Remember my post about TM? Well, after he returned to the states, he wrote this article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/10/16/band-aid-on-a-bullet-wound-what-americas-new-war-looks-like-in-afghanistans-most-violent-province/
Resolute Support leadership had a conniption, removed two colonels from their posts, launched an official investigation (15-6) and created an environment where all subordinate commands are afraid to talk to the media and blame their PAOs if they see a story that they find unfavorable – regardless of how accurate, factual, or even balanced it may be. The change that has affected me the most, however, is that all embeds are indefinitely on hold, as of about two months ago.
This is problematic since my job is to coordinate embeds. I have now been interviewed by a brigadier general tasked with conducting the 15-6 investigation to determine whether or not TM was given classified information (or perhaps to compile enough documentation to scapegoat the “bad story” and ruin someone’s career), and I’ve spent the last two months spinning wheels and going nowhere; planning engagements for media only for them to be shut down or not supported by flight operations because no reporter is allowed to visit a location and stay overnight.
It has been frustrating.
The result of this new environment of shutting out the media looks like this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/04/us-military-un-relations-strained-afghanistan-war-reports-disagreements
where the lead states:
The US military in Afghanistan is increasingly trying to control public information about the war, resulting in strained relations with western organizations offering different versions of events to official military accounts, the Guardian has learned.
Meanwhile, on the embeds, my general officer, DCOS COMM, has promised 5 or 6 reporters that we will get them out on an embed with forces on the ground. I don’t actually have access to troops in the field, nor am I allowed to do an embed right now, nor do I want to spend weeks planning an embed that may never get a greenlight… so when the general gets back from his vacation, I anticipate “greenlight, send someone to helmand tomorrow” as though it’s that easy. Pepper in the number of folks going on R&R that we have to cover for in December, and the village idiot, an O-5 select full-time-navy-reservist who is completely inept as a leader and a PAO, who we have to cover for every day… it’s getting harder and harder to quell my cynicism.
My mission could very well change from being the media operations team lead to just being a base photographer. It’s disheartening to know you could do a better job if you were allowed to. But as a lieutenant colonel, who I have the utmost respect for, who leads one of our subordinate PA shops and faces very similar leadership dilemmas and professional hand tying, said, “If they want to pay me deployed O-5 pay to do O-2 or O-3 work, then that’s what I’ll do.” So if they want to pay me deployed O-3 pay to do an E-3’s job, I could live with it as long as someone tells me that that is my new mission.
This post really digressed into a confusing stream of consciousness rant. But it was cathartic so I’m keeping it. They can’t all be winners.