8.26.07
Justification junction
by Jon Worley
"Pull out? Doesn't sound manly to me, Bill. I'd say leave it in there and let's get the job done."
George Carlin, commenting on "the sexual aspect" of the Vietnam War
Apparently the Prez was one of those children left behind, as it seems incomprehensible that the most important lesson he learned from the Vietnam War was...we shouldn't have left. Last week in Kansas City, he used that specious logic to defend his continued prosecution of the Iraq War. Maybe the Prez should call up Flavor Flav and see if there's a new installment of "The Surreal Life" coming up any time soon.
Hey, distorting the historical record to justify your own blunders is a time-honored presidential tradition. Remember Kennedy's famous "It worked at Normandy, so it should have worked at the Bay of Pigs" speech? No? Well, it would've been great.
No matter. As long as the Prez is interested in warping history to make sense of the Iraq War, I'm happy to help. After all, there's more than one way to judge a war. Here are some of my choicer "renovations" of America's military history:
We never left Puerto Rico after the Spanish-American War, and look what we got in return: a bevy of great baseball players and West Side Story. The ultimate win-win situation.
We quit direct control of Cuba not long after the Spanish-American War. Imagine the baseball players we would have gotten if that bastard Castro hadn't come to power. There was a real opportunity lost.
We conquered Japan and then left. Do you think Detroit would be suffering the way it is if we hadn't subsidized the rebirth of the Japanese industrial sector? Hell, no. We should have stayed there and made sure the American auto industry remained strong. Bonus: Sadaharu Oh would have hit only 300-400 home runs in the majors and we wouldn't have an international home run king.
We left Libya (and Tunisia and Algeria) after storming the shores of Tripoli as part of the Barbary Coast wars at the beginning of the nineteenth century. If we had stayed, Col. "Does this dress make me look fat?" Ghadafi would never have come to power. The impact on baseball, however, is negligible.
We absorbed Texas just before and stole New Mexico, Arizona and California from Mexico after the Mexican-American War. Imagine if we had walked away from so much territory. iPods made in Mexico? John McCain and George W. Bush duking it out for the Mexican presidency? Imagine the possibilities...
In The Russians are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, a Russian submarine runs aground on an island off the coast of New England. Despite terrorizing the populace, the captain convinces the townspeople to tow his sub back out to sea. If we had captured and kept that sub, we would have learned a lot about Russian technology and possibly ended the Cold War sooner.
We won World War I, and then we left Europe. If we'd only kept France and Germany and, what the hell, the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, we would have prevented World War II and 9/11, since we would have been in control of Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden and all that.
There were many plans after World War II to drop atomic bombs on the Soviet Union and take control there. If we'd done all that and kept our gains from the other conflicts, we'd have been halfway to making the entire world part of America. How cool would that have been?
Boy, once these things start flowing, they just don't stop. Maybe the White House will even get Miss Manners to write a column saying, "It's better to overstay your welcome than to depart prematurely."
Or maybe not. That doesn't sound manly. Not in the slightest.
Jon Worley is not a man's man.
|