The weather has turned again here in eastern Pennsylvania to a rainy, warm kind of thing that promises to create a great deal of slush. It is my final day here. Tomorrow a plane leaves Newark for London and I expect to be on it.

Allow me to turn to events in Afghanistan, where Kelley has gone and I expect has already arrived. Reports this morning indicate the capture in Pakistan of another supposed member of the Quetta Shura, the core leadership of the Taliban. The Washington Post reports Maulavi Abdul Kabir may not have been a member of the shura; the New York Times is unequivocal that he is a member. Either way, it appears that the arrest of the Taliban military chief, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar signaled a change in orientation for the Pakistani intelligence community, which may see its links with the Afghan Taliban as an overall liability. Baradar's arrest opened a series of similar grabs that so far has collared three other influential Taliban figures.

On the down side, the Dutch, it seems, are destined to leave Afghanistan following a political dispute over the country's involvement there that caused an irreparable rift in the Dutch ruling coalition. Dutch troops, about 2,000 Dutch troops are in Uruzgan province, doing much of the same kind of work done by the kind of team Kelley is serving with in Paktia province. Uruzgan is also the scene of another unfortunate bombing that killed several civilians. This AP report suggests a domino effect that may result in other countries pulling out, with Australia perhaps first to go.

Finally, here's a more nuanced view of Al Haig than my hamhanded commentary last post. Enjoy.

P.S. The photo above is of the flue, I guess you'd call it, of an old stone forge near Suedberg, Pa.

Generals, Discontent and General Discontent

 For those readers following Kelley's odyssey, or rather more appropriately her iliad, the update is that she reported most recently having reached Shannon, Ireland, aboard the chartered flight taking her team to Afghanistan. Progress halted there for nearly a day while weather conditions downrange improved. The upside is she reports having stayed in a comfortable hotel until the journey resumes, a welcome break from the prison-like austerity she experienced at Camp Atterbury, Indiana. No further word has been received via e-mail, except for a comment on a photo I posted recently.

That's me, perched on Pulpit Rock on a spur of the Blue Mountain along the Appalachian Trail in Berks County. The view is east toward New Jersey. The Lehigh Gap in the Blue is barely visible in the distance. Sunday was a beautiful day for getting out, getting fresh air in the lungs and stretching the legs. My old bud, Rob, with whom I ran cross-country in high school and whom I haven't seen in 25 years, took the picture. We took many more and I'll be posting some soon.

My own sojourn here in the Keystone State concludes this week. School begins again next week in the U.K. with a class in international communications, one theme of which is the consolidation of media -- news, entertainment, film making, Internet sites, etc. -- into a handful, that is six, large transnational corporations, namely Time Warner, Disney, Sony, Bertelsmann, Viacom and News Corp. The reading includes "The World is Flat," by Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, who expounds on the effects of globalization on the services industry as well as the changes the coming generations can expect in the world of work.

Friedman, I think, is a Utopian. He sees the best, rarely the worst, in worldwide trends that remove barriers to digital commerce and communication. That progress that results from outsourcing and offshoring will create a new middle class in places like China and India and thereby result in vast new markets and opportunities for ever-creative Westerners, like us. In the meantime, suffer. Our lot is social dislocation, job loss, public and private debt, along with a vast new population of poor who may never find work and will be forced to rely on public assistance, as reported here by the very same NYT.

Friedman takes note of the upheaval all these globalizing changes are causing, but he is the sunny optimist who believes Americans will exercise their penchant for adaptation, creativity and enterprise to keep their country on the cutting edge of prosperity.

I also think he tends to ignore the idea that globalization rests to an extent on consumerism and conformity, much of it dictated by the aforementioned five big media companies. He has a problem with results. Two of his early, prime examples of things to come are McDonald's franchisees who "outsource" drive-up orders in order to eliminate the employee who takes your order from the window, and Wal-Mart, whose supply-chain improvements ensure low, low prices. He overlooks the fact that at the end of the labor and cost saving processes, I'm left holding a McDonald's hamburger or a device from Wal-Mart with built-in obsolescence, if it's built to last at all. Have you eaten at Mickey D's lately?

Friedman made me angry and anxious. His flat world makes me uncomfortable, but what he describes is undeniably taking place and to ignore it is to invite peril. His book challenged me and forced me to think, which is what a good book does. Read it.

Student Discontent

Speaking of school, military spouses like me who took advantage of a Defense Department program called My Career Advancement Account, or MyCAA, were gobsmacked last week with a surprise announcement that the program is on an indefinite hiatus while its overseers give it some kind of once over. That means thousands of people are left high and dry in the middle of degree- or certificate-seeking programs without the tuition assistance promised to help us find meaningful work.

