan, and our military proved very efficient at dealing with the bad guys," says John E. Herbst, the former ambassador to Ukraine and Uzbekistan who now runs the agency, which came together in 2005. But the U.S. also had to ensure stability and technocratic competence, "and our efforts to do that proved to be very difficult." Troops aren't trained to govern; the CPA needed bureaucrats.

To provide them, Herbst's new office has collected experts from throughout the federal government in a Civilian Response Corps (CRC). It's a kind of temp agency for specialists, deploying them whenever they're needed to help unstable governments. Beverly DeWalt, a Foreign Service officer and CRC member, was sent to Kosovo in the months before that nation declared independence to help synchronize its laws with international standards. After Kosovar independence, DeWalt was dispatched to a provincial reconstruction team outside Kabul in order to help make municipal government more democratic and transparent. She erected a police recruiting station and helped broker a deal between local clans.

But Herbst's most dramatic new unit is the CRC standby force, only now being assembled. It will rope in, for example, contract-law authorities from the Justice Department, monetary policymakers from the Treasury Department, civil-military-affairs specialists from the Defense Department, linguists from the State Department and botanists from the Department of Agriculture, all ready to respond to disaster at a moment's notice. That way, if, say, the Burmese junta collapses, Washington could assemble a team in hours to fly over and show locals how-without any centralized government-to package, ship and deliver new rice crops to markets on the other side of the country.

To prepare for such contingencies, CRC officials have gamed out exactly what they would do in various regions around the world should calamity hit. They won't say exactly where, because they worry it will frighten local governments about the possibility of an invasion. But it's a safe bet they're looking at current conflict zones (like Congo, Pakistan, Sudan) and teetering strongmen (like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe or Burma's Than Shwe).

The idea, says Herbst, is to ensure that "next time we find ourselves in a stability operation, we'll have the flexibility, smoothness and civilians with the right skills to run it." As he puts it, "the post-Cold War world has been characterized by the unique problem of failed states. There were always ungoverned spaces, but in this world-with integrated economies and integrated communications and lethal technologies-an ungoverned space can pose a lethal problem." And the best way to prevent that is to have competent, nonpolitical experts ready to parachute in.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the CRC program, however, is not its size and scope-250 active corpsmen and women, 2,000 on standby and 2,000 on reserve-or its budget, which at just $250 million means that it could do stabilization cheaper than the military. Rather, it's who set it up. Not Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the "smart power" team that promised a subtle and nonbellico se approach to international affairs. It was then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, the Bushies who bungled reconstruction and stabilization in the first place-another sign of how even Bush administration diehards managed to learn from their early mistakes.

© 2009

And this one...some of you have seen...but how can you not want to watch it again?

Perhaps one of the most touching things I've seen in years. Odd, how something so silly, can be so beautiful. It screams of the joy of life, the connection among humanity, the adventures and discoveries that lie all around us. Click here to smile, listen to a great song, and reflect on things much bigger than ourselves that can be portrayed so simply while begging the question how we can allow ourselves to be so divided.

This one is to make your day!

For those of you who grew up within 2 decades of me... click here

Today is a day of postings...Article: Why Countries Like Haiti Matter to the Well-Being of Everyday Americans

This article is by Robert Creamer. A bit slanted, but it does a good job presenting the bigger picture issues and since the Haiti Stabilization Initiative is something I've spent time on this past year, I figured I could share.

Haiti is the poorest country in our hemisphere.
• It is a country of 8.2 million people.
• 6.2 million of them live in poverty.
• One out of eight children die before the age of five.
• Seventy percent are unemployed.
• Life expectancy is 54 years.
• It has been deforested and environmentally degraded for years.
• 7.2 million Haitians do not have access to reliable energy.

Of course we've heard these kinds of statistics many times before -- about Haiti and the other desperately poor developing countries of the world.

This week an international donors conference meets in Washington, DC that will have an enormous impact on the future of Haiti. But at a time like this, when our own economy itself is a basket case, what's wrong with a little "donor fatigue"? Why shouldn't we wait to focus on countries like Haiti until we've taken care of our own problems?

The reason is simple: because what happens to the people of Haiti affects us in at least four critical ways.

1) Our own long-term economic well-being. The world economy is not a zero sum game. For us to be richer, someone else doesn't have to be poorer. In fact just the opposite is true.
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If you think of the earth as a huge space vehicle -- or a ship at sea -- it just doesn't make sense that a big proportion of the crew isn't able to pull its weight because they are undereducated, unproductive and constantly in need of handouts from the rest of us. The Navy wouldn't tolerate it, neither should the world community.

