AFG 4b: CRC Paperwork

Bob and I got on base early in the morning where we went to chapel with a bunch of airborne recruits. Some things that stand out about the recruits were these: how young they were, how short their hair was, and how fired up they were. The chapel also featured contemporary Christian music or CCM, which caught me, a traditional church music guy, by surprise. The lyrics were projected on a screen in the front of the church even though all the recruits seemed to know all the words, which was weird for me.

Soon it was time to leave and get back to CRC, the CONUS Replacement Center. Today we formed up and marched past the open-air concrete pad onto a road. The military guys in uniform went first marching in formation and shouting cadences that they all knew. The contractors, like me, brought up the rear in a rag-tag, undisciplined fashion. I’ve never been so proud.

We marched along this road for perhaps a mile, maybe less, up a hill to the biggest tent I’ve ever seen. In it contained a large, open-air room with row after row of tables and row after row of chairs. Behind the tables and chairs were a few classrooms that we would not see for a couple of days. We were instructed to take a seat. And there we were given forms to fill out. Forms would be passed out, we would fill them out, and then they would be collected. In one section were the military personnel in uniform, and in another section were the contractors. We were not allowed to mix. This went on for form after form, hour after hour. We went home on Sunday, came back on Monday, and filled out more forms. But there was a method to the madness. The instructors knew what they were doing – they had done this before – and it was clear that many people had been in this large CRC tent and had filled out many, many forms.

The day was punctuated by our lining up and marching back down the hill, with the military in the front and the contractors bringing up the rear, to the dining facility or the DFAC. The food was good and plentiful – you could eat as much as you wanted. It was also free; all you had to do was show your LOA. Then we’d march back up the hill to fill out more forms. After a while we also started to receive training, such as not to sexually assault our female colleagues because it could hurt team cohesion and jeopardize the mission. We were also instructed on what to do if we got captured, which was hold out for as long as possible and maintain our honor and morale but realize that everyone breaks eventually. One of the forms we had to fill out was for dog tags, and I remember thinking, “Cool, I get dog tags!”

But something else was happening, something that I did not expect but was fundamental to the CRC process: I was slowly but surely inculcating and embodying military ways. Through the process of being given instructions, implementing those instructions, marching up and down the hill, and eating at the DFAC, a civilian like me was slowly becoming adapted to the ways of the US military machine. The civilian world of hotels and restaurants was slowly fading into my mental background.

AFG 04a: CRC Arrival

It was Friday in late July in Georgia, and I picked Bob up from the Atlanta airport in a rental car, and from there we headed to Columbus and got a hotel suite with two bedrooms. At this early point in the week, everything seemed pretty normal, like an average business trip. Bob and I, once we got into town, went to a roadhouse restaurant where we got to eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor, which was a first for me. Later that day we made it onto the Ft. Benning base and figured out where we needed to be the next morning. With nothing else to do, we left. That night, I went to sleep with little idea of what was going to happen to me the rest of the week.

We got up early and made it onto base first thing Saturday morning, the Army way. We parked the car and made it into the CONUS Replacement Center (CRC), which at this point consisted of a bunch of buildings off to the right and a large, open-air concrete pad of covered by roof to provide shade from the intense Georgia sun. There were hundreds of people, both military in and contractors out of uniform, who were there with one goal in mind: to go off to war. But before you could do that, you had to show that your paperwork was squared away, and that’s why everyone was there. Bob and I had our Letters of Authorization (LOAs), and that was all I cared about, that was all they cared about. When I got up to the head of the line and had my LOA signed off, I was oh-so-glad I had sweated those details earlier in the week because there was no appeal, there was no arguing, and there was no wiggle room: you either had the LOA or you didn’t, and it appeared that some people didn’t.

Bob and I were there as highly-educated analysts, but it appeared to me that many of the people there were mechanics or service providers on their last legs that had spent quite a bit of time and resources to get to CRC in hopes of going to Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere to make some much needed money. And some of them didn’t have their paperwork together. They were arguing, and weedling, and making excuses, but it didn’t matter. There was no way for me to figure out how many people were leaving those desks for the long trip back home empty handed, but there were a few.

