Photo by Spencer Case

Combined Joint Task Force 101

PAKTYA PROVINCE, Afghanistan – U.S. troops may help build two bridges spanning a river in Danda Patan District, Paktya province, over the next several months.

Members of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gardez Resident Office and the Paktya Provincial Reconstruction Team surveyed two frequently-traversed sites along the Darya-ye-Chamkani River Sept. 27. They measured the breadth of the river and its velocity.

The purpose of the survey was to gather information for future infrastructure projects that could help provide local Afghans with access to government services, said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Charles W. Douglass, commander of the Paktya PRT.

“The bridges [should they be built] will connect several outlying villages and reduce the travel from 9.6 kilometers to the main road down to less than 1 kilometer,” Douglass, a resident of Niceville, Fla., said via e-mail. “This opens these villages to direct support from their government, connects them to education and market opportunities, and provides a stable roadway above the river and wadis [dry seasonal riverbeds] for their safety. It’s a great project and long overdue.”

Sean Walsh, a USACE civil engineer present at the Sept. 27 survey, said, “What our [USACE] office is planning to do is put together three or four options for each site.”
The options range from inserting concrete blocks in the river, which would reduce the velocity and depth of the water at the popular crossing areas, to constructing bridges in both locations, said Walsh, who is from Carlisle, Mass.

U.S. Army Capt. Daniel R. Hill, the USACE Gardez Resident Office officer in charge, who was also present during the survey, said the projects would likely be funded in part by the Commander’s Emergency Response Program, a tool that allows on-the-ground commanders to fund infrastructure projects with the approval of the local government.

Preferably, the work would be done by Afghan contractors and supervised by U.S. personnel, but U.S. military may take a more direct role depending on what proposals are accepted, he said.

“Our goal is to build something that is not going to wash away – we’d rather not fight the water,” said Hill, who hails from Whitney, Texas. “High water is a problem in the area. We want durable and low maintenance – that really is the theme for all construction in Afghanistan right now.”

The final product is likely to be the result of effort from the Paktya PRT, USACE and other elements, Walsh said.

“We’re all working together to get this thing done, which makes it fun – a little difficult – but fun,” Walsh said.

Photo by Spencer Case

PAKTYA PROVINCE, Afghanistan – In the center of the room is a 7-by-8 feet plastic relief map of Paktya and surrounding Afghan provinces surrounded by tables and about a dozen desktop computers. Above the map, a mounted television broadcasts Pashto-language news.

The humble setting of the Operational Coordination Center-Regional at Forward Operating Base Thunder in Paktya province can be deceiving. Part emergency management center, part military intelligence hub, the OCC-R is the central coordination center for the Afghan National Army, the Afghan Uniformed Police, the Afghan Border Police and the National Directorate of Security at Paktya, Paktika, Khowst, Logar and Ghazni provinces.

“We have coordination here,” said ABP Lt. Col. Muhammad Salim, an intelligence officer who reports to daily briefings at the OCC-R. “If we don’t communicate, the enemy will be successful. If we continue like this and communicate well, the enemy will fail, and we will succeed.”

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jon L. Stephenson, a senior partner at the OCC-R, is one of only a handful of U.S. troops tasked with advising the Afghans at the OCC-R. Stephenson said the creation of the OCC-R filled a major vacuum in Afghan information coordination.

“When I embarked on being the senior partner for the OCC-R … I ended up finding out was there is no agency within Afghanistan that actually brings together the Afghan National Security Forces, government agencies, non-governmental agencies and also lower-level provincial and tribal leadership … ” said Stephenson, a resident of Whiteland, Ind. “There’s no organization that’s bringing them together, and this is the organization that needs to be doing that.”

The facility began under the direction of 82nd Airborne Division deputy commander, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Kurt Fuller, as an extension of the Joint Operations Center at FOB Thunder. When the 101st Aborne Div. replaced the 82nd Airborne Div. as the battle space owner of Regional Command-East in May, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, deputy commander of the 101st Airborne Div., encouraged the facility to become independent.

“They wanted to separate [the OCC-R] from the tactical command post, so it isn’t an Afghan National Army facility,” said U.S. Army Capt. Urayoan Pomales of 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Div., the Task Force Rakkasan liaison officer at the FOB Thunder OCC-R, and a Ponce, Puerto Rico, native.

Since then, things have accelerated rapidly.

“In the last seven weeks, we went from nothing to … being about 40- or 50-percent [closer to achieving our goals], which is pretty good for seven weeks,” said U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Samuel L. Guimbellot, Headquarters, Headquarters Battalion, 101st Airborne Div., and an intelligence advisor at the OCC-R .

