KABUL — A Command Sergeant Major serving in Kabul who reportedly said he’d fight the war “so his son wouldn’t have to” in 2001 sort of feels like an asshole right now, after his son joined the Army a year ago and serves with a unit just a few miles away, sources confirmed today.

“When I said that, I thought we were going to, you know, come in, bomb the shit out of them, shoot a few guys, and split,” said Sgt. Maj. Ted Stevens while noting previous U.S. engagements without a prolonged troop presence such as Vietnam and Korea.

Brad Stevens, a private first class now serving with 2nd Infantry Division, barely remembers the events of Sept. 11, when he was just seven years old.

“I remember my mom and dad just staring at the television screen, and smoke, but I didn’t really know what he meant when he said we needed to ‘bomb them back to the stone age,'” Brad told reporters.

On that day, sources confirmed then-Sgt. Ted Stevens said he would fight this war against terrorists so that “you wouldn’t have to” as he pointed to his young son.

“It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the mountains of Afghanistan when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas,” Stevens later told a reporter, shortly after landing on the ground in Afghanistan in October 2001.

After routing the Taliban and capturing a number of key terrorist leaders in Operation Enduring Freedom, Stevens, along with the rest of the U.S. military, packed his bags and redeployed in support of Operation Enduring Clusterfuck, a controversial new war plan which shifted U.S. efforts in Afghanistan around mid-2002.

The plan, devised by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, involved setting up bases in remote areas of Afghanistan so thousands of soldiers could receive combat action badges after mortar attacks, in addition to allowing an untold number of Marines to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by building bridges across canals using corrupt Afghan contractors.

Shortly after that plan went forward, Rumsfeld also launched the controversial Operation What The Fuck Are We Even Doing Here? after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. That plan was later followed by Operation Surge Troops Into Afghanistan Because Fuck It, I Need To Act Like I’m Sort Of Doing Something Here by President Obama in 2009.

(h/t Brandon Friedman)