Russell In Afghanistan Update #6 – 1 January 2010 – Holiday Leave and Electronic Media Bombardment
3 January 10
Happy New Year to everyone!
For that matter, given the frequency with which I’ve updated – Happy holidays, Happy Thanksgiving, and a solemn Veterans Day to you all, as well. I must say, I’ve been quite remiss in keeping in touch in this mass forum. It’s not without an excuse, at least, as the last few months have been busy as hell.
There’s so much to tell you all about, and there are a ton of links in this email as I try to incorporate more illustrative forms of media into my updates. Since I last updated, my team has been very busy undergoing the most intense and final phase of our training in Hungary and Germany. There have been many, many moving parts to the last several months, hundreds of hours of training conducted within our team, and many battles fought with a multitude of organizations to help get us as prepared as we can be for our ultimate deployment to Afghanistan this month.
Part of being away from home means having to miss certain events that you come to regularly plan on. It’s the disruptive nature of things like these, and servicemembers who are on fulltime active duty have it even worse. Worse being relative, that is, as we all chose this profession. Still, one of the big events back home every year that I look forward to attending is a Veterans Day breakfast at Brady Middle School in Pepper Pike, Ohio. Mrs. Carol Kapostasy, a teacher there, puts it together every year in conjunction with VFW Post 5799’s Patriot’s Pen essay contest and I’ve been privileged to speak there the last few years. This year, I obviously was not able to make it, but sent my message over the internet.
October and November were pretty rough months which mainly saw two of my favorite things: a lot of time on weapons ranges, and time spent in the classroom focused on counterinsurgency and combat advising. The time spent outdoors got to be hellishly cold and wet, but we wouldn’t have had it any other way. The time discussing counterinsurgency and combat advising made some guys’ brains hurt so bad, I’m sure they would have spent an entire month outside in the cold and wet just to get out of the classroom.
The weaponry is important for obvious reasons. When we have to act quickly to destroy an identified enemy target, we must be able to expertly wield any weapon system at hand. Most of our training in direct-fire weapons systems has been defensive (reflexive fire and transitioning between a rifle which has just run out or malfunctioned and your pistol) because under normal circumstances there should be several echelons of ANA between us and the enemy. Still, variations between our western-bloc NATO-standard equipment and the Hungarians’ former eastern-bloc equipment caused us to have to familiarize ourselves with every system they had, and vice-versa. If, in the heat of an engagement, the only weapon you can find is a Hungarian machine-gun, you better know how to use it, and you sure as hell better know how to perform immediate action if or when it stops firing. The links below are to a video clip showing one of my soldiers (left position) and myself (right position) tossing both Hungarian and U.S. hand grenades at a target. With all the gear we had on, there’s a fair share of short tosses and some good-natured salty language from other soldiers, um, cheering us on. Hungarian Horseshoes – (a few bad words, nothing you haven’t heard before, though). Below that, there is also a short clip of me firing a rocket-propelled grenade, the insurgents’ weapon of choice, and a common weapon in the Hungarian and Afghan armies.
Putting together and teaching the counterinsurgency and combat advising classes were by far my favorite part. It was the part we were the most worried about translating properly from our military’s culture to the Hungarians’. While, on one hand, more Hungarians on the team have been deployed to Afghanistan than Americans, the training we received at Fort Riley will go down in my book as the single best thing the Army’s ever done for me and we wanted to be able to present its lessons to the Hungarians just right. If you get too academic or theoretical, you’re bound to lose most of your soldiers. You must repeatedly reinforce that tactics in counterinsurgency have just as much relevance and importance for the individual soldier as any offensive or defensive task. We tried as best as we could to present condensed versions of many of the culture, history, and social geography lessons we were fortunate enough to have received at Fort Riley and were pretty successful in getting points across.
One amazing and unlikely teaching device that Army instructors have seemed to warm up to is five to ten minute video clips offered on the internet via sites like YouTube, which can underscore just about any point one is trying to make. They were invaluable in helping drive home points that we were making in our counterinsurgency and combat advising classes, and soldiers could go back to them on their own time and review things they didn’t quite get the first time around. If you can take the time to watch most of these recommended videos, you’ll be guaranteed to know more about the last few years in Afghanistan than any of your friends or coworkers. Seriously, though, as mainstream America still has trouble grasping the full commitment that a war of this kind requires not only from the military domain but diplomatic, economic, media, and in terms of national willpower, a few of the videos below are excellent “energy bars” of information that really cut through a lot of the haze for many people.
