We're Your Huckleberries: Kilmer and McChrystal

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, is in a world of hurt this morning thanks to this article in Rolling Stone. The general is expected to appear before the president today in Washington, D.C., to answer for remarks attributed to him and his entourage that many deem insubordinate.

Of all the small consolations he can take, the least one is that he's not alone. Over in New Mexico this afternoon, actor Val Kilmer will appear in front of the San Miguel County Commissioners, explaining, among other things, his controversial remarks seven years ago in Rolling Stone and again five years ago in Esquire.

Kilmer, you may recall, played Doc Holliday in "Tombstone," Gay Perry in "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" and Chris Shiherlis in "Heat," among many other noteworthy roles over a long career. He's also a reputed ass. Nonetheless, he charmed my former boss's wife with a kiss to the cheek back in 2003 when he had dinner with the boss and Gov. Bill Richardson in order clarify those remarks about homicidal New Mexican drunken drivers.

For the record, Kilmer says he was misquoted. Not so McChrystal, who was quoted as referring to the article as “a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened.”

The piece by freelancer Michael Hastings for RS is remarkable for a couple of reasons, one because of the unguarded access he was given, which in the aftermath cost McChrystal's press aide his job. Apparently he set no ground rules prior to the series of interviews that yielded this piece. Two, Hastings is clearly no proponent of the war in Afghanistan and makes no pretense from the opening paragraph right up to the closing how he feels. Our allies are fictional; the Afghans themselves either apathetic or hostile, never friendly; the effort itself doomed to failure.

On the first count, RS has always been the edgy journal of politics and culture and the tone set in Hastings' account is in keeping with the tradition set by Hunter Thompson and Matt Taibbi. I get that. Kudos to Hastings for counting coup. RS stands by its man, and McChrystal despite his mea culpa has yet to deny any of the statements attributed to him or his staff.

On the second count, Hastings has a noteworthy record of reporting from Iraq, so he's an experienced hand and entitled to his opinion. On the other hand, the Drover questions whether he's reported enough from Afghanistan to draw the wide conclusion he puts forward in his piece. Despite having spent months on this piece, it boils down to a day and a night in Paris and a trip to a Afghanistan, where he attended one meeting between McChrystal and the troops. It seems pretty thin ice on which to make that kind of stand, even though it serves up insight into the nature of fighting under the rules of engagement designed to minimize civilian casualties.

The Drover has a stake in the argument, of course, and does not out-of-hand dismiss contrary opinions about the war. It's a mess over there, that's a fact, and and by what terms we define victory is clouded in murk. Nonetheless, from a critical reader's point of view, Hastings delivers little more than the unguarded snark any employee engages in about their superiors. In this case that may be enough to relieve a commanding general, but so be it. Otherwise, Hastings has done little in his article to advance his own naked sentiment that the war is a waste of time, effort, blood and treasure.

The Drover turned, of course, to the one authority with which he's most familiar in this context and asked her opinion. The Captain writes:

"Haven't gotten to the part about no Afghans who like us, but that truly is not the case.  Maybe the guy didn't get out of Kabul much. Out here in the hinterlands, unless they're straight-up Taliban or their associates, they tend to like us. In Gardez City, they really like us a lot. I'm sure Helmand and Kandahar provinces are a completely different story, but that's the heart of TB territory."

And that's all I'll say about that.

This Just In: Double Tap Newsletter No. 3

It's here, the third and latest edition of The Double Tap, the newsletter of PRT Paktya straight from FOB Gardez. This month features pics of family and friends receiving combat infantryman and combat action badges as well as awards for on-the-job performance. Plus, "how I spent my mid-tour break." Don't miss it.

Previous editions of The Double Tap are available here and here. Also, take a look at Avalanche, the newsletter of Task Force Avalanche, the PRT Paktya sister unit at FOB Gardez.

New, Improved: Paktya Newsletters Right Here

The Apple lent his considerable expertise in the realm of desktop publishing to recommend an app, Issuu, that allows Turtle Drove to post Double Tap, the best-selling newsletter of PRT Paktya, directly on this site. No more tortured links.

