Pogue City

Fat'n'happy in Afghan-land.

Fast food joints where soldiers wolf down burgers and pizza will soon be a thing of the past at bases in Afghanistan, as the U.S. military reminds soldiers they are at war and not in "an amusement park."

In the sprawling military base at Kandahar, the fast food outlets facing the axe include Burger King, Pizza Hut, and the U.S. chain restaurant T.G.I. Friday's that features a bar with alcohol-free margaritas and other drinks -- all set along the bustling "Boardwalk" area of the base.

The U.S. military says its beef with the burger joints is that they take up valuable resources like water, power, flight and convoy space and that cutting back on non-essentials is key to running an efficient military operation.

"This is a war zone -- not an amusement park," Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall wrote in a blog earlier this year.

"Supplying nonessential luxuries to big bases like Bagram and Kandahar makes it harder to get essential items to combat outposts and forward operating bases, where troops who are in the fight each day need resupply with ammunition, food and water."

Same as it's always been: the REMFs sit on their asses stuffing pogie bait into their maws, while the grunts are dropping iodine pills in dirty streamwater to fill their canteens.

Amazingly, I never seem to meet anyone after they've left the military who was in a non-combat MOS. Everybody was a SeAL, Force Recon, Green Beret, etc. I volunteered to be a Marine Corps infantryman; so did Fundy. We wear the tribulations of a grunt's life proudly. It's a badge of honor. So you can probably understand why I harbor a special ration of hatred for vets who like to pretend they were grunts -- especially since they were the first ones to look down their noses at us while on active duty.

The military needs support personnel -- about ten per combatant, the last I heard. There's no shame in it. The war can't be fought without such people. If your rear base camp has a burger joint where you can glutton up while in a war zone, well so be it. Any grunt will tell you he'd happily trade his sister's virginity for a Happy Meal after three weeks of eating MREs. Them's the breaks, as they say. But don't try to act like you were crawling in the sand and weeds with me when you were actually in the rear with the gear, sucking down Big Macs faster than Wimpy with a hangover.