The more skilled, the more educated, the more productive, the more efficient every one of us is, the more successful we will all be in our common mission of forging a better life for future generations.

Every kid in Haiti who grows up to be a surgeon or an engineer instead of a stoop laborer contributes to the common store of our wealth. If a woman is sentenced by the accident of her birth to spend hours each day cleaning clothes in a Haitian stream instead of going to school, all of us miss out on the possibility that she might contribute to finding a cure for cancer. Millions of minds are indeed a terrible thing to waste.

And the effect of this waste plays itself out in the terms of pure economics. Several years into the Great Depression, the New Deal began to close the gap between supply and demand in the American economy. Roosevelt began to use public sector demand to fill the demand gap and move the economy toward full employment. But Emperor Hirohito's attack on Pearl Harbor was necessary to give America the political will to fully utilize the tools of the New Deal - to stop worrying about short term deficits - and create full employment. After all, it was do or die.

There was great concern at the end of World War II that demobilization would result in a precipitous new economic downturn. One of the major factors that prevented that downturn - and fueled world economic growth for the next 20 years -- was the Marshall Plan. America invested massively in rebuilding Europe. In the short term, that created a huge new market for American products. In the longer term it allowed the rebirth of an economically prosperous Europe that contributed to the store of our common productive capacity.

In the same way today, long-term economic growth in the developed world will require a massive investment to jumpstart the economies of countries like Haiti and the entire developing world. And like the Marshall Plan, we will all benefit.

2) Our own national security. The bottom line is that an island of relative prosperity can't exist forever in a sea of poverty. Ask Louis XIV of France how that works out. Kids who grow up in poverty in countries like Haiti don't see the "good life" in American commercials and movies and then resign themselves to suffer quietly. A recent survey showed that 75% of the people in Haiti want to leave the country. Many of them will try -- even if they risk their lives in a leaky wooden boat. Many will try to come illegally to the United States.

People have never left their homes and families to immigrate to foreign lands unless they felt they had no choice. The millions of immigrants at our borders are the waves crashing over the seawalls of our island of relative prosperity. If you want to do something serious about illegal immigration, you need to help create economies in countries like Haiti and Mexico that allow people to believe they have a future there -- everything else is a band-aid.

Without economic development in Haiti, other children will grow up to join criminal gangs that promise them a relative fortune of a few thousand dollars to transport drugs to the United States.

In other parts of the world kids like them will resort to strapping on bombs in the vain hope of giving their lives some meaning. Or they'll hijack ships. Or they will join revolutionary movements to challenge the wealth and power of those who have it.

A recent report made public by our own CIA described world poverty as the greatest single long-term threat to world stability and our own national security. There has never been a time when the old Catholic Worker slogan was more correct: "If you want peace, work for justice."

3) It is our moral responsibility. Well-being is not just a matter of the number of rooms in our houses or the quality of our vacations. People -- especially young people - want meaning in their lives. They want to commit themselves to other people -- not just for the sake of the other people -- but because it fulfills them -- it makes them feel that their lives matter. Our well-being as individuals and as a people is not simply measured by our GDP. It is measured by whether we can be proud of ourselves.

Unfortunately, with a few brief exceptions, the government of the United States has actually prevented the development of Haiti for much of its history. In fact, too often American policy has treated Haiti as one giant sweatshop -- available for exploitation.

Over much of the last 50 years, the U.S. supported two vicious dictators -- "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son, "Baby Doc." These regimes, and the tiny group of elites that constituted their political base, systematically exploited and terrorized the island's population.

Much of their power was exercised through the Army -- which was created during the U.S. occupation of the country in the early 1900s. In its history, the Haitian Army never fought a foreign foe. It was used exclusively to enforce domestic social control.

In 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a progressive priest and hero to the country's poor, was elected President by 70% of the vote. Within seven months he had been ousted by a military coup backed by his country's elite and their foreign backers. Aristide was returned to power in 1994 after President Clinton threatened to send American troops to re-establish democracy in Haiti, which is only 600 miles from Florida.

After Aristide returned, he abolished the Haitian army, but economic progress was slow and difficult. Over its history, Haiti has been almost entirely deforested. The border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, with which it shares the island of Hispaniola, is a stark line. On one side there are forests. On the other side there are none.

Aristide became the first president in Haiti's history to peacefully hand over power to another elected civilian, René Préval, in 1996.

