fuck Rimbaud

I just visited the estimable ROKDrop and saw this post about "The Afghan Rambo," which in turn led me to this post at BlackFive. Jamal Udin, the Afghan Rambo, guards Camp Phoenix, a military base in Afghanistan. He has six children, and lost his wife during a Taliban rocket attack. Since that time, he's been working for the Americans. Get this [edited for style]:

"Since he couldn't have a weapon, he found a big red pipe. So now he stands there at the front gate in his US Army ACU uniform with his red pipe. If a vehicle approaches the gate too fast or fails to stop, he slams his pipe down on its hood. Then, once the gate is lifted, the vehicle moves on to the 2nd gate where the US Army MP's are. So he's like the first line of defense.

"Last Thursday at 0930 hrs, a Toyota Corolla packed with explosives and some jackass that thought he had 72 virgins waiting for him approached the gate. When he saw Rambo he must have recognized him and known the jig was up. But he needed to get to that 2nd gate to detonate his load and take American lives. So he slammed his foot on the gas, which almost caused the metal gate to go up but mostly caught on the now-broken windshield. Rambo fearlessly ran to the vehicle, reached through the window, jerked the suicide bomber out of the vehicle before he could detonate, and commenced putting some red pipe to his heathen ass.

"He detained the guy until the MP got there. The vehicle only exploded when [base personnel] tried to push it off base with a robot but no one was hurt. I'm still waiting for someone to give this guy a medal or something."

All I have to say to our troops at Camp Phoenix is... you'd better not let anything happen to this guy. He sure as hell deserves better than $400-something per month. If he won't accept higher pay (and another article hints that he won't), do something meaningful for his kids.

NB: BlackFive linked to the site from which I plucked the photo of Rambo.


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