Preface: With Gustav battering the Gulf Coast, the GOP convention all but on hold, and most political rhetoric toned down for a day or two, I thought this an appropriate lull to present my final post on Operation Continuing Promise. Also, since this is Labor Day, consider what your armed forces are doing: securing the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan, mobilizing to clean up the Gulf Coast once Gustav is finished, and conducting this humanitarian mission in Latin America. We truly have a remarkable force laboring for us, representing us, the world over. Happy Labor Day. — Crowe

Operation Continuing Promise may have been an a-typical military mission, but one basic tenet of military operations has held true: when the bullets start flying, the plan carefully laid out goes right out the window. The last day featured a series of last-minute changes for the better, and one huge decision to stick to the plan when flexibility would have been understandable. I’ll take you through a blow-by-blow chronicle of the day…

0600: For whatever reason, I was not on the manifest to take a helo over when I first reported to muster. This means that without higher-up intervention I’m not going to shore for the final day in Nicaragua and I’ll miss the celebrations and ceremonies. I alerted ENS Day, the Public Affairs Officer, and, figuring I simply wasn’t getting off the boat, went up to the Wardroom to get the breakfast I had missed. Was halfway through my eggs when Day burst into the Wardroom: someone with enough clout had intervened and I was headed over in the last flight. I finished my eggs and French toast without much hurry — the last flight wouldn’t leave for at least another 1.5 hours.

0700: Waiting for flight; got bumped up to an earlier flight. This new flight has me spending the day with the US Air Force Prime BEEF (Prime Base Engineer Emergency Force) and Navy Seabees who are heading out to finish up a few projects, including one they took on after arriving in country. Everyone will wind up at the municipal park for the “closing ceremony” which is the city’s farewell to Operation Continuing Promise and is also the formal opening of the refurbished park.

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Don’t have much here, I just don’t have access to RedHot or a live blog to post it there.

But seriously: she’s a bona fide outdoors-woman effectively and meritoriously breaking the glass cieling who is not rough on the eyes.

So she’s red meat, a good garden salad, and all in an attractive presentation.

If you tell me she smokes the occasional cigar I might melt.

On the Stephanie Miller program this morning, she and a co-host were fake-giddy over the Palin selection. “Fake” giddy because I’ve rarely heard a more fake laugh after obviously not-funny material.

Anyhow. When I clicked it on they were talking about having “the former Mayor of Wasilla” in charge of everything. They began slagging her on experience and turned to how she couldn’t even win Ms. Alaska. Creepy fake laughter intersperse throughout. That was the meme — lack of experience. They also tried a “gotcha” by saying “she’s a celebrity, just like the GOP is painting Obama as a celebrity”

The only time they mentioned the fact that she is a governor is to talk about “she is under investigation for possibly abusing her power as governor to try to have her former brother-in-law fired from his job as a state trooper.”

Then Paul Begala came on and it got fun. They talked about how she won’t peel away Clinton voters because, “when I think Hillary Clinton I don’t think inexperience light-weight.” (Of course, that’s precisely what many, many people think when they think “Barack Obama,” but that’s beside the point, apparently.) Begala brought up McCain’s age, his four-time bout with cancer, and Palin’s inexperience. And then they agreed this was the worst veep selection ever, with Begala even proclaiming “this pick makes Dan Quayle look like George Washington.”

They’re apoplectic and don’t realize that their main thrusts of attack will backfire on them. (Or they’re trying to delay that eventuality but realize it will come like that Mac truck off in the distance.) The most glaring problem for them is they are attacking our veep nomination with attacks that are even more valid (youth, inexperience, corruption, celebrity status) against their POTUS nominee.

This humanitarian mission has a macro-level motive, of course. “Soft power,” diplomatic and humanitarian efforts like this one, undertaken to “win the hearts and minds” of populations, has become an integral part of global security strategy. In short, we’d rather prevent an insurgency than fight against one, but since we cannot be sure where the next war and ensuing insurgency may take place it makes sense to cover our bases, so to speak. But winning hearts and minds, whether in a hotspot like Iraq or Afghanistan or in a presently-stable place like Nicaragua, doesn’t happen from a distance or through sending a big fat foreign aid check: it happens when two people look each other in the eye and see that the other ain’t so bad. Sure, the enlisted sailors and ship’s crew are on the ship and on the mission under orders. Sure, some of the officers volunteered with an eye on how this mission will help their career advancement. But that doesn’t change the value of those one-on-one interactions. Whether it’s the doctor and patient, the veterinarian and owner of the animal, or the COMREL team member and the local kids, the person to person human interactions effect the good relations between nations. That means these sons and daughters of the USA, Canada, Brazil, and the Netherlands are personally, directly improving international relations just by being who they are. By no means is everyone on this mission is the model of virtue, but among those who went ashore the only gripe I heard was from those COMREL teams who were hampered from doing anything by lack of supplies.