At the beginning of the seven-week period, the Afghan partners often showed up late, said Guimbellot, a resident of Alexandria, La. Now, Afghan intelligence officers show up on time and accurately report significant incidents in their respective areas.

During the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, the U.S., Afghan and other coalition force troops at the OCC-R kept track of information on about 700 polling sites scattered across five provinces and under constant threat of enemy disruption.

“It was our first test in coordinating operations across the entire battle space,” Guimbellot said.

ANA Brig. Gen. Mohammad Daud (Andaraby), acting commander of the OCC-R, said he was proud his troops handled the situation so no coalition and few civilian casualties occurred.

“I am very pleased and very happy that, on the day of the election, our troops did an outstanding job, and the election took place under good conditions,” Daud said. He added that he did not think the election would have gone as smoothly in the 203rd Thunder Corps area without the OCC-R.

It is hoped the OCC-R will eventually move off base to a local district center, where it can incorporate non-military agencies and even village elders, Stephenson said. In the meantime, however, those working at the OCC-R are willing to take things one step at a time.

“Everything in Afghanistan moves relatively slow,” Stephenson said. “In America, our culture moves fast and we want instant results. It’s not that way here. … It’s evolved to the point where they are functioning, but they are not where we want or need them to be right now … but they have a functioning facility.”

Photo by Spencer Case

Combined Joint Task Force 101

Afghan National Army 2nd Lt. Mohibullah keeps a note scrawled in Pashto of “pretty good” handwriting tacked to his office wall. It reads: “Until the headmaster returns, I have complete responsibility.”

The soldier who wrote the note had, a few days earlier, been completely illiterate.

Mohibullah, the new commander of the Team Leader Course, who like many Afghans goes by only one name, keeps the note as a reminder of what can happen when uneducated soldiers are given an opportunity to learn.

The four-week Team Leader Course is unique among the three noncommissioned officer training courses at Forward Operating Base Thunder in Paktya Province under the auspices of the ANA’s 203rd Thunder Corps. Unlike the Battle Course, the Team Leader Course is not designed for ANA soldiers who have experience as NCOs, and unlike the 1U Course, it does not assume the students have had any prior education.

Much like the Warrior Leader Course in the U.S. Army, the Team Leader Course is designed to prepare enlisted Afghan soldiers for their first taste of leadership. ANA officers choose 10 percent of their soldiers to attend the Team Leader Course at regional training centers like FOB Thunder. Upon graduating, the soldiers are eligible for promotion to sergeant and, eventually, higher noncommissioned officer ranks.

“We’re not just training [NCOs], we’re creating them from Afghan soldiers,” said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Gary E. Smith, a training officer with the Indiana National Guard’s Regional Corps Training Team 2, who oversees the training at FOB Thunder. “It’s very analogous to what we do in our Army: same type of discipline standards, attention to detail and basic squad-leading skills,” the Kendallville, Ind., resident added.

The Team Leader Course retrains ANA soldiers on basic soldiering skills, such as weapons qualification, and introduces them to NCO skills like responding to an ambush, as well as conducting searches of houses and vehicles. The first week however, is dedicated to literacy.

The literacy block consists of 36 hours of classroom training taught by retired ANA officers rehired as civilian instructors. The block includes instruction on the alphabets and basics of both Pashto and Dari, as Afghanistan contains millions of speakers of both languages. The instructors also teach basic mathematics, including multiplication, in the literacy section.

The block is particularly significant to soldiers like Tajudin, son of Imamqul, a native of Takhar Province, who was forced to withdraw from school several years earlier due to economic problems.

“This course is very important for us; it teaches us how to read and write,” said Tajudin through an interpreter. Tajudin is one of more than 150 students in the current cycle of the Team Leader Course, which runs from Oct. 16 to Nov. 11. “A man who can’t read or write can’t read signs to know where he is going; if it is the right way or the wrong way. He doesn’t know his name or his father’s name. Now, we can write our names and know what way is the right way, and what way is the wrong way.”

With UNICEF reporting a literacy rate in Afghanistan of about 30 percent, Tajudin is not alone. Many hard-working ANA soldiers are among the illiterate because they are often in the field and unable to take advantage of the literacy programs offered by their units. Others are more fortunate, so soon after their arrival, the students divide into three sections based on ability, Mohibullah said.

At the end of the first week, all students are tested with their section. Mohibullah said many of the students do not pass the test, but said they are all given passing grades for the literacy section nonetheless. He justifies this policy on the basis that in Afghan culture, brutal honesty so early on would discourage rather than help soldiers who have still not received enough education.