Steven Pressfield, author of Gates of Fire & The Afghan Campaign has a five-part video series, approximately 20 minutes’ total investment where he discusses the tribal nature of Afghanistan and even manages to strip away religious arguments while comparing Alexander The Great’s experiences in Afghanistan to our experiences today. It’s an extremely insightful perspective and only takes about 20-25 minutes at five minutes a pop:
Episode 1 – “It’s The Tribes, Stupid”
Episode 2 – “The Citizen Versus The Tribesman”
Episode 3 – “Tribes Are Different From You And Me”
Episode 4 – “Fighting A Tribal Enemy”
Episode 5 – “How To Win In Afghanistan”
CBS 60 Minutes Combat in Afghanistan: Lara Logan and 60 Minutes spend a month with U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and see some intense combat. While this video does not demonstrate much interaction with Afghan security forces, it does illustrate what a truly up-close fight this is. The technology and stand-off Americans have been accustomed to seeing since the Gulf War are usually last resorts in this kind of fight. Gritty, determined soldiers and their gritty, determined opponents. These men are not pushovers, and while this video displays a lot of the strictly combat engagements, things get even more difficult when civilian considerations, local government and local politics come into play.
Beating The Taliban By The Book: Made by the same folks who made the Lost in Translation video, this something less of a good-news story. Here, U.S. soldiers – just as tough and smart as the soldiers featured in the 60 Minutes piece are shown, but through a lens of counterinsurgency. The way they interact with the population does not endear the soldiers to their tribal nature. They seem more concerned about complaining about electricity, water and toilets on their base than the situation outside it. They are gruff with elders, disregard a lot of nuance needed in dealing with tribesmen, and lack self-awareness of how they’re probably, in turn, perceived by the Afghans.
Lost in Translation – Afghanistan: A lot of salty language, but a good lesson. This video shows how difficult it is to relate to and communicate with the native populace on our own. Thus, why it’s so important we strengthen the Afghan security forces. Watch how one frustrated soldier communicates gruffly with a man who is many years older than him, using an inadequate interpreter. We used this video as a lesson in gauging and finding a good interpreter, but it also illustrates how a soldier without the proper training – not just language, but people skills, leader engagements and COIN training – can affect a situation for the worse. He’s no doubt a good soldier, and trying, but frustrated because he hasn’t entered the situation properly prepared and with appropriate expectations.
As always, with sites like YouTube, just assume that any comments posted below the videos are made by the dumbest people the world has to offer and please don’t think I support or endorse any of the rubbish third parties will post beneath those videos.
In my attempts to further impress the importance of patience in counterinsurgency, Mary had a chance to interact with Army Chief of Staff GEN George W. Casey, Jr., at the City Club of Cleveland earlier in November and ask him a question I sent her from Hungary. Click here to listen:
Thanksgiving was spent in Grafenwoehr, Germany, where we had a culminating mounted gunnery range and didn’t really get a Thanksgiving proper, but nobody seemed to mind too much. A wonderful organization known as Operation Baking GALS (http://www.bakinggals.com/) sent (literally) several hundred pounds of homemade cookies, brownies, and other such treats right before we left, so it really, really made up for a lot of the stuff we missed during your typical Thanksgiving feast. There really were some amazing ladies and families who were incredibly kind in sending us their recipes and treats. I was also lucky enough to say hi to my friends at WNYC’s The Takeaway for a brief interview about our Thanksgiving plans. Click here to hear:
Other than the exciting training that’s occupied our final phase, life has had its typical ups and downs for all of us. Some rugged terrain and about 100 lbs of gear during one of our field exercises caused a pretty nasty sprained ankle (worse than my wedding!) that kept me out of my gear and off my foot for the better part of a few weeks. Weekends off and passes here and there saw groups of Soldiers hit Vienna, Austria and Bratislava, Slovakia, among other places. My wife, Mary, came out to Vienna for a three-day pass that was absolutely lovely. We had planned on spending a four-day pass in Zurich, Switzerland, but she had a bad case of the flu, and international air travel is just the wrong thing to do in that situation. I went to Zurich on my own (damn!) and though I didn’t enjoy it as much as I would have with her, I found it amazing, if expensive, and am excited to go back there together someday. Most recently, as our training was winding down in Hungary, Mary was able to come out for our final week and see what life in Tata was like, where we could make a pit stop in Berlin to see my good friend and fellow OIF veteran Josh Gnizak and his wonderful girlfriend, before heading back to the States for Christmas leave. Berlin was amazing, futuristic, and had some bitter cold wind for the third week in December, but a great time was had. After Berlin, we had just the absolute damnedest time trying to get back to the States, as the holiday Snowpocalypse of 2009 had beset the eastern seaboard. After about four real and three theoretical flight itineraries and a small bribe to a ticket agent later, we ended up having to overnight in Newark, New Jersey and getting into Cleveland about sixteen hours later than scheduled. Jet lag and European Central Time has been taking its toll – I’m passed out by 10pm and wired at 4am. Christmas leave has come and practically gone and has been pretty bittersweet – a series of hellos, only to have to say goodbye soon afterward. With the love I have for the subject, I could make a career out of counterinsurgency and stability in Afghanistan, but part of me wants the next few months to zip by, for sure. Mary and I talked about the family aspects of a deployment to The Takeaway on New Year’s Day. Click here to listen:
Other than that, leave has been wonderful, even in the mundane things. I’ve done some laundry, got a dentist appointment in, got a new driver’s license… Being boring and not rushed can be good fun sometimes. My attempt to get into the MS in Foreign Service program at Georgetown’s Walsh School continues. I retook the GREs on the 28th and most of my application is in, with just a week to go before the deadline. January 5th will see me fly back to Budapest and sometime after that, we’ll finally enter Afghanistan. It only gets more serious from here.
