New Missions?

Are these soldiers:

a) Fleeing to their barracks because George W. Bush has just started his “Mission Accomplished” speech?

b) Victors in a game of Capture The Flag? Or

c) Doing a foot race to raise awareness for autism?

If you picked “c”, you are correct. What a great thing to do. It’s a lot more than I’m doing to help, that’s for certain. All I ever do is tell parents that they shouldn’t vaccinate their kids.

With the war in Afghanistan winding down, the military is now considering what its future missions should look like. The nation has grown tired of invading countries whose most advanced weapon is a goat-mounted rocket launcher. And we’ve got drones to handle the threats posed by Yemeni wedding parties. So the big question is “What’s next?”

Here’s what I think we should do:

America’s brave soldiers are physical bad-asses. See the thigh muscle on that guy in front? The only way I’d end up with a thigh looking like that is if I walked into a parking barrier while texting and my leg swelled up. But these men and women are fit. So I say we skip all the things that involve shooting and build on the race shown above with:

The Marathon For Muscular Dystrophy – a badass, cross country race where soldiers raise a dollar for every mile covered. They’d make the contestants in The Amazing Race look like slobs doing a beer run to 7-11.

Pushup For Buildup – a contest to see who can hold a push-up the longest. Every minute would net each soldier a dollar that went to rebuilding blighted neighborhoods. Guys like me could tune in and watch as women hold a push-up for ten minutes more than our best time, which is approximately 30 seconds.

And so on, defending the nation by making it healthier. The Pentagon and the defense contractors would chafe at this idea. They’d probably tell us to take a big drink from a frosty mug of Shut Up, but it’s our military in the end.