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The Old Man and His Place

The picture shows part of a dog pack that patrols the hills near Haditha. There were about a dozen of them, but most went behind the ridge before I got my camera out.  It is not related to my story below.  I needed to put in a picture. I did not have any other use for this one and I wanted to pose a wild dog question that I have been thinking about.  Feral dogs all over the world seem to have cury tails and are often a kind of tan-yellow color.  Wolves and foxes do not have curvy tails, nor do most domestic dogs.  I wonder why it is that feral dogs do.  Anybody know anything about that?

As I looked out the window where the local council was going to meet, I noticed an old guy in a fine suit walking slowly across the bridge.  I thought how he looked out of place.  I figured he was a city council member.  As he approached the guards, I got a better look.  He was a sophisticated looking guy, tall with strong features and very well dressed.  He looked like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. with a full mustache.  I noticed his shinny black shoes and impeccable dark suit.   It is so dusty here; how did he keep his shoes & clothes so clean.

He was not a city council member and he was not coming for the meeting.   It turns out he was ostensibly the legal owner of the building where we were meeting.  He was trying to file a claim for rent and ultimate restitution, but he had been unable to complete the paperwork w/o a recent picture of his property and he has been unable to get a recent picture because of security.   He waited until he saw the Marine patrol come by and then he walked from his nearby home in hopes that he could get a hearing and a picture.  It worked.  His nice suit and demeanor got in him past and we can get the pictures.

As I looked around the room, it clicked.  This place had been a restaurant, probably a nice one.  Broken bulbs gloomily festooned the now defunct garden that was now used as a big urinal.  The storage room was the kitchen; we were meeting in the main dinning room. The shattered windows overlooked a beautiful bend in the Euphrates and a little park, with a defunct soccer field.   I had seen all these things but not connected them. 

This poor old guy was the once and & perhaps future owner of a fine restaurant and garden on some prime real estate.  He was polite and spoke English.  Fixing the place up looked like a lot of work, but there did not seem to be structural damage.  In fact, I could not figure out how the place got so busted up in the first place.   It was not battle damage, probably vandalism and looting.

It was poignant watching him furtively look around, no doubt recalling happier times, maybe dreading the work he would need to do to get the place repaired, maybe looking forward to it.  He had been a prosperous man and with any luck he would be again. 

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With the U.S. Navy in Iraq

There is something joyful and appealing about water, especially when you live in a desert.  I had the great fun on one of  the USN boats that patrols Lake Qadisiya above the Haditha dam.  The Navy patrols the Euphrates River and its reservoirs.  This allows us to catch bad guys trying to cross the river or hide supplies on the islands.  It is kind of funny to find the Navy this far inland and in a desert, but I guess water is water.

Coalition forces from Azerbaijan guard the dam, along with the USMC.  This is appropriate, as I understand Azeris were among those who originally helped build the dam.   It was built about thirty years ago and not maintained very well, so it needs lots of work.  It was built primarily for irrigation, but it also generates power.  I will not vouch for the exact figures and I am not good at technical things, but I understand the power plant currently produces around 440 mw.  This was enough to power most of Anbar and give some to Baghdad.  But now people have bought a lot of electronic devices like computers or durables like washers and refrigerators, so demand for electricity is rising.  The dam could produce 660 mw if all the equipment was updated & working and the reservoir was full.  Watching the water spill over is very pretty, but a lot of energy can go down the river.  One expert says that in an eight hour period he had watched enough water “over the dam” to make the energy equivalent of 33 tanker trucks each holding 5000 gallons of diesel.  I am not sure how he figured it out, but he was an expert.

Water levels are currently low, but that will soon change when winter rain and snow falls upstream and dams in Turkey and Syria release water to send it flowing down the Euphrates.  Low water creates problems for the Navy since weeds and rocks that they could normally sail over are near or above the surface.  Since I was not driving the boat, I was happy with the lower water levels, since they revealed more of the landscape.  What surprises me is how LITTLE grows along the lake shore.  My guess is that the shore of the expanding lake extended into the rocky desert and there is not enough soil to support plants, but I really do not know.  I noticed the same thing along Lake Mead in back of Hoover Dam, which seems to have a similar climate and disposition.  on the other hand, along the river below the dam it is green (as you see in the first picture), which lends credence to the soil theory.