Four years later, Aristide was re-elected. Unfortunately for Haiti, so was George W. Bush. The Neocons hated Aristide. They used purported election irregularities in the election for the Haitian Senate (and not for the Presidency) as the premise for an aid embargo to the fragile government, including $500 million in aid from the International Development Bank.

In 2004, The Boston Globe reported that the aid cutoff ravaged the economy of the nation, already twice as poor as any other in the Western Hemisphere:
The cutoff, intended to pressure the government to adopt political reforms, left Haiti struggling to meet even basic needs and weakened the authority of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.... Today, Haiti's government, which serves 8 million people, has an annual budget of about $300 million -- less than that of Cambridge, Massachusetts, a city of 100,000... Many of Aristide's supporters, in Haiti and abroad, angrily countered that the international community, particularly the United States, abandoned the fledgling democracy when it needed aid. Many believe that Aristide himself was the target of the de facto economic sanctions just as Haiti was beginning to put its finances back in order.

In fact, the U.S. may have done even more to undermine Aristide. In early 2004, a small group of well-equipped personnel from the former Haitian Army entered the country and marched on the capital. The exact role of the U.S. is unclear. But the International Republican Institute (IRI) spent $1.2 million of the U.S. taxpayer's money funding Aristide opposition.

We have a moral obligation to help Haiti be successful. Luckily, that now seems increasingly possible.

4) Success is possible. This is a turning point time for Haiti. A relatively small amount of money could make a huge difference in finally jumpstarting serious development. The UN mission there, and new government, have begun to give the country some stability and security.

The international community, the election of Barack Obama, and the volatile Haitian political scene may have finally aligned to allow for real progress.

Haiti needs $3 billion to execute the development plan that has been designed by the government and international community. That is the equivalent of the price of about ten F-22 fighters.

In a world where hundreds of billions of dollars are spent to bail out big banks, $3 billion from the international community to recreate the future of 8.2 million people would be a quite a bargain -- for them, and for us.

Rather uneventful day...except

For the fact that our office lost 2 LTCs and 3 S/CRS'ers in the past few days, so wish us luck! Wow, ok, let me clarify, lost as in they flew out of the country. LTCs being Lieutenant Colonels and S/CRS'ers being people from my office in DC-the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization. On top of that, this morning while I was typing at the computer inside the heavy imposing concrete building of the Embassy with its bulletproof glass, there was an enormous explosion. The office was empty except for one other guy who ran to the window to see what happened. the sound was big enough, I was thinking that wasn't a good idea. The impact at the beginning wasn't as loud as those percussive fireworks at the big shows that just make noise with the flash of white light (my least favorite), but the impact was about 20 times that and the rumble continued as the building shook for about 5 seconds. I've never heard anything like it, including at explosives training. We were surprised and wondered if that was a truck bomb...but luckily it ended up being the intentional destruction of a weapons cache that was found on the edge of town. So, all in all a good thing!

Wow. What power. Am glad as always to be safe and just as glad to know that people weren't hurt.

Peace...

Television and Work-What I'm Doing Pt. 1

I sometimes have the TV on while I'm working in my hooch. It is a brilliantly eclectic combination of channels. There are stations from India, Afghanistan, Britain, and more. It also carries the Armed Forces Network which for the civilians out there, is a channel that is shown around the world. No commercials, outside of advertising for re-enlisting, and a slew of public service announcements presenting the responsibilities of a variety of agencies within the military, and campaigns against smoking, theft, and security. The programming is a conglomeration of sports, talk shows from both Fox and CNN, some movies, sitcoms, etc.

Today as I was writing, I flipped through the stations, and stopped on a show from the UK on the "Hollywood Channel" where two Brits were checking out houses in East Tennessee! It was nice to see a glimpse of home. Of course the Brits were impressed:) They were concerned about the wooden houses and pleased that there were fireplaces since "the power can go out often during storms in the winter."

Several people have written to ask exactly what I'm doing. Let me tell you about 1/2 of my responsibilities that kick in when I'm out in the provinces. I go out with 1-2 other colleagues, at least one of whom is a lieutenant colonel to ensure that we gain some credibility with the military. Once there, the leadership of the province comes for about 15-25 hours of facilitated sessions (depending on if it is a new effort or an update). The leadership can include Department of State, US Agency for International Development, and US Department of Agriculture representatives, as well as members from the Police Mentoring Teams, the military staff of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, Maneuver Units, and other military task forces in the area of operations.

