War Diaries Part III
The War in Afghanistan | 99 Days

Chapter 1: Hurtling

Aftermath

We are speeding. Late. Late. Hurtling toward LAX like a panel of space debris--picking up heat as we fall. My flight is still four hours from now, but radio reports say check-ins are taking three. Our drive will burn off two. The math is against us. Solvang on the left.

It’s been nearly a week since hijackers crashed their jets into the collective national psyche. America’s vaunted innocence and isolation, now buried under seven stories of rubble. Thousands of lives. Hour after hour, for days, the world has watched, slackjawed and numb, the "new" reality TV. Video of airliners slicing into skyscrapers, skyscrapers pancaking hundreds of floors. Then a tidal wave of glass, steel, smoke, dust, death.

The pictures: so unreal, so unbelievable, most of us are forced to use movie references as our only grasp at description. It was, as National Public Radio commentator Bob Garfiled said, playing off Roosevelt’s line, "a day that will live in imagery.".

In the aftermath, I wished I couldn’ve been a doctor, a fireman, even a civil engineer. Someone with something useful to offer Instead, I’ve been tapped to feed the need for more images. Images potentially as disturbing as the burning towers. Video of America’s revenge. I’m being positioned my the NBC News Foreign Desk to cover the War on Terrorism. My assignment: babysit the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, based in the tiny gulf emirate of Bahrain.

As we get closer, traffic is backing up. I’m getting nervous. I smile at my girlfriend. Our time left is too short to poison with stress. We’ve been together only five months. I know I could be away at least that long— maybe more. We tell each other this is not the end of our relationship, but she is scared and so am I. Casablanca runs through my mind, “in this crazy world the problems of two little people don’t unt to a hills of beans,” speech. That one. That’s where we’re at. In the midst of senseless, earth-shaking carnage--everything else should be irrelevent. But it’s not. All the dealings of life go on...guiltily.

A War Against Terrorism. What does that mean?. We’ve ramped up our military machine. Mightiest in the world. Stuck $20-billion in its back pocket. Yet, who do they fight? An enemy of shadow warriors. Men without uniforms or countries. How long will that take? When will it begin? Who says when it’s over?

Back in the Game

This will be my third time in Bahrain. I travelled there in ‘96 and ‘98 to watch F-14 and F-18 fighter jets shoot off carriers to enforce the no-fly zone as post-Gulf War tensions ratcheted up with Iraq.

The Terminal

We know we have to say goodbye quickly--or the process will become unbearable. We are in the Remote Parking Lot C at LAX. The terminal has been closed to direct passenger drop-off. I must take a shuttle bus to my check-in area. We hold each other tightly. Promise things. Forget important other things we want to say. I don’t fully realize the sense of loss--until I get on the bus. This is our new world.

New Marching Orders

I remember I need to get cash from the trip. I max out my daily limit at the ATM
with a withdrawal of 300-bucks. On the walk back to my terminal, I get a call on my mobile phone. It’s Danny. Head of Foreign Desk. “Where are you,” he asks me? “About ready to board,” I tell him, walking slowly to my gate. “Ok, go ahead to London,” he says. “But call me when you get there. Things have changed.”

-END-