The boats can go pretty fast and ours did, as you might guess from the picture.  I got a good seat near the back, hung on and thoroughly enjoyed the experience of having the water spray past me.  The back of the boat was below the surface, but the wake formed a depression around us.  I didn’t realize how much I missed seeing flowing water.  The best time was when we crossed the wake of the other boat and really bounced.  The water of the Euphrates and the water of the lake is a beautiful aquamarine color and very clear.  You can see fish swimming around below.  The Marines landed on one of the islands, actually more of a peninsula with the low water, took the high ground and checked things out.  Nobody was there.  I stayed on the boat.  Civilians have to be safe.  Actually, I think I just did not get up fast enough, although they clearly didn’t need me, and my boat pulled away to let the other one land troops before I knew it.  After a little while, we picked everybody up and headed back to the shore.

As I looked toward the dam, I noticed something strange in the sky – clouds.  I had not seen significant cloud cover since I arrived in Iraq.  The clouds were back again today in Al Asad.  Those who know tell me that they are the harbingers of winter when we will get some rain and cool weather.  When I said that I looked forward to it, they told me that I would change my mind when I saw and felt the mud.  I figure it is better to be too cold than too hot.  Right now the weather is perfect and I will enjoy it while I can.

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Train Depot on the Edge of Forever

Remember in those 1960s TV SciFi shows & how they always featured a post-apocalyptic world that is not really so much destroyed as just devoid of people and busted up?   I found a place where they can do remakes of those classics.

The Al Qaim train depot sits in the middle of a flat desert with tracks stretching to infinity in both directions. The building was new when it was abandoned because of the war; in fact I don’t think it was completed.  Now it is quiet and empty, the vast cavernous inside space ruled by pigeons that spook when you come in, the sound of their wings echoing off empty tile walls.

I kept on waiting for an alien to step out from behind a pillar and cue the Outer Limits control voice:   “There is nothing wrong with your television set.   Do not attempt to adjust the picture.  We are controlling transmission…”  None showed up; all we heard were pigeons and the wind.

The picture is a couple of my colleagues looking around the facility.

BTW – toward evening, I ran a little on the dirt road along the tracks that leads to the depot. The pigeons were sleeping, but I could hear the wild dogs howling in the distance.  It gets dark fast around here.  It was still very light when I started and almost dark 20 minutes later.  I cut my run short because I hoped to avoid getting shot or torn apart by wild dogs.  Neither of these things was a strong possibility, but these are the things you think about when it gets dark in a place like this.   Besides, breaking a leg on the dark rough trail was a danger, so why take chances? This place really has all the needful things for a whole SciFi series.

The depot is structurally intact.  It looks like what damage it suffered is superficial vandalism and neglect. It seems to me, since there is no town nearby that the whole place is vastly over engineered for its probable use, but maybe it was built with future growth in mind. When they built Dulles Airport, it was ridiculed for being in the middle of nowhere; today it is in the middle of a thriving business district.  Some things take time to catch up.  

The railroad was built to serve the local state-owned enterprises. There is a cement factory and a phosphate plant within distant sight of the depot (with a lot of desert in between).  Farther down the tracks was/is a rail repair yard, currently occupied by the Marines.  The rail line was supposed to move heavy materials produced at the plants, such as phosphate and cement to other parts of Iraq and markets in the Gulf and the Med.  The passenger depot would bring in workers from other parts of Iraq and presumably take them back home when they could no longer tolerate life in the desert.  

It was not a bad plan as far as central planning goes.  Locating the phosphate and cement plants near sources of bulky raw materials made sense.  Of course they were managed in the typical socialist way.  That, coupled with local proclivities for flexible accounting methods, meant both facilities soon became massive boondoggles. With decent management and planning, however, this complex probably could make a profit and  contribute something useful to Iraq’s future.  The cement is good quality and there is a large unmet demand.  (Producing cement, BTW, is energy intensive and releases prodigious amounts of CO2.  You literally bake CO2 out of the rocks at high temperatures.  Cement is not an eco-friendly building material, but there is not much wood around here.  Maybe they should import eco-friendly southern pine.)  I have to learn a little more about the phosphate plant before I have an opinion on it.  I hear that it will not make as good an investment, so keep your checkbooks in your pockets for the time being. 

