Jihad Joe Inspires the Troops

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Jihad Joe Inspires the Troops

On Independence Day Vice-President Joe Biden, America’s ambassador of good will, made a surprise visit to our Frankenstein’s monster, Iraq. While giving a speech about how well the war is going or something, some of the lads outside The Green Zone dropped a mortar round into Fort Maginot to remind the white-wine-and-cheese set that Abdul and Achmed are a little miffed about not being invited to the party.

A spokesman said that this was an isolated incident, no one was hurt, and no damage was done. Nothing to see here, folks, just move along, no cameras, please, and just ignore those dead bodies on the croquet lawns and that little man behind the curtain.

Jihad Joe can now join John Fitzgerald Kerry and Hillary Clinton in the pantheon of great American war heroes. He’ll probably get a medal for cussing small business owners while under fire. In the meantime, the E-4 on patrol protecting Fort Maginot will consider himself lucky if he gets a hot shower sometime this week.

Jihad Joe was earning his combat honors in the new American embassy, a modest endeavor said to cost some $700,000,000 dollars. At that price it ought to have restrooms, unlike the proposed Amtrak railroad stop in Beaumont, Texas.

$700 million dollars. For an embassy. In Iraq. Has anyone asked why?

Whatever business is being transacted in Bagdad could surely be accomplished on a couple of floors rented from the Hilton or the Holiday Inn or something. Heck, General Eisenhower led the allied forces in Europe while living in a travel trailer. Does an ambassador need anything better?

When Saddamn took the long walk from a short rope there was much mockery about all his palaces, about how large and pretentious they were, and how much they cost the poor Iraqi people. And yet the ambassadors from our modest republic founded on the rocky shores of New England by sturdy Puritans now seem to expect to live as high on the camel as any supremeissimo generalissimo grandissimo beloved of Allah.

I don’t suppose there are any oil slicks in His Highness the Ambassador’s swimming pool.

Books in the ambassador’s library should include Bernard Fall’s Street Without Joy and Hell in a Small Place, Brian Farrell’s Defence and Fall of Singapore 1940-1942, Charles Morris’ Massacre of an Army, Michael Asher’s Khartoum, Tacitus’ Annals, Tim Saunders’ Fort Eban Emael 1940, and perhaps just one useful line from Kipling: “Here lies a fool who tried to hustle the East.”

$700 million for an embassy. I guess that means that the wounded and the shell-shocked are getting some really good treatment, then, eh?

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