No warning was issued that the program would be put on hold, nor was any explanation offered other than the program would be reviewed, basically, to determine whether it is meeting its goals. MyCAA administrators gave cold advice to tap our spouses' GI Bill, if need be, to continue in school until the review period, however long, is past. Some folks point out that maybe our spouses had plans for their GI Bill money themselves (mine does) or that it makes better sense to hand it over to their offspring. (The government, before creating MyCAA, also allowed military members to make their updated GI Bill tuition assistance money transferable to family members.) Something is afoot, but little reporting is available other than a rehash of the announcement that appeared in Stars & Stripes.

Answers that identify the real, underlying issues with the program are non-existent. Is it underfunded? Is there sloppy accounting? Has someone had second thoughts about what is seemingly a very generous program? MyCAA gives qualified applicants $6,000 toward a wide range of eligible education programs. The aim is to help spouses find "portable" careers and thereby increase the chances that the military member, now married to a career-fulfilled spouse, will stay in the service. I use mine to pay tuition for a graduate program in international relations through the University of Oklahoma, a program OU provides at military bases under a DOD contract.

Secretary Gates has made a number of changes and cuts in order to beef up the actual warfighting efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Could this be another attempt to save some cash in the Defense Department? Stay tuned.

Compare & Contrast

Two noteworthy passings occurred in the past week, Al Haig and Fred Weyand. Haig got more press, by far, and for good reason. Like him or not, Haig stood tall on the national stage. He occupied a central position in the Nixon White House as chief of staff during the Watergate era, and then again for a spell as Reagan's secretary of state. He's probably best recognized for his ambition and thus is certainly reduced in popular recollection as a one- or two-dimensional character, scheming and unquestioning in pursuit some great geo-political goal. He is easily caricatured, unfortunately, I think, as an uberpatriot with few scruples.

I had the good fortune to elicit a "no comment" from the general on the one opportunity I had to question him. The Republican Party sent a battalion of party luminaries, Haig among them, to campaign in 1986 in Pennsylvania's 11th congressional district on behalf of Marc Holtzman, the young challenger to the incumbent Democrat, Paul E. Kanjorski. Haig appeared with Holtzman at a local American Legion or AMVET hall, the details are vague. My colleague, John Bull, and I arrived early at the event, headed for the bar, made note of the two ideologically correct lovelies interning for a local radio station, a pair we dubbed the GOP Twins, and took our seats in the back row. I recall asking the former SoS about progress freeing hostages in the Middle East somewhere, and what did he know about it.

"No comment," he barked, adding that he wouldn't risk any ongoing attempt to free said hostages by making any public pronouncements.

All I accomplished, I think, was to give him an opportunity to sound like he maybe knew something about something when he probably didn't. But who knows.

Weyand, the last U.S. commander in Vietnam, presents a different model of a general. Haig put out the vibe that he was always willing and ready to execute the program, and by all accounts he was an intelligent man. Weyand, who was also willing to carry out orders, had reservations and made those reservations known. He too was intelligent, no doubt, but was a thoughtful man in a way Haig, on the face of it, may not have been. What would Haig have done in Weyand's position? What would Weyand have done as Haig? Would Watergate have the same meaning if he, by some dint of fate, had found himself the White House chief of staff? Would Vietnam have cost us more young men if Haig had been, in the last chapter, running the show?

Inside Looking Out

I have seen this Frontline documentary already under another guise as it appeared on Brit television last month. Check it out. It's riveting.

Graduation Day at Camp Atterbury

Camp Atterbury, Ind., opened its gates Tuesday for carloads of folks, civilians coming for a long, last look at sons, daughters, husbands and wives for the next nine months. Another in a series of road-choking snowfalls, as predictable as the freight schedule, did little to curb the tide of traffic easing its way across slick roads to the base south of Indianapolis.

In a warehouse-sized building of sheetmetal and concrete flooring, members of 13 Provincial Reconstruction Teams formed up, along with a portion of a South Carolina National Guard battalion of field artillery. Facing them across the room were maybe 1,000 friends and family who had arrived during the previous day, many of them during a snowfall that practically closed the state. Roads were a hazard, schools were closed, as were many businesses, including restaurants. They filled up the motels clustered around the outlet mall on U.S. 31 about 15 minutes south of the base. Travelers forced off the highways by the weather were turned away for lack of rooms.

The base, built in World War II as a training camp, hospital and POW camp, in its winter mantle bears the aspect of post-industrial functionality. Modern buildings of quickly erected sheet metal combine with older wooden barracks, concrete block and portables. The streets now are clogged by the uniformed inmates, who have no other place to walk and who walk everywhere, and lined with hip-high berms of plowed snow. The core of the place has a feel of hastily-built, make-do to it.