 

There were also a few people on the other side of the equation: guys whose paperwork was squared away and who were going over but were leaving loved ones behind. They wanted work in the United States, in CONUS, but couldn’t find any, or it didn’t pay enough. One guy I talked to was leaving his family behind to maintain helicopters, which he said “Hurt his heart.” After getting our paperwork confirmed, there was nothing left to do but leave and come back tomorrow, which we did.

AFG 03: Preparation

After leaving Tampa where I spent a week with Special Forces (SF), which was my first week of work at my new job, for some reason I went off to my second week of work at a conference in Chantilly, Virginia. The event was held at a mega-conference center that had the feel of an American version of Versailles built by the Marriott Corporation on short-notice. There in Chantilly I tagged up with my new boss, JP, and told him that the meeting at SOCOM went well but that I had unexpectedly been invited to go to Afghanistan for six months to be a political-economic analyst for SF. I then gently hinted that he probably didn’t want me to go because he hired me to do important work for him, right?

JP reaction was like a kid on Christmas morning: “You were asked to go to Afghanistan? That’s awesome! You should totally do it! What a great opportunity! That’s a once-in-a-lifetime adventure! You should totally go!”

Thanks JP, I had been sucked into and trapped within his reality distortion zone, and so began the Lowell Goes to Afghanistan (LG2A) project.

Now what I didn’t understand at the time is that it takes a lot planning, preparation, and paperwork to get yourself into a warzone, which is counterintuitive because, let’s face it, who really wants to be in a warzone? Given the work I put into it, apparently I did.

After I got back to work proper, I called my buddy Darrall who was in the Army and said, “SF wants me to go to Afghanistan – what do I do?”

Darrall said, “I hate to say this, but I’m now in the business of sending guys there. You want me to do that for you?”

I said yeah, so that’s how Darrall became my program manager, a kind of boss, for a while. So the paperwork started with me writing up what we were going to do. Now this was supposed to be Bob’s job, because: (1) recall that he was the one who knew the SF guy Fred, (2) this was his dream; and (3) I didn’t even really want to go. However, Bob worked for this gigantic defense contractor for whom a contract in the tens of millions was considered small potatoes, so this small, two-man analysis LG2A contract wouldn’t even appear on their radar, so because I worked for a small company that’s adapted to small contracts, writing up the proposal became my job.

The interesting part was that I had to write about what Bob and I were going to do in Afghanistan, a place I had never been, for a command about which I knew little, and for people I had never met. However, as a professional defense contractor, this didn’t stop me because if it was easy, then everyone would do it. Basically, I made up a bunch of stuff, including a schedule, which is insane because when I’m working for the command, basically I’ll be an analytic resource that will be tasked by the command, in a warzone, so how do I know what their schedule will be. And they’re in a warzone, so guess what? They themselves don’t know what their schedule is! But I made up a schedule anyway, which said that I’d provide a schedule a few weeks after Bob and I got there and figured out what was going on. One thing I made sure to do was write in my coming home for Christmas, the one precondition I had for going on this insane adventure. So we finished the proposal, sent it off, and after a few months, amazingly, it was accepted. Also, because I wrote up the proposal and my company was in charge, I became the project leader, what’s called the Principal Investigator or PI.

Increasing numbers of people in my new company had gotten wind of this proposed project over time because, let’s face it, it was so outrageous and interesting that how could you not have heard of it? I remember walking into work one day, and this other scientist, Ross, came walking in behind me.

Ross asks, “Are you Lowell?”

I answer, “Yeah.”

He says, “And is it true that you’re going to Afghanistan?”

I wonder how this guy I’ve never met knows about this, but say, “Yeah, there’s talk of it, but until I’m actually on that plane, I can’t believe it’ll actually happen.”

And that’s exactly the way I felt. I was going through all these motions and putting in all this work to go somewhere that I didn’t really want to go, which probably wasn’t going to happen anyway for some stupid reason, but that’s defense contracting.

One day, I’m sitting in my office with no windows directly under an air conditioning vent freezing. At my level of seniority, I should have a nice office with windows, but because I’m going to Afghanistan, the company has decided to give me a bad office and will take care of me when I get back. So I’m sitting there, freezing and not really believing that I’ll actually ever make it to Afghanistan, when this crazy senior corporate bald advisor guy with a cane, COL Ted (retired), shows up at my door. “Are you Lowell?”