“One week is not enough,” he said.

Fortunately, the test is only a formality, and book learning continues informally throughout the duration of the course. Since the training day is only about six hours, many troops take the initiative to study, sometimes with the assistance of the instructors, Mohibullah said

“Our soldiers are good,” said Mohibullah, who recently transferred from the Kabul Military Training Center. “I visit them during the evening and see that they are reading and writing. I saw one soldier reading from a newspaper and another soldier writing down what was read. I did not see such a soldier at the KMTC.”

Mohibullah said Tajudin, whose regular unit is 6th Kandak, 3rd Brigade, 203rd Thunder Corps, based out of Qaraba District, Ghazni Province, is among those who have shown great diligence in their studies.

“He was very excited to get the opportunity, so we will help him out,” Mohibullah said. “If he keeps up his good attitude we can help him.”

If there can be found a single issue upon which conservatives and liberals reliably fall on different sides it is whether we are in the midst of a “clash of civilizations.”

Conservatives believe the values of the West and the values of the Islamic world are in the midst of an epic face-off not dissimilar to the Cold War, whereas liberals chalk up the tensions as merely the manifestations of a host of local issues like inequality of wealth, post-colonial malaise, etc.

Recently, I read a book that convinced me more than ever that the pessimistic conservatives are on the right side of the divide. The book wasn’t by Ibn Warraq or Robert Spencer or one of the many other popular critics of Islam, but Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the renowned expert on Sufiism and Islamic apologist tenured at George Washington University.

Nasr was the keynote speaker in the UN’s Conference on Islamophobia. He has a regal appearance and is essentially the poster child for moderate Islam. That is why his book, The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity, is probably the most chilling I’ve ever read.  The book, which was commissioned by Harper San Francisco shortly after 9/11 to provide “an explanation of the authentic teachings of Islam anew in light of the challenges of the present-day situation,” inadvertently provides the best argument yet that Islam is inherently totalitarian.

Nasr states in many places and in no unclear terms that he opposes both secular law and “freedom of speech”—placed in scare quotes—which allows for criticism of religion. Most moderates in western countries, Nasr asserts, want the same.

“In the Islamic perspective,” he writes, “Divine Law is to be implemented to regulate society and the actions of its members rather than society dictating what laws should be… to speak of Shari’ah as being simply the laws of the seventh century fixed in time and not relevant today would be like telling Christians that the injunctions of Christ to love one’s neighbor and not commit adultery were simply the laws of the Palestine two thousand years ago and not relevant today, or telling Jews not to keep the Sabbath because this is simply an outmoded practice of three thousand years ago.”

And again: “Since God is the creator of all things, there is no legitimate domain of life to which His Will or His Laws (antecedently stated to mean Qur’anic Shari’ah) do not apply.”

So does Nasr favor theocracy? No, because, according to Nasr, theocracy is rule by a religious clergy, whereas Nasr favors what he terms “nomocracy” or rule by Divine Law. (Nomology means “rule by law,” which seems redundant to me.) Islam, Nasr points out, has no official clergy and so cannot be theocratic. This is a clever dodge, but here’s a question: who is going to be interpreting and enforcing this Divine Law, exactly?

Speaking of the desire of the vast majority of Muslims to preserve their religion and reestablish Shari’ah the second half of the twentieth century, Nasr writes:

“Many organizations were nevertheless established to pursue these ends by peaceful means, chief among them the Ikhwan al-Muslimin, or Muslim Brotherhood founded in Egypt in the 1920s by hasan al-Banna’ and the Jama’at-I Islami, founded by Mawlana Mawdudi in 1941, both of which remain powerful to this day.”

Muslim Brotherhood did begin as a peaceful movement focused on charity and education, but by the time it became interested in politics—Nasr’s clear interest in the passage above—it had morphed into a violent movement.

According a July 10, 2008 Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs report: “The vast majority of Sunni terrorist groups – including al Qaeda, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad – are derived from the Muslim Brotherhood.”

As for the JI, also known as the Pakistani Islamic Assembly, Globalsecurity.org has this to say:

“In order to rid the community of what it considered to be deviant behavior, the JI waged a campaign in 1953 against the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan that resulted in some 2,000 deaths, brought on martial law rule in Punjab, and led Governor General Ghulam Mohammad to dismiss the Federal Cabinet.”

Throughout the book, Nasr uses the word peace, and other words like freedom and cosmopolitanism, as semantic shells to be emptied of their conceptual content when convenient. He pretends to share Western values while covertly redefining them.