The military folk live little better than prisoners. Liberty to leave the base arrived with the conclusion of training; soldiers, sailors and airmen were allowed eight hours Tuesday and eight hours Wednesday to spend with visiting family and friends.

J. Michael Bednarek, major general, commander of 1st Army Division East, delivered a stirring speech, praising the gathered trainees as America's best and exhorting the audience to stand and applaud. He left out "wives," however, when he described the military people as sons, daughters and husbands. Of course, Kelley was there, in the back rank, with PRT Paktya.

Her team, commanded by Lt. Col. Charles Douglass, USAF, includes 78 members, 11 of them women, from the Army and Air Force. A Pennsylvania National Guard company from Connellsville is their security force. The women live in one barracks in a cluster of those metal buildings. The men occupy an adjacent building. Inside the barracks the living quarters are reminiscent of a prison. Seven-foot-high steel lockers lined up together form a wall between bunks. A sheet hung across the space between them affords some privacy. Downtime is spent in The House all ranks club. The bar there sees little commerce since General Order 1 is in effect, the ban on alcohol, although the pool table gets exercised. A restaurant and coffee bar are options to the base chow hall. The USO operates a break room with a room full of computers, TV and gameroom. On my visit, it looked like a student union, a crowded room full of coffee drinkers and game players, some watching television, others dozing in comfy sofas with laptops open in their laps. It's impossible to find a private moment in warmth to make a phone call, short of standing in the cold and snow.

 We are together for 1 1/2 days, Kelley and I, spending her days on liberty watching TV in my Best Western motel room, catching a movie or two at the Columbus, Ind., theaterplex and having dinner. We find the same tan-and-green camouflage uniforms everywhere; this is the farewell week for everyone heading with the PRTs to Afghanistan. Kelley and her group departs via a charter flight with her team from the Indianapolis airport on her birthday. Some present!

Moshtarak: Coalition Puts the Surge to Work

It appears the vaunted Big Push is on in Marjah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan by the U.S. Marines, Afghan National Army and the Brits. It looks a lot like Fallujah, in terms of planning and tactics, Fallujah being a much bigger city in another country. Filkins and Chivers are excellent reporters. Chivers is an especially good writer.

Here's the AP version, via Stars and Stripes. The Times of London had no front-line account thus far; Guardian pretty much the same. Al-Jazeera quotes some Taliban chest-thumpers and offers some critical remarks from Afghans besides.

This first offensive following the surge will test coalition resolve and McChrystal's overall counterinsurgency strategy, including a resolve to avoid civilian casualties. Clearing the area may be a relatively quick success. Holding and securing the area is the real challenge.

Speaking of winning hearts and minds, it looks like Kelley will be heading to Gardez, Afghanistan, as early as Feb. 20 from the base in Indiana where the Provincial Reconstruction Team on which she is serving is winding down its training. The Drover leaves soon for a "graduation" ceremony in Indiana, to deliver alpaca socks for protection against the Afghan cold and to bid farewell for the next five months or so.

The two widespread snowfalls that crossed the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic this past week provided maximum training value, as the Marines would say. The week was consumed, Kelley reports, with a lengthy exercise that capped off the months of work they've been doing there.

Here in Eastern Pennsylvania, two days spent housebound passed before we were able to actually go anywhere or do anything. Day one was spent watching the surrounding woods, fields and streets fill up with snow. 

Day two was spent removing same from the driveway and clearing paths around the house. A snowblower was employed on the drive and shovels were used for detail work. Three or four hours passed before the job was done. I'll estimate 18 inches of new powder fell overnight Tuesday into Wednesday and all day Wednesday. The accursed street snow plow came along and pushed a load of snow into the street-side parking spot we carved out of a 3-foot snow bank, and pushed a berm across the mouth of the driveway. Curse you, snow-plow driver!

Meet the New Drove, Same as the Old Drove

Welcome to the new edition of Turtle Drove.

For a variety of reasons, the Drove has migrated to Blogger, but mainly to make it more accessible to those who have yet to know the joy of enlightenment that issues from same.

This installment comes to you from the hardwood forests of eastern Pennsylvania, where a full-on blizzard has been smothering the landscape for the past 20 hours or so. A prior snowfall over the weekend dropped about a foot. That episode left the East Coast pretty much paralyzed and newscasters outdoing one another in wordsmithing: snowpocalypse cropped up most frequently. This one I think is dubbed snowmageddon. It has already, at least in this vicinity, outpunched the weekend event.

