USO show, meeting Adm. Mullens

Today, we were up at 0500, left KAF at 0700, and drove straight to Patrol Base Wilson (PBW), where we were supposed to meet and talk to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullens.

My first impression of the morning was that the locals were suddenly obeying all of our gunners hand-and-arm signals and getting off the road 100 or even 200 meters ahead of our vehicles, which is a HUGE change from the normal. Frequently they won't even slow down until they are 50 meters or so in front of the lead vehicle, at which point they will try to pass the vehicle in front of them (between their vehicle and our lead vehicle) before pulling over on the side of the road.

Now, you may be thinking "I sure wouldn't appreciate it if people were driving around in my country waving guns at me and forcing me off the road." And you would be right. But then, in YOUR country people don't exhibit any known tendency to pack their cars full of high explosives and ram said vehicle into military vehicles and then detonate the explosives. So, we tend to try to get oncoming traffic to come to a complete stop before we reach them, so that they can't use their momentum to throw the vehicle into our formation, or across the road so that we hit their vehicle, and then blow up a truck bomb killing all the crew in that humvee. It's a self-defense thing, and we try not to be too obnoxious about it.

ANYway, the point is that the locals were suddenly doing exactly what we want them to, instead of pushing the envelope. Typically, anything out of the ordinary is a Bad Sign, so we were very very nervous driving through Kandahar City today. Nothing happened however, and we got to (and later back from) PBW without incident.

Meeting Adm Mullens was kind of anticlimactic, although we did have to do a stupid formation thing (in a combat zone! in our body armor and kit!) and stand around for him to take pictures with us. Well, okay, we were getting pictures taken with him. But still, it was a dog and pony show, and a stupid one at that. Not saying that the Admiral is stupid, just that what we did today was in no way an effective use of our military capability. But hey, that's what the military is like, so I'm not bitter (really).

However, the upshot of this whole misadventure (the admiral was 90 minutes late showing up at PBW) was that we were late for the USO show and missed all but the last 10 minutes, which were Kid Rock singing and somebody else. I, of course, have zero interest in Kid Rock, so no big loss for me. But Robin Williams was there, and I would just like to say that the man is a class act, even though his humor is filled with profanity and vulgar language. Here we have a stand-up comic and comedic actor who is liberal and very much against the war, but he loves to come to USO shows and act up for the soldiers. I literally saw him going all over the place to shake hands and have his picture taken with various soldiers and contractors. He really, really supports the troops, even if he doesn't support the war.

Lance Armstrong was also there, and he was similarly impressive, going up to soldiers and signing autographs even though his USO "handlers" were trying to get him to line up for a photo shoot and stuff. There was also Miss America (no idea what her name is), and another comedian, I want to say Louis Black. I took some pictures of a couple of the soldiers with Kid Rock and another soldier in a group photo with Robin Williams. In addition, the USO was giving away DVDs and stuff that Hollywood in general provided, so I nabbed a copy of Airplane II, and a copy of Batman Begins.

All in all, the USO still rocks, and does a great job, it's just Admirals that are pains in the butt. In fairness to Admiral Mullens, I imagine he got some useful information about Afghanistan from being here in person, and probably got some good intel from the local ARSIC commander. I'm sure he wasn't just here for the USO show... right?