It is a common misconception that every working factory is worth saving.  Often the expense of rehab and various legacy costs associated with previous management give them zero or even negative value in comparison with starting from scratch in a green field (or in this case a brown heap of dirt).  Sometimes the scrap value exceeds the working value, but who knows?  Such decisions are beyond my pay grade.  It might work out just fine.  Maybe the train depot on at the edge of forever will not be forever empty.

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Return to Normalcy

Imagine that you lost everything.  Now you are getting it back.  How lucky do you feel?  That is where the people of Western Anbar are today.  After years of suffering, things are finally starting to return to normal and normal looks plenty good when you have not seen it in a while.

The reopening of the port of entry at Husaybah will open western Anbar to trade with neighboring Syria and through that to the Mediterranean. It means that Husaybah and the Al Qaim region is now in the middle of something instead of at the far end.

Goods and people will not move immediately.  The Syrians have been less involved in the opening.  In fact, they were downright petulant, saying that THEY had never closed the POE so they could not reopen it.  But they have begun to clear rubbish, paint buildings on their side, and even touch up the large portrait of Hafez Al Assad, whose friendly face greets visitors entering Syria.  Reopening the POE will profit businesses on both sides of the border and everybody knows that. A Syrian official did wander over from the nether region of the border to congratulate his Iraqi brothers on the reopening.   Whether this was a carefully planned diplomatic move or just some guy wanting to get in on the free food, I do not know.

The refurbished POE will have everything it needs.  There is passport control, a medical unit, police station and a bank.  Outside are docks for the unloading of trucks, as well as a quarantine area and acres of parking. Presumably businesses will pop up nearby to serve the traffic. 

Hundreds of invited guests turned up for the official opening ceremony, including business leaders, officials and local sheiks.  Officials made longish speeches about the work that had gone into the opening as well as the perceived benefits of trade and commerce.  In other words, they made predictable political speeches, normal politics, thanking and acknowledging all those who may be useful in the future.

The opening ceremony itself represented a return to normality.  Although security was very tight, great pains were taken to have security not visibly intrude.  As a result, it looked like an ordinary event in a normal country, with Iraqi flags and Iraqi guests generally dressed in suits or traditional garments, not armor.  The ceremony was followed by the traditional feast.  I understand that 40 sheep contributed the last full measure to the festivities.  And when the feasting was done, the guests went home, without incident.

Below is me at the border.  Over my shoulder is Syria.  Still some work needs to be done on the connection, but normality is on the way.

Our ePRT will be facilitating the flow of commerce at the POE, most immediately with a QRF supported grant for signage to direct traffic.  In the longer term, ePRT personnel are helping with planning things such as traffic flow and placement of commercial areas.

A lot of planning went into making this spontaneous event possible.  I like to remember this from the Book of the Tao:

The best rulers are scarcely known;
The next best are loved and praised;
The next are feared;
The next despised:
They have no faith in their people,
And their people become unfaithful.

When the best rulers achieve their purpose
The people say they did it themselves.

I would presume to add one more line: AND they are right, IF planners get initial conditions right and understand when to get out of the way.

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Celebratory Fire…Maybe the Odd Angry Shot

Kids come out and wave as we drive by.  When I got out and walked toward them, they started to run off.  When I sat down on the curb they came back.  We are evidently a curiosity. 

The day started out auspiciously enough.  We scheduled a full slate of appointments.  We were supposed to meet with the regional agricultural representative, visit the local bank, talk to the microfinance people and tour some local farms.  Beyond all that, we planned to go on a foot patrol through the marketplace.  I had grand hopes to spend my first Iraqi dinar at an actual Iraqi market, even if it was only to buy a can of Coke and some kabobs.

We DID mange to meet the ag official.   I did not have much business with him and only went through the greeting rituals, but my team members spent a couple of very useful hours looking over plans and proposals.  Our first bad news came when we learned we would not be able to visit the market.   An IED had gone off there a couple days before.  The Iraqi police said that it was a local matter, more a case of criminal intimidation than terrorism, but since the site was where we were going, the Marines thought it was not worth the risk. 