The fact that a revered “moderate” Muslim scholar such as Nasr can admit to such totalitarian sympathies without raising a major ruckus in academia should be a clear indicator of what the West is up against.

PAKTYA PROVINCE, Afghanistan – Standing about six feet tall and sporting a short dark beard that makes him look older than his 31 years, Afghan National Army Command Sgt. Maj. Habiibullah Chamkani, command sergeant major of the ANA’s 203rd Thunder Corps, is a hard figure to miss.

U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. James M. Brown, Chamkani’s U.S. mentor, said his character stands out as much as his stature. The sergeant major’s friendly demeanor, proactive leadership style and sense of presence make him one of the most respected noncommissioned officers in the ANA’s 203rd Thunder Corps, he said.

“He’s approachable, very friendly and very, very popular (among Afghan Soldiers),” said Brown, a resident of Indianapolis, currently serving as a part of Regional Corps Training Team 2. He added Chamkani “has an outgoing, friendly manner and wants to be around his people at all levels” and is popular for “his willingness to make contact with the Soldiers at all levels.”

If anything, Chamkani’s amicability can even seem a bit excessive to cultural outsiders.

“It’s like he’s running for mayor,” Brown joked.

Chamkani hails from a district of the same name in Paktya province. In the 1990s Chamkani completed his high school education—not something to be scoffed at in Afghanistan—and went on to attend Mashriq/Maghrib English Language School in Kabul. Shortly after the U.S. invasion and the fall of the Taliban, Chamkani joined the ANA.

“I didn’t have any military experience,” he said through the aid of an interpreter, “but I had the feeling I was going to join the Afghan National Army to help the country.”

Chamkani’s leadership skill and presence helped him advance through the ranks quickly. In 2006, a little more than four years after he enlisted, Chamkani was promoted to sergeant major of a kandak in the 203rd Thunder Corps. Not long after, Chamkani advanced to the position of 203rd Thunder Corps sergeant major, a position roughly equivalent to a division sergeant major in the U.S. Army.

With the age and military experience of an average U.S. Army staff sergeant, Chamkani faced an enormous jump in responsibility many would have found overwhelming. However, Chamkani was untrammeled and threw himself into the work at hand. One of his most pressing challenges was helping to build the ANA noncommissioned officer corps, which was essentially non-existent in the Soviet era, he said.

“The Russian system was inappropriate for this time,” he said. “This new (NCO-centered) system is appropriate for this situation.”

Brown, speaking of the idea of showing respect for NCOs, said, “Older officers are just now beginning to absorb that kind of thinking.”

In his relatively short time in the ANA, Chamkani witnessed dramatic change in the emphasis the ANA places on NCOs. Chamkani said he believes much of the progress is due to the new NCO development courses offered at Forward Operating Base Thunder.

“Before, we didn’t know how to conduct operations and we didn’t have a combined command center (as we now have at the FOB Thunder Tactical Operations Center,)” he said. “Now, even our E-5 sergeants know about planning and the procedures for conducting operations.”

The expansion and improvement of the ANA’s NCO corps continues to be one of Chamkani’s biggest missions. He can regularly be seen supervising the NCO courses and making sure NCOs conduct checks before ANA convoys leave the wire. Often, volunteers to go outside the wire with troops, as he did on two recent missions to his home district.

At times, his official duties have taken him much farther. In December 2008, Chamkani visited the United States for three weeks. He visited the Sergeants Major Academy at Fort Bliss, Texas and also visited Fort Hood, Texas, where he observed how the U.S. Army’s G-sections are organized. He described the quality of life, education and military discipline in the U.S. as “one hundred times better” than in Afghanistan, a thought which inspires him to improve his own country.

He continues to look with gratitude to his U.S. counterparts.

“My partnership with the Americans has been good,” he said. “Without their help, I would definitely be behind schedule.”

Brown, a former sergeant major of the state of Indiana’s National Guard, honored Chamkani by presenting him with the Indiana Sergeant Major’s coin and certificate in front of the commander of the 203rd Thunder Corps, ANA Maj. Gen. Abdul Khaliq.

“Toward the end of my deployment, this is what I’ve found: I want to express my appreciation to him and in some small way in front of his boss for his faithfulness and service to his country we are all very proud of him,” Brown said.

PAKTYKA PROVINCE, Afghanistan — Afghan National Army hospitals do not normally do pediatric work, but when civilians have nowhere else to go, ANA doctors often find ways to accommodate them.

