Is it worth starting a war to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein? Or to
rid North Korea of Kim Jong Il? Or to rid China of the Communist
party? Or to rid France of the French?
Is it worth starting a war to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein? Or to rid North Korea of Kim Jong Il? Or to rid China of the Communist party? Or to rid France of the French?
We already know the answer to the first: to about half of America it’s a big ol’ “Yes, oh yeah, damn straight, you betcha.” When Secretary of Doublespeak Rumsfeld was asked about six months ago about the unfortunate inability of our troops to find any weapons of mass destruction, he answered, “We haven’t found any yet; ask me again in six months.” In the interim we have gone from caring about the alleged threat to America posed by the Hussein regime to just being proud of ourselves for having done the Iraqis the kindness of chasing their dictator into hiding and giving them Halliburton to gouge them at the pump for their own gasoline.
Now, follow this closely because you’ll be quizzed on it at the polls in November: 9-11 was the act of terrorism that completely changed our entire outlook on the world and has been the driving force, whether we admit it or not, behind everything we have done in the world or at home since; the Administration has stated straight-out that there is no link, no evidence, no connection between 9-11 and Iraq or for that matter between Iraq and any terrorism against America at all; yet Bush has never stopped labeling Operation Fix Daddy’s Mistake as “the war against terrorism.”
Sometime-comedian Dennis Miller avoided the Administration’s graveyard where logic goes to die and got right to the point when he said, “You can’t expect us to take 9-11 lying down; we had to whack somebody.”
OK, so under the right circumstances starting a war can be justified as necessary venting; I buy that. But man, it’s really turning out that we could have picked a country with fewer problems. I mean, the place is broke and broken; seems the CIA forgot to notice that our embargo was doing a terrific job of wrecking the joint. And then there’s the whole Muslim thing. I’m beginning to fear that we may be losing some popularity among those folks, not to mention the fact that we haven’t got a clue about the language or the culture, so we’re kind of like people from Mars tromping around in their country expecting them to like us because it’s a cornerstone of our national self-image that everybody likes, at a bare minimum envies, Americans. All in all Iraq was perhaps not the best dog to kick.
But there’s France, just sitting there like the smarmy schoolteacher you always loathed. It’s much closer; it’s economy and infrastructure are in relatively good shape; lots of Americans speak French, and most of all, we’ve been hating the French for scads longer than we’ve even been aware of the Iraqis. I mean, these people are so warped that they laugh at Jerry Lewis and Woody Allen AT THE SAME TIME – now what kind of sick sense of humor is going on there? They’re smug, and they talk through their noses and they kid themselves that their wine is better than California’s, and they think our beloved president is a moron. Left to their own devices they could become a real threat somewhere off in the future, and these days that’s all the justification we need for a state-of-the-art whacking.
We pummel Iraq into scattered pieces – big deal; how satisfying a payback is that? We don’t even know these people. But the French – put ’em down, keep ’em down, steal their recipes, boycott their cheese, wipe that over-cultured smirk off their faces. Dubya could dress up in an appropriately heroic costume and go hang that “Mission Accomplished” banner from the Eiffel Tower; now there’s your can’t-miss photo-opp.