Instead, we went straight to the bank to meet the microfinance guys, but there was a flawed communication.  The people we were supposed to meet had gone.  The guard called them and they said they would be right back.  We were having a good into talk with the administrative manager.  He has survived some rough times.  AQI had murdered his father and his ten year old brother.  His family had to hide out in the desert for six months until AQI cleared out.  But now times were better. 

We heard shots, quite a few.  It was “celebratory fire”.  Evidently some detainees were released and their joyful relatives were celebrating the way they do around here: shooting guns into the air.  These kinds of celebrations are dangerous for two reasons.  First they sometimes turn nasty.  Maybe for some of the former inmates, the joy of getting out does not completely balance the annoyance of being put in.  Second and probably more important is that other rule of law — gravity.   What goes up must come down.  Falling bullets hurt and kill people.  They tend to tumble a little, but they come down with force similar to what they went up with.  Not a good thing to get caught in that rain.  The Marines told us that it would be very embarrassing if we got shot while under their care.   They ushered us out quickly and we missed the rest of our appointments.It is surreal.   Our hosts at the bank were not armored or protected and they were also not particularly concerned.  They were just bringing out cakes and little cans of Pepsi (very cute little cans) when we made our excuses.  Those kids you saw in my picture just kept on playing.  I understand the need for safety in general.  I also understand that given the circumstances of the celebrations our presence might actually cause a celebratory mob to turn unpleasant creating danger for ourselves and those people around us.  I just hope there is less such joyful noise so that we can get more work done.

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A Talking Frog

This old guy is walking down the street and sees a frog on the pavement.  To his surprise, the frog speaks and says, “I am an enchanted princess.  If you kiss me, you will break the spell and have a beautiful woman forever.”  The old guy just puts the frog in his pocket and begins to walk along.  The frog complains, “Maybe you didn’t hear me.  I am a beautiful enchanted woman.  If you kiss me, you will have me forever.”  The old guy replies, “At this stage in my life, I figure a talking frog is more interesting.”

I went to see the Purrfect Angelez, pictured above, at a camp show in Al Qaim.  They treated the assembled multitude to an impressive show of gymnastic flexibility, punctuated by less impressive singing.   But it quickly got repetitive, not that it seemed to bother most of the Marines.  I kept thinking about how hard some of those moves would be on a person’s back or knees and it was then I realized that I had been gradually but inexorably moving into the talking frog stage of life.  I am not saying that I am not interested.  The show was worth seeing, although perhaps not worth going to see.  After about a half an hour of watching their vigorous gyrations and observing the enthusiastic response they got from the Marines, I shuffled back to my can to read my book.   I noticed that my PRT colleagues, whose median age is 49, also did not stay much longer.  That is no country for old men. No matter how much we want to pretend, interests develop and that is probably a good thing.

This is kind of a miscellaneous posting.  Take a look at the picture below.  Yes, it is two bottles of mayonnaise sitting in the sun.  I do not know how long they were out there, but let me give you an additional piece of information:  The Marines in Husaybah live with the Iraqi police and they usually prepare their own food.

I was sitting out in the courtyard of the joint Marine-Iraqi Police building listening to the wind and contemplating the nature of things,  when I notice the mayo.  A short time later a couple of Marines came out and we got to talking about their living and working conditions.  They generally liked the Iraqi police and they thought that the fact that they were integrated with the community and got more local food, different from the standard chow hall fare, was a good thing.  It was a more authentic experience than eating the same meat loaf and red jell-o you get in all the chow halls in all the world.  But one of them mentioned, off handedly, that stomach viruses were a bit of a problem among the guys.  Ya think?  Of course, if you leave it out long enough, I hear it turns into special sauce.

All this makes me think of that lesser known Yeats poem.

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I Can’t Complain

Above is my office at my last job when I ran the Worldwide Speaker Program.  I could see the Capitol from the window.  The view from my office in Iraq is not so nice. 

