25 July 2009
Sangin, Afghanistan

Have been out with British forces in the area of Sangin in northern Helmand Province.  This area appears to be turning into the main effort of the current fight in Afghanistan, but this is unclear to me at the moment.  I do know that air assets are heavy.  During our mission yesterday, a B-1 could be seen overhead, though it was miles high.  On the ground, this place is loaded with IEDs and there were many firefights during yesterday’s mission.   My section of eight soldiers did not fire a single round; we did not come into direct contact, though bullets sometimes zipped overhead.  Nearly all missions are conducted on foot and the soldiers like it that way.  I am with the British battalion called 2 Rifles.  The last mission I did with 2 Rifles was in Iraq, and they killed maybe 26-27 JAM members during that fight.  Yesterday they only killed two Taliban (Predator actually made the shot), but the mission was well run, and morale here is very high.  Everybody is ready to roll again and missions are near continuous.  I’ll ask British commanders to let me stay, though that might not be necessary because there are so few helicopters.  More likely I am stuck here.  FOB Jackson is probably going to be my Hotel California, but that’s all good because these are great soldiers, in the thick of it, and I want to stay.

More broadly speaking, our forces are spread to the high winds across desolate stretches of Afghanistan, sometimes in tiny “bases” with as few as a half-dozen soldiers.  Last December, I spent some time with a group of such soldiers in Zabul Province, but hardly wrote a word about them, yet. They were deep in wild country and it took two days for us to drive out to a paved road.  Those soldiers had no access to Internet, and said that on one occasion they didn’t even get mail for three months. (more…)

Sometimes I sit at my desk and I think about what I do for a living. Some people say comedy is hard but comedy is a byproduct of our society. Everything that we have and everything that we do in America from telling jokes to curing cancer to turning bolts in a factory is the result of a culture in our country that says country is more important than self. From the early revolutionaries to the men and women standing a post in Iraq tonight, Americans have always stepped up to do what is necessary to protect our freedoms.

I believe that the average person in America, and I include myself in that number, has become complacent about the liberties with which we are provided. Most of us don’t vote. Most of us don’t pay much attention to what the government is doing. Most of us don’t care that little by little, freedoms won and protected by the blood of our young man and women, are being whittled away. Smoking is banned, but hey, most of us don’t smoke. They kicked an old lady out of her house, but we all got a great new shopping mall. The government decides that AIG or GM is too big to fail but that’s OK because my insurance or my uncle’s pension was saved. Each time one of our freedoms is chipped away it is an insult to those who have laid down their lives protecting them.    (more…)

Thank God for America’s Armed Forces and Her courageous men and women in uniform who selflessly stand for us “between our beloved home and the desolation of war.”

Such brave and heroic souls, with their families’ steadfast love of country and sacrifices in support of their mission – to secure the Blessings of Liberty to our selves and our posterity – provide for us all the sacred opportunity to pursue our own happiness, hopes and dreams.

For that, we fellow Americans must pledge our humble and eternal gratitude to all those in service to our nation, past, present and future. (more…)

Before the election, at a comfortable film festival in Spain, filmmaker Woody Allen told journalists abroad that it would be “a disgrace and a humiliation if Barack Obama does not win.”

“It would be a very, very terrible thing for the United States in many, many ways,” he said. Adding that Mr. Obama, “represents a huge step upward from (the) incompetence and misjudgment” of the Bush administration.”

You know, it’s a hard thing to watch your heroes fall. To see them as they really are, not as you thought they were, not as you wish they were.

I grew up loving Woody Allen movies, ranking “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan” and “Hannah and Her Sisters” as three of my favorite all-time films. With “Radio Days” and “Sleeper” not too far behind.  (more…)