Call it Saturday...

I got an e-mail from American Short Timer today and it made me really happy. As did his new post. Number one, it means he’s still around to post and number two, it’s like getting an e-mail from Gustav Hasford or somebody. Eyes and ears in Iraq complete with all the juicy rocking and rolling words that make it such sweet symphony, fine-tuned for the irony and sarcasm and good ol’ fuck yous.

See, I’ve always had this thing in my life where I like to apply war/military lingo to my everyday life and for the most part I’ve been informed by Vietnam books. When I waited tables, our customers were always “gooks” or “zipperheads” and we were “grunts” and “short-timers,” and the waitstation was the “DMZ” and our bar was “Dogpatch” or “Gookville,” and we said shit like “Don’t mean nothing” and “there it is” and “get some” and tried to one-up each other on knowing the names of military hardware while we got stoned and drunk and cried about our girlfriends or why the new waitress wouldn’t blow us. Now, thanks to ‘Raq guys like Colby Buzzell, AST, and Big Neal, I’ve found a whole new lingo and now when I’m at my bullshit office job where the most dangerous thing I’ll face all day is a paper-cut, I get to call people I don’t like “insurgents” and “haji” and quote 4th25 lyrics. This is my idea of fun. Send American boys to war and they’ll create their own fucking language. Is this a great country or what?

I had this fantasy when I was a kid, like junior high through college-y age just after the phase where all I wanted to be was a soldier, where I was going to be this bad-ass war protester when a war happened, right? I read all the ‘60s books and watched all the movies and knew all the songs and I was gonna do it, man. Burn my fucking draft card. Hell No I Won’t Go. Give the finger to The Man. Etc. But, the thing was, I was a little war-light there in the late ‘80s. Wasn’t a whole lot of shit going on where people were taking to the streets, you know? I mean, the first Gulf War was kind of over before it ever got started and since I didn’t know any war protesters and I lived in a little redneck Texas city, nothing was really happening anyway. I’m sure there were a few hippy kids in my little city who did some protesting and they probably got their balls stomped by drunk frat boys and now can say “Yeah, I lost that nut protesting the war in ‘91” or something, but to me that wasn’t a good enough reason to lose a ball and I was selling those frat boys drugs anyway, so it would’ve been awkward for everyone. But this war, oh boy! Now this war, this here Iraq war, this is something totally else. This is an invasion followed by an occupation and we’re in the third year of this shit and there’s not an end in sight. Guys getting back-door drafted through stop-loss and involuntary enlistments and National Guard units with more body bags than swinging tags and 2,000+ dead and counting -- this shit is off the hook. I mean, this is a WAR! The war protester’s fucking four-year long Super Bowl World Series wetdream kind of war! So, I was gonna do it, right? I was gonna get out there and protest the shit out of this war! Fuck yeah! I made the move to New York City, it’s 2004, the war, Bush, all that shit – man, I am gonna get out there and scream and yell and get tear-gassed and fight with the fucking pigs and it’s gonna be AWESOME. Except when I did get out there and start yelling, I looked around and noticed that I couldn’t really stand most of the other protesters. And I’m not talking about Grannies for Peace or the Vets Against the War or any of the older, more respectable folks. I’m talking about the hippy-dippy, so-called socialist/anarchist/whateverthefuck-ist kids. They all spouted this rhetorical bullshit and they all looked brain-washed and since when does taking a bath mean “selling out” and I said “You know what? I don’t want to be associated with these kids in any way, shape, or form. God love’em. I hope their team wins if they've even got a fucking team, but I just can’t do it.” So, I pulled out the camera and became a cockroach “journaliste” and that kind of sucked, too, because no matter how many pigs I cursed or how many flags I burned or how close I was to the girl who caught a rubber bullet in the face, I knew the stories about protesters on the streets were never going to be as good as stories about soldiers in the field and it was pointless to pretend I felt otherwise.

This is not a new history we’re writing in Iraq, anyway, so why should the anti-war movement be exceptional? No, this is the same ol’ history on both sides, repeating itself in real-time HD. Talk about not being able to read writing on walls -- how many of these fucking stunts do we have to pull before we realize the bottom line does not change? WE CANNOT KILL ALL THESE PEOPLE NO MATTER HOW HARD WE TRY OR HOW MUCH WE WANT TO. You can make bigger bombs but there’s always gonna be more people. Average age of an Iraqi is like 19 or something, right? Are you shitting me? By statistics alone, we’re fighting an army comprised mostly of children. Talk about punk as fuck. Now, those kids are pissed. Maybe if Johnny Rotten had had an AK, huh? Coulda seen some real rock-n-roll. Give those kids grenades! All of ‘em! And guitars! Yeah!

20-Ought-6 and time to realize we still have at least a couple more years of this shit. Same presidential circle jerk trying to keep all the money shots in the mouths of those with the deepest pockets. Same fat, white fuckers turning blood into oil and catastrophe into contracts and fucking the poor and giving the finger to most of the Rights they keep saying are worth getting killed for. “Seriously, that pile of bloody clothing that used to be your daughter? Worth it. Hey, cheer up and have some freedom, Haji” or “Sorry about your Specialist son who got IED’d on his way to the airport to pick up some general’s gay porn. It was so totally worth it, though. Check it out. Posthumous commendations? Huh? Yeah. And freedom. Don’t forget freedom. Your kid died so the ‘Raqis could finally get some freedom. ‘S good, right? Knew you’d like it. So, anyway, here’s his personal effects and don’t worry, we edited his diary for you. It was pretty upsetting stuff. And, frankly, off-the-record? Not too patriotic. So, there’s that… uh, can I use your bathroom?”