Attendant to that thought, however, is the pessimist’s view of such a quick stint in country — given how destitute these people are, how much good can we really do in only two weeks? One sailor voiced this attitude to me after being on shore with the COMREL team. With tens of thousands of people in the Puerta Cabezas area, even though the medical team treated upwards of 20,000 people, many, many people received no treatment at all. After evaluating the frightening drainage system at the hospital grounds — where biohazard waste lies in piles around the grounds — the US Public Health Service engineers estimated it would require a complete overhaul of the city sanitary system and cost four to six million dollars to make it acceptable. Four to six million American dollars would go much further down here than in the States. On the last day I overheard a doctor tell a young man who had come for the first time, “You have a minor hernia. Had you come earlier we probably could have taken you to the ship and fixed that, but this is our last day. All I can tell you is that we’ll be back next year, so if you’re able, come on one of the first days and we should be able to get you fixed up.”

Such despairing questions, of course, miss a number of points.

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Nicaraguan Army Chief of Staff Major General Javier Aviles paid a visit to Puerta Cabezas and came aboard the USS Kearsarge for a press conference and luncheon. He was joined by a number of other high-ranking Nicarguan military officers — Admiral Estrada, head of the Nicaraguan Navy, among them. I don’t know Aviles’ politics vis-á-vis President Ortega, but the warm reception he received in the town and his words to the assembly aboard the Kearsarge suggest that he’s not of a mind with Ortega on any supposed “ulterior motives” that we have on this mission.

I had heard there would be an important person coming aboard but had no idea whom that might be. That morning I observed a cataract removal surgery in one of the ORs aboard the Kearsarge while waiting for whomever it would be.

Maj. Gen. Aviles visited the medical clinic in Puerta Cabezas. I wasn’t there, but I saw pictures of him hugging patients and health care professionals. He was very happy with everything going on.

Around noon Aviles’ entourage alighted on the deck of the Kearsarge with a contingent of Nicaraguan and international news organizations. One man I spoke with briefly was from Reuters.

Aviles’ remarks were brief:

On behalf of the Nicaraguan Army, and members of the Nicaraguan state governments, also on behalf of the civilian population that this humanitarian assistance is providing for, I want to take advantage of the opportunity to say to all of you thank you, we’re very happy to be here. This is a good thing you do, helping our population… we went around the towns and villages, looking at the various sites. We saw medical care of all kinds — eye doctors, dentists, general medicine, for women, children, men, old, young — we see the enthusiasm with which you do it. And on the faces of the people we see gratitude for your mission…Like the Commodore said, already 20,000 people have been cared for…even though you haven’t finished, we already consider this mission a total success…Thank you all from the authorities, from the population. We hope that this experience will stimulate you to continue to help those of us in need. Thank you so much.

He and Commodore Ponds exchanged gifts and the Nicaraguans left the ship. Clearly he works from a different playbook than Ortega.

0500: Alarm clock goes off.

0515: Dressed and in the Wardroom for breakfast. Groggy. Coffee. Eggs freshly scrambled by the short-order cook with mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, onions, and cheese. Five strips of bacon. French toast. Coffee. Malaria pill with tall glass of water.

0600: Muster in the hangar bay. Get into the right line to make sure I get on the right helo to get to the right site. Once I’m checked in and in the right line I can lie down and get some more shut eye.

0700: Move from hangar bay up personnel ramp toward the flight deck.

0715: Lie down on the ramp and doze again.

0745: Board helo. It’s hot, noisy, and rattling. If you sit in the wrong seat you get hydraulic fluid dripping on you. (But hydraulic fluid dripping isn’t a bad thing because if it’s not dripping, that means it has run out of fluid, which is a far-worse problem) We put on the life preserver and “cranial” — the helmet with hearing protection — in the personnel ramp. This is actually early for boarding the helo. Usually I don’t get onto a helo until 0900 or later.