Sporting Goods & Stuff

No doubt attendance will suffer as a result at the Eastern Sports & Outdoor Show at the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg, a week-long event and what is apparently the largest of its kind in the U.S. The rescued, one-eyed owl at right was present there yesterday as part of a presentation by a West Virginia outfit that works with birds of prey.

Attendance was down, and so was business as a result, based on what a handful of vendors had to say. Others took the situation in stride and said it would hurt business to not be there, whatever the weather. At any rate, it's a great place for deals on all kinds of equipment. My dad picked up a couple of rods that normally retail for $150 or so for $40 each.

If taxidermy is your thing, then this show is the place for you. Elephants, goats, wild boar, otters, ducks, raccoon, fox. And deer. Rank after rank of mounted deer heads, bucks with big grasping racks, doe with a soft, wide-eyed gaze that suggested wonder at finding themselves stuffed, mounted and suddenly on display.

Space A and How to Fly It

The Drover arrived here a week ago, landing in Dover after a 9-hour flight aboard an Air Force C-5 Galaxy from Ramstein, Germany, then driving north into the Keystone State. The first leg started in Mildenhall, U.K., aboard a KC-135 tanker to Ramstein. Getting out of Mildenhall was easy. The plane was empty, for the most part. From Ramstein, the tanker picked up a complement of Army troops and headed downrange somewhere.

Ramstein is a hub for military transport and the terminal there, a big, modern and fairly new building, hums with the ebb and flow of troops departing for points east and west. The boarding calls summon long lines of men and women in camouflage battle dress, of all branches, to the gates. Until then, they fill row after row of seats in the waiting area or gather in groups on the floor in the corners. Most have an open laptop computer, checking or sending messages, gaming, surfing. The USO provides free WiFi in the terminal, and it also has a small lounge with free coffee and snacks, computer terminals, a small movie viewing area, comfy sofas, phones and game stations.

Getting out of Ramstein for me was a little more complicated but with patience proved not so difficult. The afternoon was spent keeping tabs on upcoming flights and checking with the passenger counter for availability. Turns out I managed the next flight out for Dover, but even that turn of luck illustrates the vagaries of flying "Space A," or space available. Dependents, retirees, active duty on leave all have the privilege of flying for free aboard military aircraft, provided there is "space available." Further, there is an official pecking order, starting with the military folks at the top and ending four tiers below with dependents traveling alone. I fell in the middle, Category 3, as dependent of a military member deployed in excess of 365 days. That little bit of juice helped me bump an irascible old retiree who'd been waiting several days for the very last seat on the C-5. I was totally not expecting to get anywhere near that plane and was taken by surprise when my name echoed from the PA system off the glass and steel inside the terminal.

But saying isn't doing and even as the bus carrying the passengers drew up to the bird itself on the slush-ridden tarmac in the midst of a night snowfall, an airman boarded to explain that the Marines who owned this flight would be boarding, but the seven Army airborne troops hitching a lift back from Afghanistan (flying "space required") and I would not. Tense moments followed until the airman, after conferring with passenger services, motioned our bags onto the plane and directed us afterthought fliers aboard, after all. No one asked why, and no one told.

The Marines were members of HMM-364, or Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 364, based at Camp Pendleton. They fly the CH-46, the twin-rotored Boeing so familiar to anyone watching the news. One of their birds was lodged in the belly of the Galaxy. They were heading home after a four-month deployment to Iraq that had originally been planned as seven months. The senior enlisted aboard, the avionics chief, I discovered had served with my old unit about four years after my discharge and knew a handful of guys with whom I'd served. Small world.

Hurry Up..... and Wait

At any rate, once we boarded word came down that the aircraft would not be leaving on time due to maintenance issues, which is typical, especially with C-5s, and that we probably would not be heading for Dover due to inclement weather on the East Coast. Two hours later, we were still on the tarmac, half the maintenance issues were solved and we were definitely not going to Dover. New destination: Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio and anyone not interested in going there should get off now was the announcement in the passenger area. The lieutenant colonel seated next to me departed, saying he would never get a connecting flight to the West Coast out of Wright Pat. Which was nice, because his departure freed up the entire row for me to stretch out upon. Another hour or so later, word comes down that Dover is back on. Another hour or so and finally we're wheels in the well. Welcome to flying Space A.

The reason I actually came over here is to visit once more with Kelley for a day before she heads to Afghanistan. The training command invited family to a graduation ceremony of sorts at the base in Indiana. Considering I could at least get there for free on Space A, why not? She'll be heading out sometime after Feb. 16th. Training, a trial in itself, is nearly over. Now for the real deal.

And finally, congratulations are in order. Kelley was chosen for promotion to major, although she won't actually get to wear the rank before the fall, date to be announced. Hooray!

You know what, it's still snowing.