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Thanks For the Food. Now Get the Hell Out.

Jimmie | January 12, 2005 | Comments (0)

I’m used to a certain amount of ingratitude from the world at large, being an American. But this is above and beyond mere ingratitude

Jakarta, Indonesia, Jan. 12 (UPI) — Indonesia’s vice president said Wednesday foreign troops should leave tsunami-hit Aceh as soon as they finish their relief mission, state media reported

“Three months are enough. In fact, the sooner the better,” Yusuf Kalla was quoted by the state Antara news agency as saying.

Well, I don’t know that the you’re much of an expert on mounting relief efforts to be telling us just how long it should take, but hey, it’s your country.

So how about we go ahead and leave tomorrow? Soon enough for you? Oh and we won’t bother unpacking all the rest of the supplies we brought, since our presence seems to cause you such anguish.

Have fun with that plague in a couple of weeks!

Oh, and don’t call. We plan on being too busy to answer our phone for a while. You know. Things to do…hair to wash…CDs to file…

UPDATE: Well, consider that situation resolved. Ace brings the story that we have agreed that our Marines won’t carry their weapons while on Indonesian soil and will get themselves right back to their ships at the end of every day.

Because there’s no chance that folks are walking around the disaster area wearing “Mujahadeen” t-shirts and jackets, or shirts emblazoned with the picture of Osama bin Laden and that just maybe those folks might think that a couple thousand unarmed Marines is the biggest birthday present ever. Oh heck no. That’s be absolutely impossible in Indonesia.

So let me get this straight. We send Marines to a country where, just two weeks after 9/11 there were parties in the streets celebrating the attacks and where you can’t swing a dead cat without knocking over a dozen people who’d love nothing more than to hang a few American scalps on their local Mosque doorframe. We send those Marines in with tens of thousands of tons of food, medicine, clothing, and shelters for which we will ask not a single dime in compensation. We also agree to forgive a pretty sizeable hunk of cash Indonsia owes us because we’ve lent them money so they can get their third-world hovel of a country back on its feet.

In return, we get told that we’re entirely unwelcome there and that our Marines, most of whom would much rather be enjoying their scheduled shore leave in Guam where the weather is nice and the cold adult beverages are nicer, have to do their backbreaking work entirely unprotected. And we also get told that in thanks for our overwhelming generosity, our troops can’t even have the small comfort of sleeping in tents and impromptu barracks on solid ground enjoying a little fresh air instead of being crammed in a tin can, two or more to a bunk.

Is that a fair assessment of the situation thus far?

Hmmm…tomorrow doesn’t seem soon enough to leave. Hell with them and their backwards, ungrateful, supremely insulting selves. When they take their next census and wonder where the hell their population went, but notice that the carrion-feeding animals seem unusually healthy and well-nourished, we’ll shrug our shoulders and pat their backs and say how sorry we are for their losses. But we’ll do it over the telephone because there’s no way on this Earth we ought to ever stretch out our hand for them.

There’s a fine line between being caring, giving, and compassionate and being someone’s bitch. Today, we just stepped over that line. We need to step back over into respectability again, damned quick.