0810: Touch down in Betania and walk the short distance to the village from the LZ. The medical team had arrived on an earlier helo and things are already in full swing. The line is long, the pharmacy is setup, one of the generators is malfunctioning, I quickly sweat through my outer shirt. Betania lies inland about 7 miles from the shore in the lowlands beyond the high area along the coast where Puerta Cabezas sits. The low-lying nature of this area makes for less of a breeze and more water — a combination that my Ohio temperament doesn’t appreciate. I had been able to keep my outer long-sleeved shirt on for most of the day in Puerta Cabezas. I’d have sweat through it by 2PM, but I would generally still have it on. In Betania, with less breeze and more humidity, I was down to my t-shirt by 0900.

I take stock of the village. The The children are generally barefoot. Many wear shirts with American sports team logos or American clothing company names on them — I don’t think they paid what your or I would pay at the mall for these. There is a dirt road that goes past the village, and judging by the only vehicles we see drive by, brightly-painted buses filled to capacity and with more perched on top, it is a main road. But there are no roads within the village — no need, because there are no cars and not enough people to justify taxis. It’s hot. Palm trees laden with coconuts are everywhere.

0820: Captain Ian Thornton, a Canadian Army dentist, is the only dentist in Betania. He has already seen two patients and is just sitting down for his third. He has two dental chairs and works on one while the nurse prepares the other.

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They’d been cutting boards and climbing scaffolding and shooting nails and digging post holes and mounting hundreds of feet of chain-link fence all day. The weather was perfect for sitting in the shade, chewin’ the fat, and crackin’ a cold one — pero, no hay ningunas cervezas. The Seabees and their Air Force colleagues settled instead for the warm water they were sipping from their Camelbacks — which, I’ve noticed, is practically part of the uniform for enlisted around here. Combat engineers — Seabees and the like — usually go ashore before the main force arrives and build the huts the troops will live in. They generally don’t stick around long and they certainly don’t spend much time refurbishing a school — putting cielings in the classrooms that previously only had exposed rafters, and replacing the chain-link fence that surrounds the school. One Seabee who had long since sweat through his t-shirt and trousers commented:

You don’t really see the effect of what you are doing everyday But here your in so close with the people that it make you deal with the heat a lot easier you put up with it a lot bettere when, Just everybody waves to you and smiles It just makes what your doing feel that much better and that much more rewarding to see it first hand.

Indeed.

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The great experience of positive human interaction and sharing a moment of good will cannot but leave all involved a little better than before. Sure this mission has a significant political motivation — Partnership of the Americas, projecting “soft power,” building better relations among nations, etc. — but none of that would happen without the one-on-one personal interactions happening here, now, in this country.

A woman came and spoke to one of the locals who has been helping us as a translator. She had witnessed some of the medical treatments and asked the translator, a weathered older man named Truman, if she could simply touch one of the doctors. To her, these doctors had brought healing like Christ had brought. She believed that if she could just touch one of the doctors, as the woman with the 12-year hemorrhage had touched Christ’s cloak, she would be healed.

Truman speaks English, Spanish, and the two local dialects that are prominent in Puerta Cabezas. He’s a weathered older man — though he is likely younger than he looks, like most people around here. He has “USA” tattooed on his left forearm above an angel. That left forearm has an irregular bump in it from having been broken and not properly set. He was a Contra rebel in the ’80s and broke the arm while in the jungle fighting the Sandinistas — no proper medical treatment was available in the jungle. He told us how he led the fight to expel the Sandinistas from Puerta Cabezas and from the town’s airstrip where our Seabees are now set up. Truman came to the medical clinic of his own volition and not in search of medical treatment for himself. He volunteers for hours a day translating and helping us with the locals. He’s a bit of a celebrity. At the end of the day he walks about 2-3 hours back to his village from Puerta Cabezas.

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Danny Ortega, leader of the communist Sandinista party that caused so much trouble in the 1980s, got himself elected president thanks to Hugo Chavez’s petro dollars. Now he’s yip-yappin’ about this humanitarian mission. He claims it’s a thinly-veiled spy mission since the ship parked 6 miles off the Nicaraguan shore is a warship and not one of our hospital vessels.