Check out the two previous editions of Double Tap: No. 1 and No. 2; along with one edition of Avalanche, the newsletter of a sister unit to PRT-P, Task Force Avalanche, 3-172 Infantry (Mountain).

For easy viewing, once you open the link look for the "full screen" icon in the top left corner of the screen. Next to it is a page icon, click it. Scroll down to "paper view." Try it. It also works in full-screen mode.

A third edition of Double Tap, incidentally, is promised in a short time. Stay tuned. Many thanks to the Apple.

The Blistering Commentary You've Come to Expect

Nothing is so bad that a hyperventilating news media won't make it worse. Oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico at the rate of hundreds of thousands of barrels a day? Not terrible enough. Coat it with some  partisan political hackery and second-guessing punditry. War in Afghanistan not keeping up with the timetable? Engage in some paper-thin debate and attach nonsensical symbolism to David Petraeus fainting at his seat before a congressional committee. It's bad enough without imagining how much worse it can be, or taking cheap shots when thoughtful analysis might find a way forward.


It's been worse, a lot worse. The steeple pictured to the left is St. Mary's Church in Ashwell, Hertforshire, maybe a half hour's drive from here. Ashwell is a picturesque ville tucked into rolling hills and surrounded by industrial-sized rapeseed fields from one horizon to another. Not far from Ashwell, out in the fields, is the site of Caldecote, a village that no longer exists. Take a walk out there and all you'll find is a patch of plowed dirt the wife of a local farmer pointed out as the place archaeologists probed some years back with shovel and trowel. Caldecote disappeared in the 1300s during the Black Plague epidemic that killed about a third of the English population.

Things were pretty bad in 1350, about two years into the event, when someone, presumably someone with enough education to read and write Latin, reached up and scrawled a message on the plaster inside the church steeple at St. Mary's.

"Pestile Cia.

superset plebs pessima testis in qeven valid"

"There was a plague," it translates, in part. "A wretched populace survives to witness."

So, we have a benchmark, of sorts, to work from.

Alas, bug, we hardly knew ye

"Bug Hunt! The Maniacal Obsession with Housecats, Disguised as Weblog Comic Relief" signs off for the season with this post, the Drover having doggedly cataloged nearly all the felines in a one-block radius. Behold Gray Cat, who lives in Bug Alley and who was really the inspiration for "Bug Hunt." That's my wallet on the pavement, provided for scale.

Rainbow Slide -- Afghan Fog -- Women in Arms

Kelley is about a month away from returning home for a two-week mid-tour break. The vacation schedule includes trips to Scotland and London, dinner at a Gordon Ramsay's and a show.

The photograph from FOB Gardez shows one of the MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles in which she and the troops with whom she works travel while on their missions.

Here's a shot of the captain saddling up for another trip beyond the wire. Communication from the front is getting thin. The once- or twice-a-week phone calls have trickled away to once a month or so as the mission tempo in Gardez has quickened. Taliban attacks elsewhere have stepped up with the coming of spring and the peace jirga this month in Kabul. Just what the jirga accomplished, I don't know. The Taliban did not attend. Instead, it fired rockets at the gathering and made itself a nuisance altogether.

In its wake, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has reportedly cast doubt on prospects that the US and its NATO allies can prevail. Reports are that he is making overtures to the Taliban and its backers inside Pakistan on his own. Karzai has become unreliable in terms of his ability to inspire confidence in his allies, to put it lightly. That he's willing to play nice with the Taliban is confusing, in that he's been its avowed opponent and not least that Talib are responsible for assassinating his father, before Hamid the Popalzai trial leader. But I digress. See Ahmed Rashid's excellent book, "Descent Into Chaos," for more background on the political relationships in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

For more on the challenges inherent in being female in the military, check out this part of a series on women in arms by the New York Times. It addresses some of the day-to-day twists women face in rough outposts in a male-dominated society.

