The Hooligans of Kandahar: Not All War Stories are Heroic

by Joseph J. Kassabian

Not all war stories are flag-waving triumphs of the American soldier, but those stories and the soldiers that lived them are no less a part of our history.

It’s not a perfect system— or one that actually works at all for that matter. That tended to be the reality in Afghanistan when it came to most things.

It doesn’t make any sense, and before you say anything, we know our commander is a fucking idiot.”

They had so many penises spray-painted across the shed you could barely make out the particle board it was built from. For some reason, wherever soldiers go, they cover everything in dicks. If you pointed out how weird that was, they would probably accuse you of being gay. Kind of like all of the homoerotic shit frat boys do but insist it’s totally straight because it’s about “brotherhood.”

“You ever think the people coming down the road just don’t know you’re there until you start shooting?” I asked.

Despite what Hollywood might have you believe, night vision goggles are nearly fucking useless. They turn everything a sickly shade of green and ruin your depth perception. You can’t effectively navigate a trail, let alone shoot well. They are only slightly better than blindly stumbling around in the dark.

We finally made our way through the corn field, which was made much easier by the fact nearly all the corn had been blown over by the explosion set off by EOD. Sure, we totally destroyed an entire village’s food and income source, but our day was made marginally easier by it.

Most interpreters working for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan kept their faces covered when out on patrol with us. They were normally from the same areas we were patrolling, and it would be bad news if someone recognized them. Not only would they be killed, but so would their family and friends.

“He says you could never kill them all. Eventually, you will leave and go back to America, but they will not. They will slaughter me.”

The old man was right. We wouldn’t be there to protect him forever. We would leave his war-torn country and return to the comfort of our homes in America. And the Taliban would roam through his town with knives looking for collaborators.

There’s a saying in the army that whenever you get screwed over in a way that you can only attribute to stupid command decisions, it’s called “being fucked by the big, green weenie.”

Of course, that never happened, as Creep had four complaints filed against him for only God-knows-what. Instead of being kicked out of the army, he had been shuffled around to different units. Kind of like the Catholic Church does with its offenders.

The Taliban aren’t a set of dominoes. You can’t just knock one of them down and expect the rest to go down with them. It turned out they simply replaced the guy we arrested less than a day later, never missing a step in their operations in our area. But for that brief moment, we stuck it to our enemy, and it felt good.

Complacency is a soldier’s worst enemy while at war. Instead of always keeping your head up for the enemy while patrolling, you start to think that they aren’t there. Your mind drifts to the home you miss so much. You start thinking about how fucking hot it is, and you kind of just drag your feet from Point A to Point B. This is generally when people start getting killed.

The idea of “the lesser of two evils” was apparently a part of our operations and procedures now.

I thought the post was hilarious and clicked that stupid little “like” button at the bottom. That was all it took to get me demoted.

Drugs are so widespread in Afghanistan that when we western folk showed up to put together a military and police force and told them they weren’t allowed to do drugs, they laughed it off.

Afghanistan, like most tribal-based societies, has ethnic issues going back centuries. No matter how many times America tried to tell all the groups to kiss and make up, they simply would not get along. That they were working for the same government meant absolutely nothing to them.

Afghanistan, like most Muslim countries, is incredibly conservative. The thought of us Americans seeing a woman without her full body robe, or hijab, was more important than their possibly being exploded by the unstable ordinance we’d found next door.

we all tried to forget we were almost killed by people who were supposed to be our allies.

We couldn’t have come from more different backgrounds in life, but in the army that didn’t really matter. Hating your life while serving in uniform tends to bring people together.

“Why do I even bother?” Sal shook his head. “Because you’re a good guy. Don’t stop being a good guy,” I said. “Why? It’s so much work.” “Because if you do you’ll end up like one of us.” I gave him a weak smile and lit a cigarette.

“It probably has something to do with the cholera outbreak we had a few months back.”

“You gave up…on child sex slaves living next door?” I was baffled. I had seen some seriously messed-up stuff in Afghanistan, but never something like this.

Insanity and sadism are timeless, though.

It wasn’t our first time enduring the horrible eighteen-hour flight in the cramped confines of a government-chartered jet. The best way to do it, we knew, was to eat an entire box of cough and cold medicine at the beginning of the flight. It put you into something just short of a coma, and when you woke up, you were somewhere in America.

It’s nearly impossible to step off that plane from a war zone and slip right back into whatever role you had before.

There is a saying in the army: “Don’t be a soft target.” It means that if you make yourself look like a badass, people generally won’t want to mess with you. If you act like a pushover, you’ll find yourself in someone’s crosshairs sooner rather than later.

knew what we’d done was wrong, but I didn’t care. I would have shot him on the spot if I thought I could have gotten away with it.

Anyone who ever said the Taliban were stupid never had to fight them.

It had become so commonplace to bribe the Afghans that we didn’t even wait for the bribe request anymore. We would just give them shit and hope they would do their jobs.

Somehow, nothing came of the incident. I got demoted for using Facebook, but not from threatening to kill an NCO and throwing a machine gun through the air.

We had always been told that if you needed help, no one would ever stop you and it would stay between you and your command. Everyone knew that was a bunch of shit.

There was a saying, “There is only one thief in the army; everyone else is just trying to get their shit back.”

“You know it’s okay to hate something and still miss it,” Nan said. “This place is miserable, but we made it our own little world.

“When do you ever tell the truth to an army doctor?” I retorted. You had to lie about injuries or mental issues or your unit’s leadership would think you were just some pussy trying to milk the government for a paycheck or were trying to get out of work.

We were all in various stages of losing it. Afghanistan had broken our minds and most parts of our bodies.

Something you learn early on in the army is that whenever you’re told that transportation is coming, it will inevitably be several hours late.

Stuck to the ceiling of the bus was a sticker that depicted a jet bombing tiny stick figures with the caption, “We will free the shit out of you.”

“Only bitches join the Air Force.” Rocky spat again. “Someone has got to go to faraway lands, meet a different culture, and kill it. That someone is us.”

Customs agents, military or civilian, were usually fat, lazy bastards who hated to actually do their jobs. If you place contraband you don’t actually want in an easy-to-find place, they will dutifully find it and think they’ve done their job—leaving your good shit securely unmolested by their Cheetos-dusted fingers.