Uh-huh.

My favorite part is right at the end:

Panama, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago are the other nations that will soon feel intimidated by the warship before it returns to its base in Virginia.
(emphasis mine)

A couple things.

First, Danny, c’mon. If the U.S. were set on spying on little ol’ you, we wouldn’t need to park a warship of any size off your coast, let alone one this big. Frankly, it would be pretty dumb.

Second, Danny, this ship is only here because your government accepted our invitation to come. Our embassy had been working with the national and local governments for four months prior to our arriving in port — nothing about what we’re doing ashore is a surprise, and the OCP personnel are kept pretty strictly in the areas where they are working, surrounded by local and national police and the Nicaraguan military.

Third, intimidation? Let’s look at that intimidation:

HN1 Michael Hagglund reading Intimidation Spanish for Health Care Professionals, with boxes of torture devices eyeglasses laid out before him awaiting their new owners.

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The people came. And came. Some came in their Sunday finest — ladies in nice summer dresses with floral prints and gentlemen wearing their dress shoes in the mud. They were lined up bright and early — around 300 when I arrived at 10AM on the first day, Tuesday. By the end of that day the line was down to 30, and those were given tickets to be first on day two. They came with ailments of all sorts — dental problems, breathing problems, malnutrition, eye problems, finger problems, heart conditions, and any other problem.

They came from all over Puerta Cabezas with their children, parents, grandparents, and anyone else who needed medical attention. The minister of a church near the center of town said when the people get sick they usually just wait for a miracle. Medical attention is expensive: the only local hospital may be able to diagnose your condition, but they have no medication to share. Transportation is expensive: a flight to the capital, Managua, where the most consistent medical attention is available, costs a month’s wages. A bus to Managua is 17 hours and involves roughly 190 stops.

Read On …

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The USS Kearsarge is abuzz as we pulled into Nicaraguan waters and weighed anchor. We go ashore today, in and around the town of Puerta Cabeza. The promise of this mission exceeds my expectations. The medical team has been prepping pills — counting them out from bulk and filling thousands of little plastic bags with a certain number of pills for distribution. Seabees helicoptered ashore yesterday to get a head start at the construction sites. Advance teams from the U.S. embassy began working with the Nicaraguan government four months ago to identify where work is needed and what work that will be. The construction efforts will include rehabbing schools and hospitals as well as new construction of elevated huts that can be used for a number of purposes. In Yulu they will cover a well and install a pump so that village has a reliable and clean source of drinking water. They will even install playground equipment.

Operation Continuing Promise represents a fairly new enterprise for the U.S. Navy. Beginning especially with the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004, the Navy and Marine Corps have engaged in large-scale humanitarian missions — this ship and her crew were in Bangladesh just last year to help undo the devastation of hurricane Sidr — but this is among the first times such a mission has been conducted pro-actively rather than in response to a disaster.

I had a chance to sit and talk with Chaplain O’Bannon who is coordinating the COMREL (Community Relations) efforts. Through COMREL members of the ship’s crew can volunteer to go ashore and assist in the work. All tolled, that translates to 20,000 man hours of volunteer labor. These are the folks who make this ship function — food prep, maintenance, computer technology, custodial, admin assistants, engine room, flight deck crew, mechanics, etc. They will get a rare opportunity to leave the ship and go ashore to help out with the work of the mission. On her previous mission the Kearsarge spent six months supporting OIF and OEF, as well as helping out in Bangladesh. The crew had a few days of liberty in a few port cities, but during long stretches of mission-sensitive activity the crew was confined to the ship while the airmen and Marines deployed to take part in on-shore activities. After a six-month stop-over back at home port in Norfolk the ship was cleaned and readied for three different major inspections and steamed up to New York City for fleet week.That six months of shore time was anything but R&R.

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Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us as we cry to Thee,
For all in peril on the sea.

— from the Navy Hymn

The vessel gently lolls to and fro under me. I was above deck briefly Saturday and was able to see off both sides of the ship. Water. Blue water as far as the eye can see. We saw some Dolphins jumping just off our port bow. The wind was excellent — just right to cut the humidity and intense sunlight. This ship, alone riding through these waters, carries a small city on board. Roughly 1500 men and women living — eating, sleeping, working, recreating, exercising, preparing, and praying — on this little patch of floating sovereignty somewhere southwest of Cuba.

