Sooner or later, all of us will have to face this question from a young child over Thanksgiving dinner:
Dad, Mom, Grandpa, Grandma - why did we have all those fights with other countries back then?
VIETNAM? “We fought them there so that we didn’t have to fight them on Wiltshire Boulevard !”
CAMBODIA: “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Saigon!”
LAOS? “So we that we didn’t have to fight them in Danang!”
GRANADA? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Saint Thomas!”
NICARAGUA? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in El Paso!”
EL SALVADOR? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Nogales!”
GAUTEMALA? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Yuma!”
HONDURAS? “So that St. Louis wouldn’t be ranked as the Murder Capital of North America!”
All of CENTRAL AMERICA? ‘So that the indigenes are kept in peonage - providing law-abiding, tax-paying, God-fearing Americans with an abundance of nutritious bananas at a price they can afford!”
COLOMBIA? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Peru or Ecuador!”
LEBANON? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Dearborn!”
IRAQ in 1990? “So that we wouldn’t have to walk to work or to school!”
KOSOVO? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Albania!”
AFGHANISTAN? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Washington, New York or MacLean!”
WHY for 20 YEARS? “So that our generals could fight for honors over in Bagram rather than in the Pentagon!”
IRAQ – the second time? “So that George W. Bush would stop fighting with his father!”
LIBYA? “So that Barack Obama wouldn’t have to fight with Hillary!”
SYRIA? “So that Barack Obama wouldn’t have to fight with Bibi Netanyahu!”
SOMALIA? “So that we didn’t risk running out of places to train our soldiers and hone their counter-insurgency techniques in order to protect us from them!”
YEMEN? “So that Crown Prince Mohammed bin-SALMAN would remain our loyal partner and keep inviting our Presidents to bashes in Riyadh with those terrific sword dances!”
CONGO? “Because Barack Obama was enthralled by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness!”
MALI? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight then in Niger!”
NIGER? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Chad!”
CHAD? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight then again in Burkina-Faso!”
BURKINO-FASO? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them again back in MALI!”
TUNISIA? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Algeria!”
PANAMA? “So that we wouldn’t have to collar Noriega in South Beach!”
CUBA: “AULD LANG SYNE!”
VENEZUELA? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in CITGO gas stations!”
IRAN: So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Tel Aviv!
RUSSIA – in Ukraine? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in the Fulda Gap!”
NORDSTROM II PIPELINE?: “So that we wouldn’t be haunted by nightmares of Vladimir Putin and Olaf Schulz having a friendly
plaudern in Deutsch in Kaliningrad over a beer at the Kropotkin
on Teatralnaya!”
CHINA? “So that we could twirl our index finger in the air shouting – USA! USA!!”
Dad/Mom: Who is ‘THEM?’ “I see that the pumpkin pie is ready. Let’s talk some more after dessert!”
Cheers
Michael Brenner
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