WASHINGTON—In the wake of the news that 2,000 of its things have now died in Afghanistan, U.S. military officials announced Monday that it will be sending some additional things to replace the dead ones.
“A bunch of those things are dead or don’t work anymore, so we need to send over a bunch more,” said U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, adding that while the military sent a bunch of new things in 2010, a good amount of them either died or were broken. “We’ve got tons of things just sitting around in Texas and Florida, so we’re going to send some of those.”
“We actually have a whole load of some used, pretty-beat-up-things that were sent back from Afghanistan a few months ago, so we’ll probably ship them over, too” Panetta continued. “They’re not in perfect condition or anything, but in a pinch they’ll do the trick.”
Since 2001, the U.S. has sent more than 90,000 things to Afghanistan, with over one thousand of them destroyed in the last 27 months alone. Of the things that haven’t been completely shattered, a very high percentage returned scuffed up or severely damaged. In addition, sources confirmed that a good portion of them have come back to the U.S. missing multiple parts.
“We get new things every day, so it’s not that big a deal,” said Panetta, responding to concerns over both the diminishing supply of things as well as whether or not more things should be sent overseas at all. “And we have some extra ones stored up and ready to go in case we need them. We’re covered.”
Officials went on to explain that the military must continue sending American things while the nation of Afghanistan figures out how to work its own things, which are expected to be up and running by the end of 2014.
Panetta said, however, that he expects American things to be present in Afghanistan for some time, or at least until the U.S. military runs out of things to send. Panetta went on to reiterate that while many of the things have died in Afghanistan over the last 11 years, that number isn’t even close to the 4,000 or so things lost in Iraq from 2003 to 2011.
Following the announcement, President Obama appeared at a press conference to praise all the things in Afghanistan and around the world.
“The great thing about American things is that you can basically do whatever you want with them,” Obama said. “You can bunch ‘em up and send them wherever, and if they come back, great. If they don’t, no biggie.”
“After all,” he continued, “they’re just things.”