And, while the start of a new year is usually the most symbolic time to start something new – hence, all the resolutions people make – I’ve never been much for resolutions. I either do something in the most quick and direct manner as possible, or I don’t. I can’t keep my room clean to save my life and though I did reach a weight goal this year, I never intended to do it by passing up all the potted-meat rations we’ve been getting in Hungary. As our boots-on-the-ground time draws nearer, I’ve been thinking more and more about the land we will all soon be risking our lives in, the war that is bringing us there and the tens of thousands of lives it has taken or shattered, and I have been taking in all the recent national soul-searching that has become popular about this eight-year-old war. I’ve also more than once been inspired by my good friend and fellow veteran and officer 1LT Kristen L. Rouse, the founder of Veterans for Afghanistan (http://www.veteransforafghanistan.org/) and the idea that the legacy of coalition nations in Afghanistan does not have to be one exclusively of war.
As an infantry company advisor, my role is somewhat limited when I am in Afghanistan in that my ANA counterpart must be the virtually sole focus of my influence, and – we hope – it will then be up to him to wield what we call non-lethal effects for the counterinsurgency. I have a great respect for the fact that everything we do as servicemembers in Afghanistan and as veterans of Afghanistan after our time there is over reflects directly on the legacy of the United States and its allies. While I hope we are able to go a long way with nonlethal effects and humanitarian assistance missions, I am not naïve to the fact that our operations will largely be offensive and defensive engagements. Regardless of what events or circumstance have in store for us while I’m in Afghanistan, I’ve decided that the best way to contribute to the country beyond my official military duties is by sponsoring an Afghan orphan through the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization (AFCECO – www.afceco.org). They are a great organization which partners with CharityHelp International, a U.S. 501(c)(3) organization, to establish orphanages throughout the country to care for Afghan orphans. It’s just one more, simple, small thing I can do to help the situation in Afghanistan.
I will say this: I am intensely interested in helping the people of Afghanistan within the confines of my combat duties or outside of them. My combat duties are my paramount priority and I may get to do nothing but them my entire time there. I can accept that but will continue to look for opportunities to apply nonlethal effects in our area. That said, I don’t mind if I don’t get a single Rice Krispie treat or bottle of Gatorade while I’m over there. If, as you’re doing your end-of-the-holiday clearance shopping, or cleaning out your attic, or whatever and have things that can be of use to Afghans, feel free to bombard my mail – shoes, winter clothes, school supplies and household first aid supplies are probably among the most important things that can be sent. If you or somebody you know doesn’t feel like sending anything, but still wants to make a personal contribution to stability in Afghanistan, visit the AFCECO site. We can all play a part in stabilizing Afghanistan.
Until we move or leave sometime this summer, my address in Afghanistan will be:
1LT RUSSELL GALETI
OMLT TEAM ORTHUS
CAMP SPANN\CAMP KELAGAI
APO AE 09354
I hope 2010 brings greater prosperity to our country and renewed resolve from the American people to stand by our commitments to the people of Afghanistan. A very, very happy new year to all. Your continued well-wishes and support are truly amazing and mean such a great deal to all of us.
Russell Galeti
Pro patria!
Russell P Galeti Jr
RUSSELL P GALETI JR
1LT, IN, OHARNG
Operational Mentor and Liaison Team
“When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen; and we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in the happy hour when the establishment of American Liberty, upon the most firm and solid
foundations shall enable us to return to our Private Stations in the bosom of a free, peaceful and happy Country.” – George Washington in a letter to the New York Legislature, June 26, 1775
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1LT Russell P Galeti Jr
