Update

Another one down here in Afghanistan. It’s obviously been awhile since my last post, so I guess I’ll do a little recap of the comings and goings of the past few weeks.

Officially, really not much has gone on. We’re beginning to make our presence known in the area, but other then that it’s been work, work and more work. The brigade was in the news the past few days, but that’s all I’m really going to say about that. It appears the elections went off without a major hitch, though turnout was lower then it was in 2004. The Taliban threatened widespread attacks on election day, but as usual those were just idle threats to keep people home. The few attacks they did carry out were aimed to keep those on the fence from leaving their homes. How it can be possible that people would chose to be ruled by fear over a democratically, internally responsible government is beyond me. For as low as the turnout was, consider that a 50% voter turnout is about par with what we have in the perfectly secure United States. What’s that tell you?

Anyways, the weather is becoming milder, and by milder I mean it isn’t 125 degrees anymore, but a cooler 100-110. It’s amazing how quickly we’ve all adapted to the extreme heat. No dust storms, sandstorms or camel spiders to report, thank God. Looks like the Giants are hanging in there while the Red Sox sweep Toronto, only to give up 20 runs to the Yankees in Boston. The 49ers still haven’t signed their number one draft pick wide receiver, but even if they did they really don’t have anyone to throw to him. It’s amazing that for a team that scouted the talent that became 20 years of Hall of Fame quarterbacks, they can’t find a good arm with the amount of early draft picks they’ve had. The Sharks, in an offseason of change, really haven’t changed much of anything other then who wears the leadership letters, which could very well end up being they same guys who wore them last year depending on how camp goes. Unless I missed something, Phil Kessel has yet to resign with the Bruins and another member of last year’s team has signed with Carolina, the team that knocked them out last year. That’s too much business in sports for me. Unless nobody else will give you a job, or you were in the minors, you shouldn’t sign with the team that knocked you out. And under no circumstances should anyone sign with Montreal. Ever.

At home apparently all the talk is about government providing health care, in a move that will probably squeeze out private insurers eventually. How is it that the entity responsible for protecting the economy by breaking up monopolies is now in the business for establishing them for themselves? Also consider the bracket of taxpayer who’ll foot most the bill for these plans are the people who already have quality health care, who don’t need to pay for it twice. It’s really income redistribution under the guise of “universal health care” because everyone health care seems to be a soft spot, everyone agrees people should have it, but not how to go about it. In past 8 months your government has bought several hundreds of billions of dollars worth of financial securities and private banking institutions. They also provided several more who didn’t necessarily need rescuing with billions in un-needed, and in some cases unwanted, aid. If they control your money and your health care, really what else is there? As Richard Nixon’s Special Counsel Charles Colson said, “When you’ve got ‘em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow”. Just food for thought. On a side note I’ll also be the guest hosting the Rush Limbaugh Show all next week, live from Afghanistan.

Until next time,

-DM

Sandstorms

August 19 Update: Forgive me for my lack of posting. Due to being busy at work and the aforementioned lack of internet, I haven't posted in a good while. Because we now have the internet in the tent, hopefully such a gaps are a thing of the past.

-DM

Finally, we’ve made it to August, which means getting through that first calendar month on deployment. I’ve been deployed longer then a month, but getting to August I guess is a ceremonial victory. Next time we’ll be in the July’s neighborhood it’ll be time for me to go home. If ever someone tried to turn an entire calendar year into something that could only be called “the micro year”, it was someone on deployment. Each day, each week and each month can be a victory in itself when thinking about eventually coming home.

To kick off August we had our first semi-sandstorm. I say semi because while there were high winds and blinding sand flying around everywhere, it wasn’t the kind of real storm that you hear about that ends up blocking out the sun or something. I guess it would have been more appropriate to call it a dust storm, but it was sand getting airborne mostly, so for our purposes here we’ll stick with sandstorm. I had the fortune of being caught outside when it came through. In walking from lunch back to work, I apparently appeared to have aged 20 years as my hair was turned grey by all the sand. It’s an amazing thing a sandstorm; you close your mouth but you still can feel the sand crunching in between your teeth and you close your eyes but still some finds it’s way in. It’s absolutely intolerable. It’s situations like that where I wonder how the Taliban actually believes we’re here to conquer Muslim lands for ourselves. Have they ever seen the United States? The few places like this in the US are either used for weapons testing, ground speed tests, or as a tourist attraction when people want to go down to Death Valley and see what real heat is. With it’s tropical locales, vast forests, snowy mountain peaks, quiet countryside’s and urban jungles there is no place more beautiful than the United States. Don’t believe me? Spend some time out here.

I am very happy to report I have not had another encounter with the dreaded camel spider since my last reporting. It’s an event too terrifying to temp fate with so I’m going to leave it at that. We’ve taken some real steps to finally solve the internet issue in our humble living spaces. We should be seeing some results in a week or two. I’m really pretty ready to get back to school, plus it’ll obviously be significantly easier to stay in touch with home and post a little more here. You’ll probably notice the dates are growing further in between one another and that’s only because of a significant increase in work, not a lack of interest. Accessible high-speed internet will also allow me to follow the upcoming hockey season, baseball playoffs and football season. It’s the little things in life out here.

Until next time,

-DM