“Yeah.”

Ted says, “I just wanted to meet you! You’re going to Afghanistan right? That’s awesome! You’re going to have a great time! I wish I was going!”

I have no idea what to say, so I basically just smile and nod. I was starting to feel like a semi-celebrity.

I call Darrall and ask what to do next, and he says schedule CRC and my shots. CRC is the CONUS Replacement Center, which represents one of my favorite military achievements, an acronym within an acronym, as CONUS stands for Continental United States. CRC is a center in Ft. Benning, Georgia that prepares military personnel and contractors, like me, to travel OCONUS, which stands for Outside the Continental United States, to places like Afghanistan. I get on some military website, which requests endless pieces of information, including paperwork with very specific serial numbers. I do my best, can’t complete the paperwork, and move on. Darrall also sends me lists of all the shots that I need to take. So I schedule an appointment with a local doctor for my shots.  

I go to the office building and go inside. Finally I get taken to the back where I am shot with multiple needles filled with various liquids. Suddenly things have gotten very real, and I reflect on the nature of trust in society. Here’s somebody, purportedly a doctor, that I’ve never met, and I trust him to inject stuff into my body that will supposedly protect me when other people who I trust take me off to some faraway and dangerous land. The doctor tells me that I may feel a little weird. I go back home where I actually feel a lot weird – for a while.

After a few more days, I finally get Bob and me scheduled for CRC in late July, but there’s still one final piece of crucial paperwork that I have to obtain, the elusive Letter of Authorization or LOA. I call, I write, but somebody in Afghanistan has to authorize our arrival there, and it’s tough to motivate and move that bureaucracy. Nevertheless, I finish off a proposal to the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency or DARPA, and then head down to a computer-based analysis conference at a Hyatt in Washington, DC.  The conference is a bit of a wasted effort however as I spend most of my time writing emails and making phone calls to try to spring loose the LOA because, without that, Bob and I are not going anywhere. I’m scheduled to get on a plane to Atlanta to meet Bob on Friday as CRC starts on Saturday, and the thought of going back to work and facing my colleagues after all the build-up and excitement is not pleasant. I finally receive the LOA in an email on Thursday, with almost 24 hours to spare before going to Atlanta! No problem! Off to Georgia!

AFG 00: Preface

I’m a computational social scientist, and for whatever reason I got invited by US Army Special Forces to go to Afghanistan, America’s longest war, around the 10^th anniversary of the conflict in the fall of 2011. Upon my return I’ve told a few stories to let people know of the awesome individuals I met over there, and one colleague said to me, “You should really write up your experiences.” I was a little reluctant to do for several reasons. First of all, it seemed like a bit of an ego-trip, in which I didn’t want to indulge. Second, I’ve read a bunch of books either from operators who live and breathe the stuff or from journalists who get embedded for a few weeks and then write up what they see. My experience is a bit different in that I worked for the Special Operations command for six months, so I became more of a colleague from the outside rather than an observer. But as I worked in Afghanistan, a curious thing happened. Multiple Special Forces and SEALs started giving me long explanations about what they saw, their experiences, and their opinions about the war. It happened so frequently that I finally asked one guy why he was telling me so much. He said that I was “on the outside” so his complaints to me about the way the war was run could possibly result in some good. That is, complaints up the Army chain of command would go nowhere, but telling me, a recovering academic, could plausibly result in actual action and change. So that is why I am writing these pseudo-chapters that could someday be reworked into a book: to tell the stories of America’s Special Operations warriors about their experience. But I don’t want this to be an academic treatise. Instead I want these stories and accompanying academic arguments to be told and developed through a literary, “new journalism” style. That way, the reader can get a glimpse into the world of warfare and Special Operations that few civilians ever get to see.