Such a scenario occurred, Aug. 30, when the Afghan National Army-run Paktya Regional Medical Hospital at Forward Operating Base Thunder received an Afghan child with a severe laceration to the foot.

The drama began when the 2-and-a-half-year-old child wandered outside while his father was breaking stone. No one at the hospital was exactly sure what caused the laceration, but U.S. Air Force physician Maj. Robert Sarlay Jr., an advisor to the hospital with the Medical Embedded Training Team at nearby FOB Lightning, speculated that a sharp fragment of rock might have been the culprit.

Within hours of the child received the injury, the father took him to the closest coalition forces base, Combat Outpost Tillman, to receive treatment. Before long, it was determined the child would need to seek a higher level care. The two were then transported by priority medical evacuation on a Black Hawk helicopter to Paktya Regional Medical Hospital at FOB Thunder and arrived at about 10 p.m.

X-rays taken after his arrival to the Paktya Regional Medical Hospital showed the laceration to be a flesh wound only – a “partial de-gloving of the foot” in medical parlance – and not a compound fracture as some had feared. The child was then taken to the emergency room and put under anesthesia so that Afghan medical professionals could clean, irrigate and close the wound.

“They [the Afghans] did a very good job, especially with the closure,” said U.S. Air Force Maj. James G. Olanda, a certified registered nurse and anesthetist with the FOB Lightning METT, who was present in the emergency room when the child was being treated.

Many civilians do not go to these hospitals, however – and those that do prefer to keep their anonymity – because they fear reprisals from the Taliban, said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. David V. Gill, the commander of the METT at FOB Lightning, and a Fairhope, Ala. resident.

The Afghan professionals, who hadn’t seen a pediatric case in months, also had reason to be nervous.

“They were [initially] very hesitant to take the patient because pediatrics is a whole different field than adult medical care,” said Olanda, who hails from Cincinnati, Ohio.

Nevertheless, all signs show that the procedure was successful.

“This morning the kid was as happy as can be,” Sarlay said, Aug. 31. “He’s back laughing and playing … kids bounce back like that.”

The procedure may also have an effect on a wider level.

“For them to reach out to help – the family benefits but, indirectly, the government is shown to be helping,” Sarlay said.

The Afghan National Army-run Paktya Regional Medical Hospital at Forward Operating Base Thunder received an Afghan child with a severe laceration to the foot.

It’s rare these days to read the news without in some way being reminded of pernicious influences of Islamism in the Muslim world. The ongoing debate about the cause or causes of all this has resulted in much spilt ink and many ruffled feathers but, so far, no consensus.

In his new book, “The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis,” Robert R. Reilly attempts to shed new light on this debate. He argues that the trouble originates in philosophical debates over 1,000 years old.

Reilly begins by describing “the opening of the Muslim mind” during the Abbasid Caliphate, circa 800 AD. Having recently encountered ancient Greek texts for the first time, Islamic thinkers soon began pondering questions about the possibility of free will, the nature of God and causality.

One of the great heroes of this period was Caliph Al Ma’Mun, whose life was changed by a dream he had in which Aristotle appeared to him. He asked Aristotle “What is good?” and Aristotle replied “What is rationally good.” From then on, Al Ma’Mun played an active role in the development of philosophy. His biggest accomplishment was the establishment of the Bayt al Hikma (House of Wisdom) where ancient texts were translated from Greek, Syriac and Hebrew into Arabic and other languages.

During this period a school of thinkers known as the Mu’tazilites emerged. The Mu’tazilites, who Reilly portrays as the good guys, believed that human free will exists, that reoccurring patterns in the universe reflect a natural order, that the Koran is a created, not an eternal, document, and that God is reason.

Soon, the Mu’tazilites faced a rival school, the Ash‘arites, who disagreed on all of these points. According to the Ash‘arites, God is not reason but pure will, unfettered even by the law of non-contradiction. Most fatefully, the Ash‘arites did not believe in enduring matter or causation, but thought God creates and annihilates the universe at every instant.

Imagine an arrow that flies through points A, B and C. An Ash‘arite would hold that God creates the entire world from nothing with the arrow at A, then destroys it, then recreates it with the arrow at B, then destroys it, then recreates it at C and destroys it yet again. If a miracle is conceived as an interruption of a natural order, then according to the Ash‘arites no miracles exist, because there exists no natural order to be interrupted.

In such a universe there is little for reason to do. It should come as no surprise, then, that when the tables turned and the Ash‘arites were in power, reason came to be regarded as more and more suspect. After philosopher Al Ghazali’s endorsement, a version of the Ash‘arite worldview became almost synonymous with the traditional Islam, leading to a host of intellectual and social ills.