I have been getting lots of emails from people asking me about jobs in the Foreign Service or in Iraq.  I am probably the only FSO they know but hiring procedures are things I know not too much about.  I let HR do their job.  I came in the FS in 1984.  Things were different back then (of course, much harder.  Kids today have it easy.  When we were young …) But I can give you my opinion about careers in the FS and a webpage (www.careers.state.gov) were you can find out more.

I could tell you that I always wanted to be an FSO, but I would be lying.  My father wanted me to be a truck driver and I wanted to be a forester or maybe an archaeologist.  Becoming an FSO was more a result of serendipity than design.  I was taking a nap in the student union at the University of Wisconsin.   When I woke up, I saw a booklet called “Careers in the Foreign Service” laying on the table.  My snoring had driven away the previous owner.  Before that, I did not know there was such as thing or at least I did not know that someone like me could get in. 

FSOs join State through a written test.  It is pretty hard, but not impossible.  I wonder how some of my colleagues got in and I am sure they wonder the same about me.  You have to know about little things and about lots of things most people do not care about.  FSOs are very good at Trivial Pursuit and we can usually impress our friends when watching Jeopardy.   Skills that sell in the marketplace…?  They are useful skills for us because we are generalists.   As generalists, we do what we need to do.  They told me when I came in that my duties could range from talking to important officials to carrying luggage.  I have done both.  Sometimes the luggage job is more fun.

All joking aside, the FS has been good for me.  I have been able to do things and meet people I could never have done.  The FS taught me three languages: Portuguese, Norwegian & Polish.   It gave me a year at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy and paid ME to attend school and live in New Hampshire.   I have never had a job in the FS that I did not enjoy – mostly – and that includes my current job here in Iraq, which is often uncomfortable and sometimes a little scary but tremendously rewarding.

The hardest part is the travel and living in foreign countries.  I know many readers are thinking to themselves that these are the great advantages, the very quintessence of the FS and they are certainly right.  But it is also hard.  You do not have the feeling of home and you are always an outsider, a sojourner, a stranger in a strange land (okay, I will stop with the descriptions).   When we got back to the U.S. and lived in Virginia, I realized how much I enjoy being an ordinary American citizen, a participant in the affairs of my country and community.  Diplomats are always guests, never participants and by clear definition never citizens of their host countries.   

It is the career I wanted and I thank God I woke up to find that brochure at the Student Union, but the FS is not for everybody.  After I come back from Iraq, I am thinking of retiring.  The FS is a great job, but maybe it is time to do something else.  I just don’t know.   That is the final advantage of the FS.  You can retire at 50 (with 20 years of service).  You still are young enough to find something else and you have the FS retirement to fall back on if you don’t.

Below is the American Indian Museum was a short walk from my office at SA 44.  Washington is a nice place to live too and you live there about 1/3 of your career.

FS is good work if you can get it.  At least I really can’t complain. Check out the webpage at www.careers.state.gov.   BTW – the Department did not put me up to this.   As I said, I am getting dozens of emails.  Maybe this will answer some of the questions.   

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Veterans Day

The picture shows those famous big Saddam crossed swords.   The hands are replicas of Saddam’s even down to the thumbprint.  Around them and in the road are Iranian helmets.  Saddam liked to “walk on the heads” of his enemies.  There used to be more helmets, but people pry them out and steal them as souvenirs.  It is not worth the trouble, but some people take what they can.  If you stand in a particular spot, it looks in a photo like you are holding those swords   Somebody has marked the sweet spots on the street.  The guy holding the swords is Major Murray, who handles most of the logistics on our PRT. 

It is interesting that Saddam would set up a memorial to his victory when he didn’t win anything and the war nearly destroyed his country, but setting up monuments to dubious victories is an old tradition in the region.  Pharaoh Ramesses did it at Kadesh.  It is actually a parallel.  Ramesses managed to get ambushed by the Hittites, but called getting away and scurrying back to Egypt a major victory.  I guess in his case it worked.  Most people remember Ramesses, but nobody can recall the name of the Hittite king.  Of course, I do not think anybody will recall Saddam in the same way, and I am wandering way off subject.