The Captain writes that she traveled beyond the wire to Chamkani for a regional peace jirga recently. In attendance was the Paktya provincial deputy governor, a guy named Abdal Rahman Mangal, who gave the keynote address.

She writes:

"(Mangal) is essentially the de-facto governor of Paktya province, as the actual governor (a Karzai appointee) is corrupt and chronically absent from the province. Mangal is a great guy who's actually FROM Paktya (unlike Hamdard, the real governor) and he really cares about the people there. We pretty much just deal exclusively with Mangal."

Here's Mangal giving interviews at the jirga.

Nearby, an Afghan National Army soldier stands guard.






It's sometimes difficult to square what she reports as progress in one area of Afghanistan while reports continue to pour in of an ineffective surge in Marja, a delayed offensive in Kandahar, endemic corruption, drug trafficking and ineffective leadership. (This account by C.J. Chivers, however, suggests a more nuanced interpretation of events in Marja.) I suspect the truth is a shade greener than most reports in the Times and elsewhere portray them, though not so bright to suggest that success is assured.

Here's my favorite shot, taken on the way to the jirga June 10.

"The doors were completely off, and I was sitting right on the edge. Pretty cool looking immediately to my right and seeing a thousand foot drop and the earth whizzing by. My hair got so jacked, it felt like dreadlocks by the time I got back to the FOB."

 Here's an overhead shot of the compound where the captain resides. She recently moved out of a mud barracks into a new trailer, something more in keeping with the dignity of her rank, I suppose, although she considers trailer trash a step up.

Here's Kelley aboard a Russian-made chopper operated by an NGO working in Afghanistan. She was taking photographs of a road-building project in her district.

No Country for Bad Filmmakers

The Drover returns from a self-imposed hiatus to mark the passing of Dennis Hopper, auteur filmmaker, photographer and cultural icon, not to mention, for a time, self-destructive personality. Charlie Rose repeated portions of three previous interviews with Hopper as part of a retrospective on the man. Among the things he had to say were one, that he considered his career a failure and, two, that he erred in moving to Taos, N.M., after his second and disastrous directorial effort, "The Last Movie."

On the first count, his lost decade of alcohol and drug abuse certainly contributed, although the idea this his was a failed career is a personal meditation, as a start. Moving to Taos put him outside the mainstream when his physical presence was required to advocate for his own work.

It's hard to imagine moving to Taos as anything but positive (Hopper was buried in nearby Rancho de Taos, nonetheless). With that in mind, let's take a look at some favorite films made in or about New Mexico.


Easy Rider -- Of course. Hopper wrote, directed and acted in this 1969 classic along with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson. One of the first films of the 60's to actually reflect the temper and culture of the times. Parts were filmed near Taos.

The Milagro Beanfield War -- Filmed in nearby Truchas, Espanola and Santa Fe, Robert Redford captured the earthy and contentious nature of New Mexicans.


White Sands -- A confusing plot and uneven performances mark this '92 murder mystery, but it's worth a look for the awesome scenery and stellar cast. Crew say Mickey Rourke was a pain to work with, a trait he acknowledges from the period. Willem Dafoe, on the other hand, was a prince. Scenes capture familiar landmarks in Santa Fe, Taos and, naturally, White Sands.

The Missing -- Shot in Valles Caldera, a national preserve in an ancient volcanic caldera, and at movie ranches around Santa Fe. Features a small, but disturbing role by that ubiquitous movie New Mexican, First amendment poster child and threat to the peace and security of San Miguel County, Val Kilmer.


The Tao of Steve -- Does for ordinary Santa Feans, those with three jobs, two of them in restaurants, what "Beanfield" did for Truchas.

Every Which Way But Loose --A sentimental favorite, despite its inconsistent logic. It features a brief tour of Taos plaza by the hapless Pacoima Black Widows.

Plenty of films have been filmed in or showcase the Land of Enchantment, the City Different and Taos. Crazy Heart, No Country for Old Men, Wild Hogs and plenty more. For ex-pat New Mexicans the  cinematic well need never run dry.