“It is no accident that the embraced view of a tyrannical god produces tyrannical political orders,” Reilly polemically puts it.

Reilly provides some interesting evidence that the Ash‘arite views on causation are still holding the Muslim world back. I can add one example of my own.

During my last deployment, I spoke with a group of U.S. military trainers in northern Iraq who had trouble convincing the Iraqi soldiers to don body armor. The Iraqis would say things like, “If Allah wants the bullet to hit me the bullet will just go around the armor.” It seemed to me then as it seems to me now that such a worldview can only be the product of indoctrination in very radical theology.

Reilly’s book is not without its flaws. There is scant mention of the impact of the Mongol’s destruction of Baghdad, for instance. Also, in Chapter 7, which describes the effects of Ash‘arite ideology, Reilly isn’t careful enough to distinguish between statistics about Muslim countries and statistics about Arab countries. At one incautious moment he writes “Muslim” in a passage where only Arab makes sense.

Reilly remains conspicuously silent on some very important points. He mentions that the Christian world was philosophically tempted by and managed to resist Ash‘arite-like ideas, but we never get a fleshed-out story as to why. (On this point, I recommend Richard Rubenstein’s book “Aristotle’s Children” for supplementary reading.)

In my opinion, Reilly doesn’t discuss this because he wants to remain agnostic as to whether the rise of Ash‘arite philosophy had something to do with Islam itself. I suspect he is actually attracted to the stronger, more controversial thesis.

Despite a few flaws I find myself convinced by the narrative Reilly presents in “The Closing of the Muslim Mind.” If Reilly’s thesis is correct, this book is further evidence that ideas—even very abstract philosophical ideas—do indeed have consequences.

Journal freelance writer Spencer Case is a 2009 graduate of Idaho State University and a philosophy master’s student at University of Colorado. He is currently serving in Afghanistan with the U.S. Army Reserve’s 304th Public Affairs Detachment.

PAKTYA PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN – U.S. Air Force physician Maj. Robert Sarlay Jr., who works as a mentor for the Medical Embedded Training Team at Forward Operating Base Lightning, observes as Afghan National Army physicians conduct patient rounds at the Paktya Regional Medical Hospital Aug. 15. The patient, an Afghan Soldier with 3rd Brigade, 203rd Thunder Corps, suffered a gunshot wound. Sarlay, a Dallas native who now resides in Dayton, Ohio describes his current job as equal parts administration and diplomacy. “It’s unlike any other assignment I’ve ever had and probably ever will have,” Sarlay said of his current assignment. (Photo by U.S. Army Sgt. Spencer Case, 304th Public Affairs Detachment)

PAKTYA PROVINCE, Afghanistan – U.S. Air Force physician Maj. Robert Sarlay Jr. has become fond of a quote by T.E. Lawrence: “Better the Arab do it tolerably than you do it perfectly.”
Not that Sarlay thinks himself a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia. Ordinarily Sarlay, a Dallas native who now resides in Dayton, Ohio, is a man of less exotic tastes. When he’s not practicing emergency medicine at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Sarlay spends time with his wife Betsey and 3-year-old daughter Carina and plays catch with his dog Raven, a German shepherd that fetches logs rather than sticks, he said.
Since his arrival to Forward Operating Base Lightning in June, Sarlay has worked as a mentor for his Afghan National Army counterparts at the Paktya Regional Medical Hospital. As a member for the Medical Embedded Training Team at FOB Lightning, he describes his current job as equal parts administration and diplomacy. In a nutshell, Sarlay’s job is to help his Afghan counterparts overcome bad habits that are either culturally ingrained or have accumulated after more than 30 years of war.
Sarlay, who is used to working 16-hour days that the uninitiated would find grueling, said his current assignment is more mentally and emotionally much more taxing than any other assignment he’s ever done.
“It’s easy for me to do patient care because I’m well-trained and well-versed,” he said. “It’s much more difficult to develop processes for the ANA.”

Sarlay completed medical school through the military’s Health Profession Scholarship Program at the University of Texas at Houston.  After his internship at Houston, he received his first job as a doctor with 9th Bombardment Sqdn., 7th Bomb Wing at Dyess, Air Force Base, Abilene, Texas in 2000. After five years as a flight surgeon he was transferred to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where he worked doing emergency care.

