With only a couple of weeks left here in Afghanistan I looked back at my blog posts and realized that I haven't really discussed what is going on here in this wonderful corner of the world. I've posted a bit about some minor happenings around the base (indirect fire, random attacks, etc) but have avoided discussing what is going on overall in Afghanistan.
I have multiple reasons/excuses for this. The first is that despite being at IJC/Corps headquarters, I really don't know what is going on most of the time. I am aware of major events but I have avoided trying to have knowledge of the day to day occurences in the province or even district level. Why? Well, primarily it's not my job to know. The beauty of being a contractor is that I get to stay in my lane; gone are the days where I was expected to not only have complete understanding of my battalion's area of operations, but also have an understanding of the entirety of the brigade battlespace as well as know what was going on two or three provinces over.
Staying in my lane is essentially the second reason. It's not my lane to be a subject matter expert on all of Afghanistan. It's my job to be an intelligence subject matter expert and review target packets, not terribly exciting to blog or read about so I don't really discuss it.
Thirdly, as I mentioned prior to coming out here, if I cross a line and inadvertantly discuss something that someone feels is classified or violates operational security I could be fired and have my clearance revoked. As long time readers will be aware, during my previous deployment somebody up at brigade stumbled upon this absurd little blog and gave me a warning about releasing too much information. I would probably get no such courtesy as a contractor.
I'm not conceited enough to think that my blog is all that important in the scheme of things or that all that many people read it. As far as I'm aware my readers primarily consist of some friends and family sprinkled with a handful of folks who somehow found this mess of thoughts and decided to keep reading. But I also didn't think Brigade (Hi Brigade!) would ever find this either so it would not shock me to learn that someone at my company or even here at IJC is keeping an eye on Warhorse Intel just to make sure I don't slip up.
Upon my return I will likely write a couple of posts about the daily happenings at IJC as well as my thoughts on how we operate here in Afghanistan, what I think the future holds for this country, and the future of counterinsurgency...so please bookmark and keep reading. I'll do my best to keep you entertained.
No comments:
Post a Comment