Amy's Robot

No Blizzards™ for troops = Outrage

A couple of weeks ago, Command Sgt. Michael T. Hall announced on his blog that most of the fast food chains currently on military bases in Afghanistan will not have their contracts renewed, and will be closing. Dairy Queen, Burger King, Pizza Hut, TGI Friday's, and that old mainstay of mall food courts, Orange Julius, will all be heading out of Kandahar and other big bases.

The reason, he says, is that using limited transportation resources to bring in Whoppers and P'Zones can delay the delivery of essentials, like "ammunition, food and water." Clearly, what Command Sgt. Hall is implying here is that he does not consider Dairy Queen's Fudge Brownie Temptation Waffle Bowl Sundaes (960 calories!) to be food.

There's some real uproar happening in the comments on the Reuters article about the announcement, "No fries with that: fast food axed at Afghan bases". Many angry responses from readers stem from an assumption that buying a hamburger and fries while stationed on a military base is a precious luxury.

They're either angry that our government would deny our hard-working troops something so wonderful and comforting as crappy fast food, or they're angry that they (the reader) didn't get any fast food options when they were stationed in Korea, and these guys today are a bunch of wusses. But they're not especially angry that young Americans have been fighting a war in Afghanistan for 8 1/2 years, and in all that time, we've failed to find Osama bin Laden or bring peace and stability to the country.

A few choice examples:

• What will they cut next? Clean clothes?
• Came on guys! our Soldiers need to be feed and feed good!
• if was getting SHOT AT EVERYDAY i would like to enjoy a whopper in my free time
• When I served I was in indian country, tree bark was the meal of the day. It's a lot better that the GI's don't eat the garbage that these companies put out. I've also heard that mcdonalds meat will not decompose in a compost pile, nor will french fries.
• eat you big mac and shut the fuc & up and enjoy the freedom you have, given to you buy people who are willing to die JUST FOR YOU! dumb ass. SGT U.S. MARINES ret!
• When our other two sons came home from Iraq they couldn't get enough candy, fast food, etc. (One son lives on pizza and slurpees for two months!) I'll be happy to give my boy(s) any kind of junk food they want when they are safely back home.

And a couple of comments from people who were stationed in Afghanistan or Iraq earlier in the conflicts:

• I am prior service, and currently work in this region, I am a professional Chef cooking for the troops. As far as the fast food joints go they are ripping the solders off with the prices they are charging $11.00 for a 6 inch pizza get real, $7.00 for a burger and fries and the burger taste like camel meat and yes I know what camel taste like.
• I don't see where any of these companies should be on base. When I was in we had chow halls making specials all the time. The worst thing I can say about the food was that they over cooked the seafood and sometimes you could taste the iodine sterilizing solution we cleaned with. But that was before somebody decided to privatize our soldiers food. Now who knows what they are being fed for someones profit. Semper Fi.
• I recently returned from a 15 month tour in Iraq. It used to piss me off seeing all these fast food places, and all the out of shape soldiers scarfing this crap down. I felt embarrassed just watching them. You want to do something on your down time? Go lift some weights.

Only a few comments suggested that instead of giving our troops cruddy junk food to buy as some sort of imagined treat, we could let them buy beer like European soldiers can. Also, hardly any comments mentioned another change coming to military bases that's in the same article: fewer first-run movie screenings. I'd be outraged.

categories: War and Security
posted by amy at 4:31 PM | #