The End of the War

On a day when the President will address the American people on the end of the Iraqi War – a President who denounced President Bush’s surge, a President who voted against funding the American effort in Iraq, and a President who chose as a running mate a moron who wanted to partition Iraq into three separate countries thereby guaranteeing bloodshed for a generation – yes, on this auspicious night when our President takes to the airwaves to tell us how he ended the war (turn off your bullshit meters, they will peg and probably explode in your hands), I am not thinking about Iraq. I am thinking about banana pudding. I am thinking about banana pudding because I don’t want to think about Iraq. I don’t want to think about the stupidity of American foreign policy. I am not thinking about Iraq because I am sickened when a green-horn amateur presumes to speak for a nation as if he had a clue about how to guide a military and direct a nation’s foreign policy. Banana pudding makes more sense to think about. Banana pudding, as far as I know, never killed or maimed anybody. It doesn’t explode, vaporizing a 12-year-old boy and your friend to whom he is clinging. It does not land in the wheel well of your vehicle and destroy the life of an honest, decent kid from New Jersey just trying to do his duty. And, banana pudding does not play fast and easy with facts and it does not presume that everyone has forgotten what you said and did.

The Blessed Saint Rebecca made the best banana pudding in the world. I am convinced that the reason she died when she did is because God looked around Heaven and concluded that, after tasting what his chefs offered Him, he needed a real banana pudding. And, since, BSR made it, He called her home. Called her to the Big Kitchen. Cooking for the Lord of Hosts. What a job! She made it all from scratch, except the vanilla wafers. She bought those. The key to a real banana pudding is the pudding. No packaged mixes for the Blessed Saint Rebecca. I was shocked to read Paula Deen’s recipe for banana pudding and she says up front, use a packaged pudding mix. Disgusting.

The people I left behind in Basra are being shelled routinely these days. While I was there, we experienced rocket attacks every week or so. Usually on Thursday nights. Now, it is almost daily. A convoy with one of my former team members was hit by an IED last week. No one was hurt. The bastards who shelled us were usually working for the Iranians. Couple hundred bucks to set off a couple of rockets aimed generally at the Americans. Sure. Lucky for us, no guidance systems and lousy aims. But, then, ever so often the bastards would get lucky and kill an American. I am not sure if they received bonuses for rockets that scored.

Instead of watching the President announce the end of the war tonight, I am making a banana pudding. To watch and listen would probably cause my eyeballs to pop out of my head and my ears to melt. I don’t mind political hacks jockeying an issue. It is a practiced art. I’ve seen it throughout my career, even helped hacks ride the pony myself. But, this one, when the lives of people for whom I care deeply is concerned, duplicity of this magnitude is unworthy of any occupant of the Oval Office. It would be unworthy of the Chambers County dogcatcher. If we had one.

By evening’s end, I will be feasting on a real banana pudding while the country stuffs itself with a packaged pudding mix.