PAONCO
Epic Afghan Snowboarding
FNG: Man the Mountains here in Afghanistan are so beautiful...I'd love to come back here in a few years and snowboard those runs.
EOD: I wouldn't do that if I were you.
FNG: Why not? I'm sure once the violence calms down it'd be cool.
EOD: Most of those mountains are covered with landmines and UXO.
FNG: That would be EPIC!
Me: (SMH)

At the core of the Public Affairs Specialist job is communication. We communicate with the American and International public to help make sense of seemingly senseless things. We act as a voice to explain what the troops are doing and provide the context for those actions. When I was in Iraq at the height of the war, this was difficult because of the sheer volume of interest…in Afghanistan, the reverse is true. It seems that much of the outside world has lost interest in what happens here. There are still teary-eyed memorial ceremonies for the fallen or bold-typed headlines when a massive bomb goes off in a major city like Kabul but for the most part the names of the places here are still as foreign to most Americans as they were 10 years ago. Iraq is over, Afghanistan is not. It seems that by-and-large this war is forgotten by the people at home. To a certain extent I can’t help but feel somewhat responsible. It is my job to inform the American Public but increasingly it seems that no one is listening.