Army Strong Stories

Day: 2/8/2010

What's up peeps?! I've been here at Ft. Lee (Prince George, VA) for about two days and it has been full go from day one! We have been filling out a ton of paperwork and (for those of us with no prior service) trying to learn Army courtesies and customs on the fly. I'm meeting alot of my classmates and it seems we are a very diverse group. Dont hold me to this number but its about 110 of us from all over the country and from all practice areas.  The weather is grea....horrible! lol. It's C-O-L-D cold out here in Virginia but we are getting through it. I find myself inspired by some of my older classmates because they are with us in the cold every minute so if they can endure it then this 26 yr old southern boy can too...Hooah! Before I go any further, I have one question? How Bout Dem SAINTS!? Hooah DAT?! Apparently no one in the NFL, we are world champions. I definitely am beginning to feel that group cooperation/group effort vibe I was anticipating. Its great to be in this enviroment again. I havent felt like this since my college football days. In fact so far it feels like "2-A-Days." We have a set schedule (that is subject to change) and are always on the go. Seems like we only have time to eat and fraternize here and there.  As one of our Cadre said, "As direct commissionees we have a steep learning curve," so its critical that we remain focus. We are learning how to line up in formation and a little bit of DnC (drill and ceremony), and I have never felt so uncoordinated but its cool to be out of my element and forced to learn something totally foreign. In fact, I had some counting problems this morning that one of our Cadre comically pointed out to me. lol! Ft. Lee, VA is beautiful, although it could be because of the snow, and the locals are nice. Im considering on competing for an Airborne slot...We were told that they're only 10 slots available and it seems that 40 of us may be going after those slots. For some strange reason Im drawn to this "I dare you to try" vibe that the cadre are exuding, plus I know I could use the extra PT and although it'll probably hurt, in the long run it can only help, right? Hooah! I've got PT in the morning@0620 so I'm going to try to get some R&R in early tonight. I'd like to thank my partners at my firm, my line brothers/chapter brothers (Xi Beta/Rho Beta Beta/Omega Psi Phi), and especially Aliya and my family for your prayers and support. Also I'd like to thank SFC Castro and the officers, NCO's, and enlisted from Houston's Team 4 of the 1ST LSO for all their words of wisdom and pointers regarding IMT and OBC. I plan to post pics in the near future....gotta get some rest now...GEAUX SAINTS....HOOAH-DAT!? 1LT Wilson...out!


 
 

Washington DC recieved one of the biggest winter storms this past weekend.  The storm started Friday and continued through Saturday.  By the time it was done my house had received 24 inches of snow (the record is 28 inches).  They released us early on Friday and Monday ended up being cancelled also.

Depending on the location, the military/government will react to inclement weather differently.  There is no set standard to how snow will impact day to day operations.  At my last to assignments we watch the news station in the morning, and receive our update about closings or delays from that. 


 
 

Thursday I had several interesting cases - buccal space infection that came in on sick call - lots of puss - forgot my camera though :(

For the day I delivered 2 crowns on 2 individuals ( 1 was on an implant), had another all-ceramic crown to deliver - but the color was off so I sent it back to be remade, 2 extractions and an incision and drainage, 3 exams, 1 two surface posterior composite, smoothed down a chipped tooth, and 1 post operative complication - guy had had surgery done somehwere else, and things needed to be opened back up and cleaned out.

Tooth appeared too dark - sent the case back with some photos to help them as they re-make it.

We wanted the crown to be a combination of 2 shades, so we held up the correct shades next to the crown they sent us so they could use it as a reference point for the next one.


 
 

These are President George Bush’s words, not mine. I wish they were mine. They are from his acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention in 2004. The point he was making concerned the sorry state of public education resulting in a high rate of failure. He believed American educators had set the achievement bar too low due to the mistaken belief that some students simply could not perform.

The same can be said about our present situation in Afghanistan. We have set the performance bar for the government here very low and the expectations are what one would expect which are very low indeed. As a result, we are seeing a self-fulfilling prophecy-if you are will to settle for so little success, that is precisely what you will see.

