 Chortler Features
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ON THE FRONTLINES
Notes from an American Taliban
Sometime during the great battle of good versus evil. (I don't know the exact time because the Taliban wouldnât let me keep my watch.)
Ah, this is the life. Up before dawn, a hearty breakfast of stale bread and water and then on to fight the imperialist Americans and their freedom-loving puppets for the bigger cause. A cause that is so big that it cannot be named and that I cannot possibly understand. That is why I am here.
Last night, I sat up and thought about how wonderful life is for me here in Afghanistan. Just me and the stars and 850 of my grubby, unshaved Taliban brothers. Why would I bother thinking about college and a career when I have everything I could possibly need right here amongst the sand, the rocks and the rubble of Afghanistan?
Though my path may have been different than my Afghan, Saudi and Pakistani colleagues, I can understand the suffering of my fellow Taliban brothers. I know what it is like to have grown up in a two-car suburban American home. I know what it is like to have had your parents give you everything you want. I know what it is like to have had someone else slide into your parking space at the mall just when you thought it was yours.
My ungrateful, uncomprehending parents should be thankful that I am doing what I am doing. After all, I have managed to save them a yearâs supply of razors and shaving cream. Yet somehow they still donât understand my adolescent need to rebel by fighting for the most repressive regime in the modern world.
That is why the Taliban is where I have found my true family. They took me in as a brother, and immediately sent me to the frontlines â although I have no military experience -- where I nearly got shot by daily Northern Alliance attacks and American bombs and then almost died in a prison riot. What nice, caring people.
I cannot accept the policies that the American wrong-doers and their freedom-loving puppets want to set up here. I would prefer death -- or at least my own dark and dank three-bedroom cave in the Afghan hills -- than to be a part of such an evil government, a government that would let women walk on the streets without covering their faces, that would allow for freedom of religion, that would give Regis Philbin two prime-time slots television slots as well as a daytime talk showâ¦
So for those who still cannot understand why I am here, I will quote the words of Mullah Omar, my esteemed leader: "America must stop thrusting its empire, its will, and especially some of those recent Adam Sandler films on the world." Only then will I leave the Taliban and join some other crazy, radical rebel movement in the Philippines or perhaps Peru.
-- John Walker
Copyright © 2001 postdocme.net
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