“PEACE WITH HONOR”?
by OPOVV, ©2017
(Sep. 1, 2017) — What we have here is two PFC’s standing guard at some worthless pile of rocks Anywhere, Afghanistan. Let’s listen in:
“What time is it?”
“It’s more than 10 and less than 15 minutes since you last asked me. Tomorrow I’m going to the PX and buying you a watch.”
“They sell Rolexes in the PX?”
“Sure, the Rolex display is next to the cases of Chateau Lafite Rothschild.”
“You ought to go into politics when you get out.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you’ve never answered a question with a straight ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; it’s got to be some long, drawn-out convoluted answer that makes the person who asked the question forget about the question in the first place.”
“20 after 2; 0220.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I won’t.”
“But you just did, so there.”
“I’m not having this conversation, you know. You’re not real and I’m not in this godforsaken place. How can people live here? All there is is a bunch of nothing.”
“And poppy fields.”
“That we’re not supposed to see, but we saw one the other day, didn’t we?”
“That’s because that shavetail couldn’t read a map. How come you didn’t tell him? You were sitting right next to him.”
“The same reason you didn’t speak up: because we were traveling on a new road, a road we’ve never been on so it was safe from any explosive device that’ll get our legs blown off.”
“Why do they call them ‘roadside bombs’? They’re not on the side and you can’t call these donkey trails roads, not in the sense of telling the dude with the Porsche, ‘That’s right, just follow the lines on your Michelin road map.’ Fat chance.”
“What do you think a ‘WIN’ looks like?”
“I don’t know; I’ve never seen one.”
“If you would’ve said, ‘I’ve never seen one, with a “W,” get it?’ it would’ve been funny but you didn’t so it’s not funny.”
“You know you’re talking to yourself? I’m not hearing a word of this ‘cause I’m not here.”
“My grandfather says after they were driven out of Vietnam with their tails between their legs they called the rout ‘Peace with honor,‘ so maybe the same thing will happen here; wouldn’t surprise me in the least.”
“Me, neither, but this is what I think: I think they’ll hire some civilian contractor to erect billboards all over this country at, say, a million dollars* each and they’ll all say the same thing: WE WON!”
“And that’s it?”
“If you got a better idea tell it to the Pentagon because, I guarantee you, they haven’t a clue.”
FINI
[*Million dollars: I first valued a billboard in Afghanistan at $100,000 each but, what the heck, if they’ll pay that much they’ll pay the million. It’s just the way our government throws money out the window, and these private overseas contractors are milking our government for every penny.]