Sarlay’s formal duties as a mentor, such as advising Afghan mentees are only the tip of the iceberg, he said. The lion’s share of his work is done on the informal side, where he expends effort trying to gently and diplomatically coax his counterparts into adopting standards that doctors in the U.S. take for granted.
“It’s a lot of sitting and drinking chai and talking about why it’s good to have standards,” he said.
Standards include things like keeping proper records for patients. As the political situation in Afghanistan decayed, so did Afghan doctors’ record-keeping habits .
“I’ll ask them, ‘What if you go to Kabul and don’t come back, will (the other doctors in the hospital) know what was done with this treatment?’” he said. “They’ll say ‘Because we all talk together in the morning.’ And I’ll say, ‘But what if one morning you don’t?’”
In the course of his planning and administrative work, Sarlay has occasionally had the opportunity to practice hands-on medicine. For instance, a few weeks ago the hospital received an Afghan Border Policeman who had to be treated for blast lung injury, a bruising of the lungs caused by being in close proximity to a high-explosives detonation. With Sarlay’s help, the hospital staff learned how to manage ventilated patients.
“They’re slowly progressively improving,” Sarlay said of his Afghan counterparts.  “When you’re here for six months you don’t necessarily see it, but when you talk to people who have been here two or three years ago you do.”
One person who has seen it is U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Bernard L. Vanpelt, a pharmacy mentor with the METT, who has been at FOB Lightning since March.
“We’ve seen progress with providers becoming more proactive with regard to trauma issues,” said Vanpelt, who hails from St. Louis and is stationed at Moody Air Force Base, Ga.
The addition of an Intensive Care Unit since Vanpelt’s arrival is one such improvement.
Vanpelt added that Sarlay’s efforts are helping the practitioners improve.
“By his being in that leadership room with the doctors, he’ll have an impact—indirectly mind you—on how the doctors understand and adhere to the newly established standards,” he said.
He looks forward to returning home to Dayton in about six months, where he will resume his practice of emergency medicine. He also hopes to be selected for the residency in a two to three year aerospace medicine program. The program would allow him to be board certified for evaluate the health of pilots, among other things.
“It’s unlike any other assignment I’ve ever had and probably ever will have,” Sarlay said of his current assignment.

A few days before I left Pocatello for Afghanistan, Bill Schaefer, a fellow military writer and photographer at the Idaho State Journal, gave me an old paperback copy of Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War. It turned out to be a great parting gift, which I carried in my cargo pocket and finished just as the binding came apart.
The Peloponnesian War gives play-by-play coverage of one of the earliest military conflicts in recorded history, the war between Athens and Sparta (circa 455-400 BC). To read it is to gain an appreciation for the reoccurring trends in human affairs, and stupidity is by no means the least conspicuous of these.
As an exiled Athenian general, Thucydides was ideally placed to give an expert yet impartial account of the war, despite a small cameo in his own narrative. Thucydides’ confidence can be surprising, as when he writes:
“My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last forever.”
I’ll have to remember that for my next publication rejection letter. Of course, from me it would be sour grapes. From a guy whose work has been around since 400 years before Jesus, though, it’s undeniably impressive.
The story begins about 50 years after a yet earlier war, the Greco-Persian War, in which Athens and Sparta fought together to repel the invading Persians. The record of these consequential events comes to us through two authoritative sources: the world’s first historian, Herodotus of Helicarnassus, and the movie 300.
Like America post-World War 2, Athens came out with the strong hand among the allies, becoming something of a superpower in the Hellenic world. When the Athenians built a wall around their city, people in other city states saw this as an aggressive act. (If this seems counterintuitive, think about how investments in missile-defense technology can be taken today.) The resentment at Athens’ hubris helped sow the seeds for the Peloponnesian conflict.
A seemingly inconsequential revolution within the city of Epidamnus proved to be the spark that ignited the tinder. Things escalated until Athens and Sparta became ensnared in a tragic, 27-year war. The Founding Forefathers, who were educated in Greek history, may well have had complexities of the Greek city- state politics in mind when they warned us of “entangling alliances.”
Thucydides account of these events did seem a little meticulous in some places, but I found it to contain a wealth of riveting passages as well, such as the apocalyptic details of the plague outbreak in Athens at the beginning of the war.
My favorite parts of the book were not battles, but speeches of the delegations. In Thucydides’ apparently faithful reconstructions of the debates, you get a feel not only for the events but the arguments and ideas that led to them.  It’s fun to place yourself in the shoes of the adjudicators and if you aren’t familiar with the history, as I wasn’t, you won’t have the unfair benefit of hindsight.
It’s strange to read ancient history and come across something that rings familiar, sort of like seeing pictures of your father at about your age except on a macro-scale. In the Peloponnesian Wars, there are plenty such moments. For instance, toward the end of the book, after the Athenians had undertaken the disastrous Sicily campaign, we read:
“What wore them down more than anything else was the fact that they had two wars on their hands at once, and indeed they had got themselves into such a state of obstinate resolution that no one would have believed it possible if he had been told of it before it actually happened.”
It has been suggested in some quarters that we may be in a similar bind.
No book is complete without heroes and villains and here, too, The Peloponnesian Wars doesn’t disappoint. For me one of the biggest heroes is the Athenian Pericles, in his funeral speech in the early years of the war, explicates what is to me the ideal of patriotism, confident without being bellicose, firm without being arrogant. As for villains, none are more spectacular than Cleon, whose self-promotion and hard-line stances spell disaster for his fellow Athenians.
In short, reading Thucydides has opened my eyes to the value of studying history, even the history that seems very far removed. I owe Bill thanks for the book and congratulations for his elevated taste.