Yesterday, Sunday, began Saturday night with a prayer of remembrance. A brief moment to memorialize a fallen comrade, Freddie Piñeda, over the 1MC (PA system). The chaplain asked for a brief moment of prayer and quoted a French Quaker, “Lord, we do not know when we shall pass from this world. We do know that we pass through it but once. Help us to make the most of this one opportunity” He closed, “May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace. We ask this in Your holy Name. Amen.” I found out that Freddie, a well-liked and accomplished member of the flight deck refueling crew, had been killed in an unfortunate car accident just days ago, widowing his wife and leaving his infant son fatherless. He had just turned 21.

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Part II in a multi-part series about Operation Continuing Promise.

The “NGO Cafe” came online yesterday. The two IT guys who run the ship’s network have done awesome work to get us our own space with a level of internet freedom and access that is denied to the ship’s crew — we can actually look at our gmail.

Earlier this morning Capt. Frank Ponds, Commander of Amphibious Squadron Eight, stopped by NGO cafe. He talked about the a multi-national, trans-agency nature of this mission. There are military medical personnel from Canada, the Netherlands, France, and Brazil. There are commissioned personnel from the U.S. Public Health Service. A coordinator from Project HOPE is on board and has others flying to join us in Nicaragua. Operation Smile will join us down there. And then there are the bloggers.

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Susan Estrich’s latest op-ed gives a bunch of reasons — some more valid than others — why this ought to be a Democrat Year and the Democrat Presidential candidate ought to win in a landslide. But she’s concerned. Very concerned.

So how can Newsweek have the race at a dead heat? How come, even in the polls where Obama is leading, his lead is in single digits? Is it that people still don’t know enough about him? No candidate in my lifetime has ever gotten better press coverage, more adoration from the media. Being attacked by Jesse Jackson is a gift of major proportions. Maybe it just hasn’t showed up yet in the numbers. Maybe race is a bigger factor than people want to admit. Maybe people just need to be convinced on the experience front. But whatever it is, Democrats should take note. It should be a Democratic year, but that is no guarantee that it will be one.

Susie is worried. I believe she well ought to be. Her party chose a terrible Presidential candidate and now they’re trying to put no-smear lipstick on that pig.*

*This is not intended to smear Mr. Obama, whom we know is not a Muslim, but if he were, it would still not be intended as a smear or religious insult.

I’m sure I was not alone in exasperation when Barack Obama called Iraq a “distraction” and said Afghanistan is where we really ought to have been focusing our attention the whole time. Internally I felt like rolling my eyes, giving an impatient sigh, and turning to the recalcitrant child and saying, “Yes, you’re right, there’s nothing stopping you from going to the park now that we’ve finished cleaning the house.”

The stark difference between Obama and Sen. John McCain called to mind an essay I saw a few years back and bears re-presenting in the context of Election 2008. That is, LTC Dave Grossman’s (Ret.) excellent piece on sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs.(From his book On Combat)

I recommend reading the whole piece, but for those unfamiliar with the tri-chotomy I’ll give a brief overview. The wolves are those few people in our midst who are willing and able to accomplish violence against their fellows and will do so for predatory and selfish reasons. They do not love their fellow man and will do whatever it takes to get their way. The sheep are those upon whom the wolves prey. They generally abhor violence and frequently deny that wolves exist. This is very convenient for the wolves. The sheepdog are those who look more like wolves than like sheep, have a capacity for violence, and love their fellow man, or at least love the tranquility of justice enough that their penchant for violence is restricted to defending peace and justice. This means doing violence to wolves and protecting the sheep — even when the sheep don’t realize what’s going on or, too frequently, wish the sheepdog didn’t exist.

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Turns out bad stuff in the media DOES negatively affect children.

Don’t mind us social conservatives and religious whack-os who have been railing against the objectification of people, especially women and young girls, for others’ perverse enjoyments (or even “innocent” marketing power): we’re already working on trying to undo the damage and prevent further similar damage in the future.

There should be no finger pointing or pompous “I told you so” on this — people have been and continue to be damaged. The only thing to do is move forward with lessons learned and applied and stop the damage.

I commend to your reading the Pastoral Letter “Bought With a Price by Bishop Paul Loverde of the Diocese of Arlington.