I'm only half-joking about this

Iran is surrounded by our allies (not to mention having a population restless for revolution), and North Korea is, by anyone's definition, massively delusional and capable of anything, which makes them less than ideal for our next target in the War on Terror. Since preemption is the concept of the times, I propose a next step that is both bold and preemptive against a re-emergent threat to US security.

We should invade and conquer France.

France has been self-described as "possibly the world's first Islamic nuclear power." Sounds pretty ominous to me. Their military is better than Iraq's was (barely) although stretched woefully thin around the world. Not to mention badly underequipped. Aircraft carriers don't actually need aircraft you know, because that costs money that could be better spent paying farmers their bribes to stay home and not make trouble subsidies.

Eastern Europe (you know, the 'new' one) would be loudly cheering us on. If Spain fusses, we send three cranky WWII vets with hand grenades into their subway system and change their government. And we keep doing it until they elect one we like.

Belgium would tie itself in knots in EU red tape while it tried to figure out what to do. Face it, nobody does indignation like the French, and no matter how hard they try, the Flems and Walloons place a distant second. We can ignore them.

Britain would stay quietly neutral, but I'll betcha that Maggie Thatcher's smiling face will miraculously appear somewhere as reported in the Weekly World News.

Russia would get the message too. Maybe we could soften the reality of the situation by sending Jimmy Carter over for "discussions and consultations", with tacit approval to jail his cardiganned ass when he becomes too annoying to stand. Hell, I'd nominate Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize for that one.

Now some would argue that NATO wouldn't allow it. My response is: "what are they going to do about it?" If they actually wanted to do anything, like say, fight, they'd have to walk to get to the battle, because Europe's armies depend on US Military airlift capabilities. Commercial airliners? Threaten to drop a few Lufthansa Airbusses into the dirt and watch how quickly their fleets would be grounded for maintenance problems. That's assuming, of course, that they can get union approval for war.

Now, once that's all done and over with, we need to do something in order to show old Europe that we're not all stick and no carrot. Like moving the UN to Paris. And making Kerry our ambassador to the UN.

Posted by Ted at September 24, 2004 04:23 PM
Category: Square Pegs