A few weeks ago I left Afghanistan for 15 days of R&R. I’m not completely sure whether that stands for “rest and refit” or “rest and recuperation,” but it’s a temporary respite from deployment.

During my Iraq deployment, before I had developed a taste for world travel, I had gone home to Pocatello, Idaho. There’s no place like home.  This time, however, I couldn’t resist getting a free two-way plane ticket to anywhere in the world. Pace Dorothy, home can wait; there’s no place like Europe, either.

That’s not to say that R&R was just about location—it was about content, too.  Before I abruptly left the University of Colorado philosophy program in Boulder to go on this deployment, I told one of my professors about an idea for a paper that I had been mulling over. The professor, arch-utilitarian Alastair Norcross whose ethics pro-seminar I had been taking, suggested that I write the paper and present it at a philosophy conference in Bled, Slovenia the following June for my R&R.

Over the course of my deployment, I spent much of my leisure time working on the paper, sending drafts to friends and teachers at Idaho State University and University of Colorado. At one point, presented a version of it to my military peers for non-commissioned officer development training.  At last, June arrived I set off with a “good enough” draft of the paper in hand.

After a pit stop for out-processing in Kuwait—where it was, as one of the other soldiers observed, hotter than certain impolite areas of Satan’s anatomy—I flew into Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana. Fellow conference-attendee Tea Logar, a young Georgetown PhD, graciously picked me up at the airport and took me to my hostel by the Ljubljanica River.

I spent the rest of the day enjoying Ljubljana. The city, with a population of only 300,000, had a relaxed cosmopolitan atmosphere. Plenty of old churches and museums were within walking distance. Moreover, the channeled river was lined with cafes, bars and home-made ice-cream stands.

The next day, Tea and I rode to Bled together. Bled is one of those places that looks too picturesque to be real.  The town, situated in the Julian Alps, is centered around a lake where an old fashion church strikingly rises from an island. Adding to the scene, Bled castle overlooked the whole scene from a 130 meter cliff.

The conference began the next day. Due to funding cuts the conference rather small—only about 20 philosophers present—but what it lacked in size it made up for in spirit. There were a number of interesting papers presented, but by far the most rewarding part of the conference was the discussion that came over dinner and drinks afterward.  I met a number of interesting people, including Nenad Miscevic of the University of Rijeka, Saul Smilansky of the University of Haifa, and Scott O’Leary, a PhD student at Fordham University.

On day four of the conference I presented my own paper with the title, “Soldiering as a profession.” The paper was modeled around the ideas presented in a paper called “Professing Medicine” by Edmund Pellegrino, an Emeritus professor at Georgetown. That paper argued that a distinction had to be made between mere jobs and professions:  whereas jobs are simply things one does in exchange for money, professions are institutions that commit one to ways of being through an act of profession, that is, a public oath that commits one to the development of certain virtues.

My thesis was simply: If Pellegrino’s understanding of professionalism is useful for understanding ethics in medicine, it ought to say something about military ethics as well. Enlistment oaths would simply take the place that the Hippocratic Oath occupied in Pellegrino’s system.

The paper was very well received, which is not to say everyone walked away convinced. The southeastern Europeans present at the conference had trouble with my idealized conception of soldiering given the recent memory of Serbian war crimes. The question and answer period was interesting. Most of the questions focused around aspects of soldiering that made it relevantly different from other professions, but these were objections that I had ready answers for.

I had a week to kill when the conference ended. I spent it exploring Slovenia on my own and making an excursion to Vienna. Without friends to chat philosophy with, however, it wasn’t the same and I felt ready to get back to the grind in Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, R&R did give me the break I needed. Now another 100 days and I’ll be home.