Reality Bites

Note: While my arm is healing, I'll do my best to drop by and divvy out small, decadent portions of interesting links like so many amuse-bouche.

There's a war in Afghanistan that hasn't reached the media by its design: the information counterinsurgency. Mike Yon has been disembedded from the much sought after unit 2 Rifles following his criticism of the purseholders of the Ministry of Defense (namely the shameful lack of helicopters in theater). The media ops of the British military made it their mission to complicate Mike's critical job of reporting on the soldiers in Helmand Province, the flashpoint of Taliban resistance. He has a clear and indelible respect for the British fighting men, so to see him tossed out on his ear by some desk riding pogue is most alarming. One particular line about a media ops major caught my attention:

"Media Ops people—who do not leave their base or go on missions—who are spooling out “the message” to the media. They are clueless about the state of the war in Afghanistan. For instance, many of the Media Ops officers will insist that we have enough helicopters in Afghanistan. Those officers are either completely oblivious to the actuality of the situation or lying."

Shades of experience. In the 15th month of our tour, my platoon was called on our rest day to take part in a meticulously crafted PR stunt in downtown Baqubah. We were to escort the deputy prime minister of Iraq to demonstrate that the city's security situation had improved (it had) and that it was safe to mill about the city (it wasn't). Each Stryker was crammed with lite colonels, full bird colonels and generals - layabout officers that clearly did not get out much, judging from their jacked up chinstraps and alarming lack of weapons. In my truck, two Associated Press reporters chatted with a public affairs lieutenant from the Air Force.

I developed a system of determining the amount of time someone spends outside the wire by evaluating the uniform and equipment of a soldier:

[] Magazine pouch attached to the receiver
[] Immaculate weapon
[] Two or less magazine pouches attached to body armor
[] Crisp, distinctive crease on the sleeves indicating a uniform press
[] Lack of night vision goggle mount
[] Bright digital patterns on body armor
[] Boots show visible signs of cleaning

For the lieutenant, I checked all the above. Now, I understand everyone has a role to play and sometimes that means not going outside the wire. I get it. But as a public affairs officer, she was, as Mike put it, spooling out the message to the media. In her five months in Iraq, it was her first time in the wild brown yonder. The AP reporters were pressing her about the improved security situation, namely the role the Sons of Iraq played in the new security apparatus. As a base dweller, it was patently impossible for her to see a SoI volunteer, much less work with one.

Sprinkled among the brass and reporters were pitifully dirty soldiers with very little rest. Their body armor vests were faded to a light brown hue like they were dragged behind a pickup on a dusty back road. Their desert tan boots bore shades of black that could only result from wallowing in the open sewers of Iraq's most deplorable slums. At their feet were myriad brass shell casings from firefights deadly and ubiquitous. Yet the public affairs officer enlightens the press of the situation on the ground. As it happened in Iraq 2007, so it happens in Afghanistan 2009. The story of the war is kept away from those intimately involved in favor of those far removed and easily corruptible. This is the starting point of ill-equipped soldiers getting killed: message control and a strong aversion to the realities of protracted counterinsurgency operations.