At the recently concluded London Conference, the international community pledged additional support to the Afghan government. The Afghan National Police will grow to 109,000 this year and the Afghan Army will grow to 134,000. Added together, this will require Afghanistan to add some 30,000 additional police and soldiers to the nation’s defense forces. For a nation of 33 million, on a war footing, struggling for survival, this should be relatively easy, considering that the international community is paying the total bill for salary, training, equipment, everything.

If you believe this you would be wrong because Afghanistan is decidedly not on a war footing. After eight years of war, the Afghan government has not gotten around to passing any legislation that remotely resembles a draft or compulsory national service. As a result, recruiters must scour the countryside looking for new recruits. This is not an easy job in Afghanistan and recruiting 30,000 in a single year is a tall order.

Even assuming a very good year and the recruiters actually recruit 30,000, only about half this number will be added to the force; 20% will fail drug testing, another 10% will not show up at the training centers and another 20% will simply walk away after drawing a couple of paychecks. The abnormally high attrition rate is due, in large part, to the fact that there is no retribution for leaving the force. No Afghan is ever punished for desertion. So to add 30,000 to the force, the recruiters need to actually recruit 45,000 and this will be a bridge too far in a single year. However, none of these troubling details were fully examined during the London Conference.

To be fair, not everything could have been discussed at London. The diplomats there had important business to discuss such as making overtures to the Taliban to come down from the Hindu Kush and join the Afghan government. President Karzai offered the Taliban jobs and money to lure them out of the mountains. He called these offers an incentive; others called them a bribe. In any event, the Taliban were having none of it, waiting, no doubt, for a better offer. As a result, there were no great expectations for resolutions to be found for every problem or for everything to be covered in great detail. A prime example of issues not resolved at the London Conference is the poppy problem. Right now down south, in Kandahar, Helmand and Nimroz provinces, a half a million acres of poppies are sprouting in the fields. They will be ready for harvest in late May and it looks like another bumper crop in the making.

Without question, the poppies represent Afghanistan’s major export. The country produces 97% of the world’s supply of opium. The poppies are the single biggest source of corruption in the country and represent some 90% of the Taliban’s funding. They could easily be eradicated by aerial spraying, thereby ending the cancer of corruption on Afghanistan and dealing the Taliban a crippling blow at the same time. However, aerial eradication is not even being discussed. Rather, the United States is following a policy of interdiction rather than eradication, opting to somehow intercept the processed drugs along an endless number of smuggling routes, rather than destroying them at the source, in the fields. Such a policy is the intellectual equivalent of attempting to destroy a missile in flight rather than blow it up on the launch pad.

To the surprise of no one, President Karzai agrees wholeheartedly with this strategy. He claims that he has encouraged the poppy farmers to give up growing poppies and grow legal crops instead. However, he says the farmers will not listen to his pleas and there is nothing he can do. The fact that growing poppies is illegal under the Afghan constitution is conveniently forgotten whenever this issue is discussed. In fact, the Afghan constitution elaborates in detail as to the illegality of the drug trade. So the American policy is to engage in interdiction and the Afghan government’s policy is to somehow convince the poppy growers to voluntarily stop growing the most rewarding crop known to man, a crop that can bring the farmer a tenfold greater profit than wheat or cotton. As long as the poppies are here, there will be money for the terrorists – terrorists that threaten the lives of our soldiers and our nation. This fact should be obvious to all parties but it is not. Maybe Keats had it right when he wrote, “Autumn slumber – all drowsed with the fume of the poppies.

No doubt, the 30,000 man surge pledged by President Obama will help in the war on terror. Neither can there be any doubt about the performance of our magnificent military on the ground here, clearing areas that were once Taliban strongholds and showing the Afghan security forces how to both fight the enemy and win the hearts and minds of the population. These points were never open to debate. However, as America begins the ninth year of combat in Afghanistan, no one knows for certain how it will all end. The questionable commitment of the Afghan government, coupled with the American strategy of demanding so little from it, is troubling. At some point, the Afghans are going to have to want to succeed at least as much as America wants them to succeed. Unfortunately, we have not yet reached this point nor can we see it anywhere on the horizon. In the meantime, this year’s crop of poppies is doing quite well in the south and the soft bigotry of low expectations is alive and well in Afghanistan and the great halls of the coalition forces.


 
 
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