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March Madness The most effective of all US weapon caches has been infiltrated. Among the millions of leaflets dropped over Iraq in the past week, several of the following were found. Dear Iraqi Citizen: Hello there. I do not represent the US government but rather the American people. I thought I’d take this rare opportunity to let you know how an average citizen feels. You know, instead of getting Donald Rumsfeld’s stream-of-consciousness ramblings all the time. First of all, politics aside, I told you we were good. You can’t argue with that. So far, we’ve killed more of our guys than you have. You might wonder why this big league franchise has to pick on a sandlot team. Well, you can’t really blame us. We have all this neat stuff, and it sits around on ships and in hangers. We’ve found we have to use it once or twice a decade to stay sharp. And you can’t expect us to use it on each other, Camp Pennsylvania notwithstanding. Consider the NCAA finals. So many great hometown players, and ninety-something percent of them have to lose. That gets frustrating. To boot, we got our butts kicked in the World Basketball Championships, and we used our pros. All that angst has to go somewhere, dude. But the truth is, while we are afraid to say anything that might be perceived as a slight against our own troops—who generally pack more courage into a hangnail than we pack into a year’s supply of paintball gear—we are by and large not as gung-ho about this undertaking as the polls GW keeps citing might indicate. Personally, I believe the "58 percent American approval rating" of the Iraqi invasion is made up of 10 percent who love the idea of us bombing anyone for any reason at any time, 20 percent who really do believe you guys were gonna get us any day if we didn’t get you first, and 28 percent who when asked publicly if they support this effort, do not want to appear anti-American. Private conversations and thoughts run differently. Bottom line--Bush could mount a 58-percent approval rating for an invasion of Liechtenstein. Sixty-eight percent for France. Seventy-eight for South Central Los Angeles. But hang in there. A Patriot here, a Tomahawk there, and Baghdad should fall by the Yankee home opener. It won’t take long. The war, that is. As for the aftermath, from what I’m hearing out of the Pentagon, your country will be harder to reconstruct than Michael Jackson’s nose. This isn’t easy for us, you know. Fighting should be something between estranged lesbian bikers on the Jerry Springer Show. Right around now, you might be missing access to working plumbing. But we’re missing Cavuto, Hannity and Colmes, and O’Reilly. We’re also missing our historical identity. Gone are the days when we can put you down for supporting Jihad. Granted, we are now exactly what you thought we were all along. But don’t you go making the same mistake by fighting back. Surrender. Order now. Subscribe today. Take what’s behind curtain 3. What I’m trying to say is you’ve got to stop taking this war so personally. If anything, you should be flattered. We don’t annex just anyone. Sure, your brother is in the next room in flames. But one day, you will see the wisdom of all this. You folks are going to get the benefit of all our mistakes, including this one. You get to jump from 1776 to 2003 without all those messy labor strikes and civil rights marches in between. No longer will your leader be chosen by brute force but rather by a time-tested democratic process—a last-minute, closed-door session of a politically appointed Supreme Court. Now that’s shock and awe. Worst case scenario—your next evil dictator is a lot cooler than this one. So, basically, you might want to think of this whole war as friendly fire. You need to know we have this cultural thing figured out better than you do. The Tigris-Euphrates, the cradle of civilization, will be home to the Middle East’s very first Foot Locker. You’ll stop stealing from each other and start foreclosing. We don’t cut off hands—only your home equity line of credit. Terror cells, no. Cell phones, yes. Mass hypnosis, no. Focus groups, yes. The only huts will have the word “Pizza” in front of them. No more gruesome public executions—just celebrity death matches. You’ll go to college. Maybe even an electoral college. One day, if you’re lucky, you’ll be involved in a war and flip around from it, to Home Shopping Network, to ESPN II, to the Playboy Channel, and back again in one Ring Ding. In fact, one day, you’ll be bombing and invading a sovereign state because you’re trying to spread democracy. That’s how we’ll know we’ve succeeded. And we sincerely hope, when that time comes, you’ll prove to be a more faithful ally than those ingrates from the Iberian Peninsula. After all, we are relieving you of your leader. Maybe one day, you’ll relieve us of ours. We still believe you have weapons of mass destruction. You’re just saving them for a really important war. Write this down: We will use all our weapons of mass destruction to find yours. And don’t go telling me that empty milk bottle couldn’t be used for Sarin nerve gas. Now, I know what you’re thinking. But those are rumors. Lies. If you’re captured, we won’t be giving you a lethal injection. You will, however, end up with a mind poisoned by dozens of hours of Fear Factor. Oh, sorry about the ad space on the margins of this flyer for Verizon Wireless and Hair Club for Men. But as you’ll find out soon enough, everything needs a sponsor. Even a war. By the way could you spot us 75 billion dollars till Tuesday? And another thing. This war is not about oil. It’s about the things you can make with oil. So please, no histrionics. You didn’t hear us complaining when something like forty-seven countries ordered back episodes of Judge Judy. We all export something. Yes, we all know that any day now, the Coalition of the Willing will give way to the Coalition of the Drilling. So then, why are we risking political destabilization of an entire subcontinent in part to stabilize our own fuel consumption and demand for petroleum products? To paraphrase Shannen Doherty in the movie Heathers, “Because we can.” Nice talking with you. If you have already been killed, please pass this leaflet on to someone who can benefit from it. --RH Click here to rant back. |