I am not a warrior and I do not have to be.  I am 52 years old, still alive, free and have never been seriously oppressed or had to face a situation where my courage was severely tested.  For most of human history, being all those things at the same time would have been an impossible or at least an unusual achievement.   Americans take such freedom, security and prosperity for granted thanks to the men and women who keep us safe.  We honor them, too often perfunctorily, on Veterans Day each year.  This year it means more to me, because I am living among heroes.

Our military today is all-volunteer but that does not mean that everybody is a professional soldier.  Here in Iraq I have enjoyed meeting the history teacher from Georgia, who was trying to make a living farming, but was currently doing his duty for his country in Iraq and  guy commanding the Marines at one of the power plants who is an investment banker back home.   We have cops and firemen, pharmacists and small business owners.  They represent the best of America.  The skills they bring from their civilian lives are helping build peace in Iraq and the experiences in Iraq will surely make them better citizens back home.  When you see how fragile freedom can be and how it must be defended, you understand how precious it is in America.

Of course, there are many here who have chosen to make the military their careers.  The striking thing about them is how seriously they take the development of leadership and their responsibility to their jobs and their fellow Marines and anybody else around.  Even very young Marines take charge, full responsibly, “ownership” of their duties.   My particular hero is the Regimental Commander.  I have been observing his leadership style with great interest and will try to adapt some of his techniques.  

Almost everybody in my father’s WWII generation served in the military.    In the later baby boom, my generation, such experience is much less common.  Most in my generation and those that followed don’t know the military first hand and we often get our impressions from what we see on TV or the movies.  Those images are almost always either out of date or wrong.  Some of the images portrayed in the media are downright pernicious, created by people who really do not know what they are talking about.  Most of the soldiers and Marines I meet in Iraq are smart, polite and patriotic.  They do not like to be here, and who can blame them, but they are fully committed to doing their jobs.

The thing that may surprise those who know the military only from old M*A*S*H reruns or movies like “A Few Good Men,” is the intellectual power of many of the officers.   These guys think very clearly about their duties and goals, as well as the ethics of what they are doing.  They see the big picture and apply various historical analogies, cultural sensitivity and sophisticated management methods to their analysis.  Then they make decisions that test their theories in practice.  More things COULD happen than can happen and many elegant suppositions do not survive a real world test.  America is very well served by its professional military and I sure am glad having the Marines looking after me in Iraq.  They get the job done.

So on this Veterans’ Day, I just want to say thanks.  All Americans should be proud.

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The Rest of the Iraq Story

I did not have an appropriate picture for this article, so I reached back into the files for something pretty.  As you can see by the date stamp, the picture is a couple years old.  It is taken around 100 meters from my house in Londonderry, New Hampshire, where we lived when I was at Fletcher.  It was even prettier in October and there is probably more fresh water in that picture than in all of Al Asad.  I could stretch it and say that I chose the picture to go with my trout metaphor below, but the truth is that I just like to think of the green and pleasant places.  I won’t be in this desert long enough to forget.

I know that good new is no news, but maybe it should not be that way.   Some things sometimes DO get better.  A key reason for following the news is to understand the world in order to make informed decisions, so positive developments are as important as negative ones.  If you measure the success of your fishing trip only by how much bait you use, you may miss out on the grilled trout in lemon sauce.

Journalists (IMO) often prefer bad news because it better fits with their cynical personalities.  It is also easier to write a bad news story.  That is why when the things get better journalists melt away like snow on a warm spring afternoon.  I guess it is a positive sign that journalists have stopped coming to Anbar.  I think there are only four of them around here right now and they are bloggers.  We will not be seeing much of CNN or CBS anytime soon, unless conditions go badly wrong or they are following a big shot on a quick visit.

This media propensity to follow bad news and step back when things improve leaves the false impression that conditions only get worse.  (That is probably a big reason why so many people in the modern world have such a negative outlook on conditions that are pretty good by any historical standard.  They see the worm hit the water, but never hear about the trout being reeled in.)   Journalists often say that they are just giving the public what they want, but is this really true?  Do we really want our media to be biased toward the negative?

I just received a new Pew Research Report on news coverage about Iraq.  As conditions in Iraq improved, news coverage dropped.  American media featured only about half as much news about Iraq in October as in January, when things were not going well.  Are journalists just giving the public what they want? 

