July 13, 2006

 

 
   

   

Redneck Philosopher


By Joshua Kors

Talk with James Downen for a good 15 minutes, and it's unclear whether the man should be writing Kenny Rogers' lyrics or George Bush's foreign policy.

Downen apologizes for delaying his interview, but lately, he says, he's been as busy as “a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.”  Anyway, he says, describing his years of service as a military photographer is easy: “I'm just a doofus with a camera” living in a “rinky-dink redneck town.”

But as Downen's comments slide from the personal to the political, it becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss him so easily. If the Sergeant First Class insists on being labeled a “redneck,” he is then the greatest redneck philosopher this side of the Mississippi, and his views on poverty, religious extremism and the geopolitics of oil prove remarkably nuanced, a worldview clearly devised on his own and fed by years of first-hand experience in Central America, Europe and the Middle East.

The 37-year-old sergeant began gathering that experience as a child, a military brat who followed his father to

James Downen's unit worked to provide drinkable water and basic medical treatment to isolated communities in eastern Afghanistan.  Downen's photos of the Afghan mountains and its villages are posted here, in the gallery below.

               

 

northern Europe for his service in Belgium. (“My father's a wicked man,” says Downen. “God, I love him.”) Later Downen himself served in Germany and Saudi Arabia, trained with the 82nd Airborne in Panama, and did duty with the army reserves in Bosnia and Kosovo, where he worked as a combat photographer.

“When you've been to so many countries, it broadens your view of the world. You experience what people are like.” And you see, he says, the poverty, the desperation and the grip of religious fundamentalism. It's that fundamentalist component, says Downen, that is the key to the War on Terror. And there's a tinge of frustration in his voice as he adds that in his opinion, America has yet to realize this.

Echoing the wisdom of Robert McNamara, whose hard-earned lessons were laid out in “The Fog of War,” Downen notes that the key to winning any war is to correctly identify the enemy. And the enemy here, he says, is the not the rebels of Afghanistan or the insurgents of Iraq but fundamentalist Islam. “We need to look at the education system in the countries we're fighting and funding. If their textbooks teach that we are the enemy, if the families are telling their children that we're game, how do we ever expect to live peacefully with them?”

The sergeant pauses for a moment. And that folksy charm slips back into his voice, as he reflects upon his experiences on the ground in Jalalabad and Saudi Arabia and how the attitudes there are so absurdly misrepresented on TV's yak shows. “People are saying, ‘Oh, the world hates us now.' Well, the world has always hated us. We're Americans. We're infidels.”

Downen's discussion of this hatred that's fueling the insurgency plays with such honesty because it's clear from the passion in his voice just how much he loves America, how without hesitation he's willing to give his life to reverse Islam's opinion. It is why, after serving honorably in central Europe and the Middle East, and with just a few years to go before his 40th birthday, Downen leapt at the chance to serve once again with the Army's 321st Civil Affairs Brigade in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.

“On 9/11 I was in Greensboro, North Carolina, going to photography school and working at the Greensboro Airport. When my sister Rachel called and told me about the attacks, the first thing I did was call up my reserve unit and say, ‘Okay, when are we going?'” Downen lets out a soft chuckle as he remembers his unit administrator's reaction. “He said, ‘Stand down. We haven't been called up for anything yet.'”

That changed, of course, in due time. By Summer 2003, Downen and his brigade were off to the Hindu Kush mountains of eastern Afghanistan, part of a coordinated effort to provide its dirt-poor communities with drinkable water and basic medical treatment.

 

The Medic

Downen shifts for a moment to the topic of bin Laden and the shock and anger voiced by military critics who can't understand why the al-Qaeda leader has not yet been caught. Those comments, he says, come from people who've never been to Afghanistan, never seen the Hindu Kush mountains, its rugged terrain, massive cliffs and complex network of caves.

“The mountains are incredible, and as soon as you see them,” says Downen, “it makes perfect sense.” If the Hindu Kush offers anything, it's isolation. If bin Laden's still there, he says, it's going to take a determined effort and time to root the terrorist out.

Such isolation may be good for bin Laden, but it's been a disaster for Nangarhar's people, cutting them off from the public eye and leaving them to make do in make-shift communities that, in Downen's words, are “straight out of the Stone Age.” “The people live in huts made out of mud. There's no running water, the roads are all dirt, and the toilet facilities are outside.” The sergeant adds that it's not just the isolation that has kept these Afghan villages in the dark. It's also war, which has been raging there in one form or another, between a variety of combatants, since 1973. The villages caught in the crossfire have had little opportunity to develop their infrastructure or absorb modern notions about germs and disease.

“Their sense of sanitation, oh, it's nothing like America. But in civil affairs, you have to get out amongst them. You have to eat their food.” The main dish in Nangarhar is Qabili palau, “which is basically an oily rice” sometimes topped with sugared almonds and yellow raisins. “You eat with your hands. Or, well, one hand. The left hand is used for … bathroom purposes.”

                      

                                                                                                   

 
Tel.: (646) 456-7738                                                   joshua@joshuakors.com