The 3 Big Lies of 20th Century Politics

In looking at the implementation of policy, I often wonder about the difference between the way things are and the way things "should be," -- that is, the distinction between facts and values. After thinking about politics seriously for a while now, I observe that the balance between facts and values have shifted too far in the value direction, which results in negative policy consequences. The reasons behind this merit mention, the increasing availability and power of the media throughout the 20th century, and by this I mean newspapers, radio, TV, and lately, in the very late 20th century, the internet. The premise behind the primacy of media rests with Marshall McLuhan who famously said, "The medium is the message." That is, the media to which I refer -- newspapers, radio, TV, internet, and even to a certain extent, literature itself -- emphasizes some types of messages and narratives over others. To the extent that these messages are over-emphasized and others are excluded, they contribute to the "big lie." 20th century politics, political science, and political philosophy are driven by three themes that, when properly weighted are fine, but when reified to the exclusion of other considerations result in problematic policies that will come to define 21st century politics, and these are (1) equality, (2) rationality, and (3) democracy.

First, equality is concept with a rich and problematic history in American political thought. The United States, as originally envisioned under the Articles of Confederation, was so equal that nobody was effectively in charge, which resulted in the Constitution that featured a more workable and hierarchical organization of the US. However, evidence that radical equality is not a natural feature of the world we see around us is a provided by two sources, one philosophical and one mathematical. The first derives from Marx and his socialist dictum, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," which shows that Marx himself recognized the inherent inequality of the world. Now Marx may have argued that this difference needed to be narrowed, but he still recognized the reality this fundamental social cleavage. The second source of fundamental inequality is more mathematical and natural, but it is the concept of fractals by Mandelbrot, which hold that the world is fundamentally "lumpy" and inequal. That is, if you look at the distribution of oil across the globe, it isn't equally distributed across the planet but is instead "clumped" with certain areas having lots of oil, such as Saudi Arabia, and other sections having not so much, like Japan. So the assumption of equality is not a natural state of the world. I always think of the sculpture Broken Symmetry at FermiLab in Batavia, Illinois to remind myself of the fundamental nature of inequality.

Second, rationality is a concept that too is assumed to be true and is, in fact, problematic. Old-school economists tended to make too much of rationality by assuming that the human brain, being an amazing piece of machinery, could take in incredible amounts of information, calculate it, and make "optimal" or "rational" decisions. Note that this is a flattering depiction of human cognition, and you can almost envision the undergraduates on college campuses being lectured to and thinking to themselves, "Yes, my cognitive capability is amazing." The problem is, evidence from the lab showed that this isn't the way people actually make decisions. Herbert Simon posited a more natural and empirically verifiable way of making decisions based on "bounded rationality," in which it is recognized that the human brain limits significantly the amount of information it can inculcate and process, and this has significant consequences for institutional design, policy, and politics.

Third, democracy generally and the democratic peace literature specifically because it assumes that democratic policies will be correct by definition when in fact, upon further review, democracy-based policies can be shown to be ineffective. The problem is that the assumption that democracy is an unquestionable good -- as well as of equality and rationality -- can be used to shut off debate and prevent a review of a policy's effectiveness, which results in the persistence of poor policy. As regards domestic politics, democratic arguments and assumptions have been used to achieve political power in both Great Britain and the US, though the policy results have been problematic. As regards foreign policy, democracy-based theory was used to inform the Afghan and Iraq wars, both of which did not end with the benefits originally envisioned. In fact, that's what an "unquestionable good," is, something that is reported to be so wonderful that it cannot be questioned. This argument, which is really more of an anti-argument, is at the root of political correctness, the idea that some ideas cannot be questioned.

The reason why democracy is problematic is a fundamental question of political philosophy that I've not seen articulated before directly in the modern context, though there are analogous arguments made through antiquity. On the sider of modernity, there is the "advertising ethic," which holds that, "truth is that which sells." Even Simon points out that democracy is just one way to make a decision, by voting on it, which in no way guarantees its correctness.  Christianity, in contrast, holds that "a tree is known by its fruit," which means that a policy must be judged on its long-term consequences, not its initial popularity. A similar sentiment was expressed by Spinoza who said "sub specie aeteritatis," or "take the long-term view," because short-term views, as emphasized by today's media, can be deceiving. Finally, Plato in his Gorgias made the point, using the example of a ship's pilot, that somebody who appears to know what they're doing is not the same as somebody who actually knows what they're doing. Today's media, by emphasizing appearance, helps to promote people who are convincing rather than those with true expertise. These three "lies" of the 20th century -- equality, rationality, and democracy -- are at the foundation of 20th century social bargains that will prove unsustainable in the 21st, and their re-evaluation will form the basis of this century's political debate and activity.