This is a report on an encounter with a group of A-10 (Warthog) pilots stationed overseas. I am a longtime expat here. These young men were congregated in front of a convenience store drinking booze and shooting the shit. I stopped some distance away and eavesdropped. I noticed that all of them sported mustaches and none of them wore or carried a mask.

After a few minutes, I made eye contact with one of them and struck up a conversation. I was intending to ask them, first, why were they not even carrying masks in a country that is extremely high in mask compliance and, second, what was with all the mustaches?

When I shook that soldier's hand, he gave me the fag handshake. That's when a faggot extends his forefinger along your wrist during a handshake, and if you're a faggot also, you return the gesture. At least that's how a faggot once explained it to me. Anyway, it was funny, because of how a lot of us associate faggotry and mustaches on young virile men. But I digress.

When pilot number one realized I wasn't a homo, he lost interest immediately. So I fell into conversation with pilot number two. I asked him about why no masks and he said they were all stationed at an air base in the countryside where mask restrictions are much more lax, and since they were in the big city for a couple of days only, they hadn't gone out of their way to mask up and conform on their night out.

I then asked him what in the name of Zeus's butthole just happened in Afghanistan.

He mumbled an answer to the effect that it was all so unfortunate, but they'd had to pull out and it was the only way they could have done it.

I politely told him that what he'd just said was factually and objectively incorrect. He asked me what I meant.

I told him, there is no way a military EVER withdraws from an occupied country and leaves untold billions of dollars worth of presents weapons, tech, planes, helicopters, infrastructure, CASH, etc for the enemy to appropriate and use. And there's no way in hell a military worth its salt leaves thousands of civilians stranded in country while evacuating citizens of that country en masse. I gave a few more examples and then finished by telling him that the generals who ran the withdrawal are either stupid and incompetent, or they are, for whatever reason(s), deliberately FUCKING the U.S. military to death, and by extension, America himself.

I added that his so-called "Commander-in-Chief" is a senile moron who couldn't find his way out of a wet paper bag.

I said all this in a calm, low-key, matter-of-fact tone of voice. I didn't make much eye contact. When I finished talking, he stood there frozen. His buddies had moved down the street and were calling him to go along with them. But he wouldn't go. He shouted at them to give him a goddamned minute, and then he stood there again without speaking. It was like his operating system had crashed and he needed to reboot. I told him he should probably go catch up with his buddies, but he just shook his head, held up one hand, and said, "Wait. Just … just wait."

So I waited. His buddies were getting agitated. After about half a minute, he gave me a serious, almost a pleading look. He said, "You're American, right?"

"Affirmative."

"What is the one value that all Americans share in common? The most important thing?"

"Freedom," I said.

He then told me that we had been in Afghanistan to spread freedom, so that the Afghan people could have freedom, and no matter how badly it had ended, and no matter what the reasons, the point was, we'd had our hearts in the right place.

I nodded and said I understood and that he had best get along with his buddies. But still he wouldn't go.

"I mean it," he said. "It's all about freedom."

"I believe you," I said.

But he seemed to sense that I was just humoring him, because he stood there rooted to the spot telling me that he really meant it, and repeating the mantra about muh freedom. I shook his hand and assured him that I understood his answer, and it was time to move along. I told him to be brave and true and to have a wonderful and productive life.

We shook hands. He didn't give me the fag handshake. But his eyes had that deer-in-the-headlights look. He was really shaken up, and he didn't want to let it go like that. But his buddies were starting to get upset, and finally he moved along.

He was a nice young man, but woefully programmed and ignorant and incapable of honest thinking.

If the military is the only way, there had better be some brass waiting in the wings that are old-school patriots and not "woke". I realize this is anecdotal and anonymous, but present it FWIW. God bless you all.