Well…no.  According to the research, Iraq remains the most important item to the public and a growing number want more coverage.  They also want a different type of coverage.  The media likes to cover policy disputes among politicians, anti-war demonstrations and the costs of the war.  The vast majority of the public wants more about the experiences of the soldiers in Iraq and after they return to America.  A majority (52%) also says that efforts to improve conditions in Iraq are getting too little coverage.  Surprise, the public wants some balance.  You need all the shades of dark and light to paint the true picture.  All black just is not a useful perspective.

The public is not getting the news they want about Iraq or the news they need to be informed.  I was surprised to read that only 41% of those surveyed knew that casualties in Iraq had gone down.  I guess I should not be surprised.  Any spike is reported w/o the perspective that shows the general trend.

Progress is still fragile, but the indications are that Iraq is reaching a point where it is tipping in the right direction.  Most people in any civil disturbance are ambivalent.  They do not really want to pick sides; they just want to live securely and sit on the fence until they can reasonably figure out which side will win.  The Coalition and Iraqi forces are looking more and more like winners and that is starting to be a reinforcing trend as former insurgents lay down their arms and Al Qaeda & foreign fighters are killed, captured or otherwise neutralized.  The American public may well be surprised by the outcome in Iraq because the media has not been telling the rest of the story. 

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Happy Birthday USMC

In heaven there is no beer; that’s why we drink it here … NOT.   If Anbar is heaven, we have been seriously misled in Sunday School, but General Order #1 prohibits drinking by U.S. military in Iraq.  It shows respect for the local customs and probably saves a lot of trouble.  As a cruel hoax, the chow hall features coolers full of nonalcoholic beer.   It looks like real beer, but that one word modifier says it is not worth drinking.  If there is any real beer on Al Asad, I have never seen any sign of it, and I have looked – until today.  Today is the birthday of the United States Marine Corps and every Marine gets two beers – two real beers – on this happy day.  This includes honorary Marines like me.  All joking aside, it is an honor to be among Marines on their birthday.

First we got a half hour lecture about the history of 2nd Marine Regiment.  It was an interesting history, very heroically told by true believers.  More than the usual number of people showed up for the meeting.  After that, we all filed out and got two OPEN beers.  Nobody can share a beer; nobody can save a beer for later.  It is two beers for everybody and only two beers. Officers, enlisted men and FSOs all get exactly the same numbers.  Colonel Clardy promised to crush anybody who drank more than two beers.  He seemed serious and probably could do it, so nobody risked provoking his wrath.  There was some choice among brands.  We had Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Special Draft and ordinary Budweiser, I took the Miller.  Bud Light is no better than that ersatz stuff they have at the PX and Coors Light just a baby step above.  Budweiser is brewed from rice.   Need I say more?  Miller Special Draft really is decent beer and its flavor was significantly enhanced by its being in this here and now place.  We were a little worried there would not be enough beer to go around.  According to the Airforce, several cases of beer were “damaged” in transit and could not be delivered.  I am told their story is true.

As long as I am on the subject of beverages, let me say a few words about my favorite beverage, which is Coca-Cola.   I drink a lot of the stuff – more than 2 liters a day.  Until a couple of years ago, I drank ordinary coke.  I used to run a lot and burn off the calories, but nobody can outrun Father Time and after he trips you, his cousin Mr. Fat comes around.   I switched to Diet Coke in Poland.  In Europe it is called Cola Light.   But the interesting thing about Coca Cola, the ubiquitous symbol of the homogeneity of globalization, is that it tastes different in different places.  The best version of ordinary Coke, for example, is found in Brazil.  Western Europe’s Coke has a peculiar taste, but in Eastern Europe Coke is more like the U.S. variety.   European Cola Light is much better than Diet Coke you get in the U.S., even though the cans look similar.  What tastes like Cola Light in the U.S. is Coke Zero.   So when overseas, I drink Cola Light, which now I like even better than sugary Coke.  In the U.S. I go for the crisp taste of Coke Zero. 

Unfortunately, my switch to Diet Coke proved a temporary fix.  Father Time has delivered another kick in the keister and Mr. Fat moved right in again.   I will have to cut down on the chocolate now.  Life is tough all over, but with the proverbial couple of beers softening the blow, today who cares?