Those discussions begin with a situational analysis to gain understanding of the province, and are followed by an attempt to link all of the issues that surface and trying to connect the issues to one another. Once that is done, discussions are held to establish a 1 and 3 year goal and then to determine how that goal can be met through levels of effort in a variety of sectors: governance, basic services, rule of law, security, economic opportunity and human capital, infrastructure, inclusive dialogue and reconciliation. Then a management tool is applied as the activities/projects necessary to ensure that the efforts are successful are identified as well as supporting partners and counterparts in the Government of Afghanistan and then placed against a timeline. Next, themes are identified that synchronize multiple levels of effort with transformative effects. A talk about what metrics are being used to monitor progress follows. Critical districts are identified where increased focus would yield higher results than anticipated and throughout the process, national level decision points, requests for information, and recommendations are captured.

The purpose of all of this is that it pushes all of the actors to step-back and communicate by cross-walking understandings, ideas, and activities with one another. The pace of operations is rapid at that level, and previously, few provinces took time to look beyond the next week. This allows them to set goals and a direction. These facilitated sessions allow a horizontal integration to occur, and as the provinces establish these plans, they can have their concerns and interests represented up the chain to the brigade and national levels. It also serves the purpose of having civilians promote their agenda in a space where the military will acknowledge the value of their perspective.

I don't know if any of that made any sense, but I've been explaining in bits and pieces, so I wanted to try to be a bit more thorough. Feel free to ask questions.

Peace...

Good Morning!

I'm not sure I've ever been overseas and had as good of a time watching basketball as I did this past night-the results just made it that much sweeter. To top of the surreal aspect of being in one of the least developed countries in the world and watching the Final Four live, I also got to spend some time last night with two old friends from the Africa region at Chemonics. They had to run the security gauntlet to get in and the food was a bit lacking, but it was great to hang out and share stories for a while.

What is the connection between the Dutch East India Company and Eastern Afghanistan?

TULIPS!!

The epicenter of the US presence in Afghanistan is Bagram. Surrounding the base are several land mine fields. Within those fields are scattered a pleasant surprise against the dreary mountains and and dusty green fields. Dwarf tulips dot the landscape among the market fields and the rusted remants of war. The red tulips held a pinstripe at the edge of each petal, or maybe each sepal? Hard to tell when you are driving past. I later learned after a bit of research that tulips actually came from the Hindu Kush-which are the mountains that I've been in and out of so far. They were beautiful, and I hope to see more.

Peace...

Fallen Comrade Ceremony

Saturday morning at Bagram...

The "big voice" came on over the loudspeakers and let us know about the ceremony. I'd heard of them, they are quite an event here. I am not sure of its origin, but was glad to take part.

When soldiers are killed, there is a ceremony at the base. Their coffins are placed on the back of a truck with their unit sitting on the sides around it. It is driven down Disney Road (not after Walt, but after a soldier who was killed much earlier in the war) very slowly as it makes its way to the airfield to unload the coffins to be sent back to the US. All the traffic is stopped and the base usually quietens down. Outside of the ceremony being given a name which still sends many of the people in the US into cold shivers as they try to shake their legacy of fear of the Soviet Union, and the somber parade down Disney drive, there were other strange and touching pieces to the whole event.

Everyone who isn't "mission critical personnel" is supposed to show up. Soldiers and civilians alike head out to line the road from the beginning of the drive down to the airstrip. In many places, the line is several people deep as there are more than 15,000 on the base. As the truck approaches, the soldiers pop to attention and salute with the civilians placing their hand over their hearts. A pick-up follows the flatbed carrying the unit and coffin. This truck looks like it should be following Brangelina somewhere as there are cameras sticking out in all directions. I'm told that there is a short video that is made for the family and presented. I didn't think it belonged there, which is odd, since I felt like photos of the coffins should be available to the public.

The event stuck different people in different ways, some had tears, others went straight back to work, while others began chatting as soon as the corner was turned. I like the idea...it was a way of honoring death without glorifying it.

Perhaps what the world needs is more of these ceremonies, where they reached across both sides. But more importantly, bringing those who are responsible for war and its conduct to attend. It would be a nice addition to the Geneva convention. Just imagine if all the politicians, generals, and military industrial complex CEOs were all there as well as the leaders of the hate-preaching madrasas, the heirarchy o f the Taliban and their families in this instance, to line up beside the soldier's friends and comrades and family regardless of the side, so that each side could understand what the other was going through.

The problem with war now is that it has grown so distant, from the way we kill, by bombs, missles, or IEDs to the fact that no-one making decisions is connected to those following the orders anymore, on either side. Perhaps there is something to be said for the small militias and fiefdoms in days gone by. It would be interesting to compare the levels of violence.

Peace...