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Graham helps train Afghan military lawyers
Posted on Sun, Sep. 03, 2006
TheState.com By JAMES ROSEN
WASHINGTON
— Col. Lindsey Graham, packing heat and wearing Air Force desert
fatigues, was growing frustrated as he stood before a roomful of Afghan
military lawyers on a steamy August day in Kabul.
Graham was trying to use his Southern wit to leaven the complex principles and practices of U.S. military law he was teaching.
His
self-deprecating, cornball jokes play well on the Senate floor or back
in South Carolina, but here in the Afghan capital, delivered through an
interpreter, they were falling flat.
Each time the colonel
cracked a joke, the few other Americans in the room broke out laughing,
while the Afghans sat stone-faced.
In mock exasperation, Graham turned to the translator and said: “You’re not very funny!”
During
his mid-August mission to train Afghan judges, lawyers and prosecutors
in the fledgling democracy’s armed forces, Graham was the first sitting
member of Congress in decades to perform military duty in a war zone.
“When
you’ve been working in the military most of your life like I have, you
relish the opportunity to put your skills to use in a time that it
matters the most,” Graham said last week in a phone interview from
Montenegro.
An Air Force Reserve colonel, Graham served more
than six years’ active duty as a military lawyer, most of it in Europe,
before joining Congress in 1995. Since then, he has sat as a judge on
the Air Force Court of Appeals and pulled other reservist duty. His
eight-day trip to Afghanistan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates was
his first foreign assignment as a reservist.
The Afghanistan assignment appealed to Graham, 51, because he felt it would aid the country’s rough transition to democracy.
“For
us to win the war on terror, it’s going to take more than bullets,”
Graham said. “Our hope is that if we can transform the military to
accept the rule of law, it will spread to the civilian population in
Afghanistan.”
Almost five years after U.S. forces toppled the
Taliban regime, Afghanistan still endures widespread violence. There
was a car bombing in Kabul shortly before Graham’s arrival, and NATO
forces were fighting Muslim insurgents in southern Afghanistan during
Graham’s visit.
Training at Andrews Air Force Base, Graham, an
avid hunter, qualified as an expert marksman before his departure. He
holstered a loaded 9 mm pistol while in Kabul and traveled in an
unmarked convoy with three other visiting U.S. officers.
Graham said he never felt directly threatened in Afghanistan but felt the general danger.
“I
realized I was in a war zone — that was never lost on me,” Graham said.
“I was probably at more personal risk because I went as a senator. I’m
just a more visible target.”
For security and personal
reasons, Graham’s trip was not publicized in advance, and his office
issued no news releases afterward. Word of the unusual journey filtered
out after American Forces Press Service ran an article for military
publications.
“I wasn’t going to say a word about it, because
I know that my contribution is minimal,” Graham said. “Quite honestly,
I know the sacrifices that people are making are so much more than
mine.”
The Afghan parliament recently approved the
post-Taliban government’s first military code of justice. Graham spent
part of his time describing its similarities with, and differences
from, the U.S. military legal system.
Graham traveled with Maj. Gen. Jack Rives, who as Air Force judge advocate general is his boss in the Air Force Reserve.
Rives
noted that while he had his own room and a private bathroom during the
trip, Graham bunked with another colonel, They shared a hallway
bathroom.
“He traveled as a colonel in the Reserves, and he
was treated as a colonel in the Reserves,” Rives said. “A lot of folks
we met, of course, were aware of his status in civilian life, but not
all of them were. Some of them were surprised when they found out.”
A
declining number of senators or representatives have any military
experience at all — about a quarter of the 535 members at last count.
Graham
is the only senator in the National Guard or Reserves. There are three
representatives: U.S. Reps. Steve Buyer, an Indiana Republican, and
John Shimkus, an Illinois Republican, are in the Army Reserve; U.S.
Rep. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican, is in the Navy Reserve.
U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-Springdale, retired from the Army National Guard three years ago.
Buyer
attends weekly drills with Graham, the other congressional reservists
and senior executive agency officials who retain their military
commissions. Their unit is a special one for “Individual Mobilization
Augmentees” — Pentagonspeak for officers who, because of their
government positions, are not deployable for active duty.
“What
is extraordinary about Lindsey doing this overseas is that he serves at
no pay, and he does not seek reimbursement for his expenses,” Buyer
said. “Lindsey is a talented lawyer, he is a good Air Force officer,
and he’s a good person. For him to go over and participate in teaching
is crucial, because, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, establishment of
the rule of law is so important.”
Graham’s experience as a
military lawyer has helped put him in the middle of the most
controversial policy debates and power struggles between Congress and
the executive branch since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Graham
has helped attempt to reach compromises over the Bush administration’s
bid to try accused terrorists in closed military tribunals, employ
rough interrogation techniques that some compare to torture and hold
detainees without access to lawyers.
But during his two-day
teaching stint in Kabul, it wasn’t Graham’s analysis of complex
military and legal issues that drew the biggest response from the
Afghan military lawyers.
The moment that most impressed them
was when Graham said that he was following in the footsteps of earlier
senators who also performed military service. As Graham paid homage to
Strom Thurmond, he mentioned that the late senator from South Carolina
had fathered two children after turning 70.
The Afghans broke out in applause, some rising to their feet.
“He almost got a standing ovation,” said Rives, the Air Force judge advocate general. “The Afghans did appreciate that.”
James Rosen covers Washington for McClatchy newspapers in South Carolina. http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/15430742.htm