Every Friday, I notice my article is surrounded by angry letters to the editor. Here I am bad-mouthing today’s society, and everyone else is trying to knock some sense into the previous person who wrote a letter. Whether their view was pro-war or anti-war, someone would write how that person’s stance was ignorant and their ignorance is the reason America is ignorant towards the real reason for this ignorant war. I don’t understand. I must be ignorant. The only other news around campus has been Dance Marathon, but sometimes my signals get crossed and I think we are told to “do it for the Kurds.”
I always write about how society is stupid, not uninformed. Nevertheless, perhaps I shouldn’t be writing about such trivial topics like bad alternative rock, although it is my right. I thought I could ride out the war coverage storm. The way I saw it, U.S. military forces would have captured Saddam Hussein’s body and made it the host of Fox’s newest reality show by now. Our troops are playing street hockey on Baghdad’s roads, and yet we don’t have one single Iraqi president to our name. Do you know why? It’s because the U.S. military isn’t the strongest force in Iraq. It isn’t British forces either and no way is it the Republican Guard. No, it’s the media.
Yes, reporters from all over the world have formed their own army and are now taking their share of Iraq. They don’t have many weapons, but they possess an arsenal of information. They apparently know the location of every brigade in the area, and that alone makes them a dangerous entity. Don’t worry folks , regardless of which force captures Iraq first, Geraldo Rivera will still be a bonehead.
If I were a betting man (and legally speaking, I can’t be), I would put money on the media crushing the U. S. military and claiming Baghdad as their own. And if not, they will simply camp out in the desert until the next guy we put in charge of Iraq gets on President Bush’s nerves. Who will that next leader be? We won’t know for a while, especially if several of their citizens accidentally vote for Pat Buchanan.
Eventually, the U.S., the British and the nosy will all put down their guns and earpieces and figure out how to reform this troubled country. Many important people will debate whether or not to leave their government intact or to turn it into a democracy. I say we should turn it into a water park. Here’s my reasoning. Everyone loves water parks. It doesn’t matter who you are. Even if you are self-conscious about taking off your shirt, you cannot look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t like to go to water parks. The water park has that certain quality which makes the object impossible to hate, like pancakes. Just looking at the word “pancakes” makes you kind of want them. It’s OK to admit it. Let’s assume that Bush finally takes my advice and converts Iraq into a water park. We would need a catchy name. I contemplated about “The Wet Turban,” but aren’t all of them damp from sweat because of the desert heat? “The Oasis” may work, but it seems too clichéd. Finally, I decided to embrace the Iraqi religion and use it to market their new water park. I decided to call it “Mohammed’s Slip ‘n Slide.”
I’m getting way ahead of myself. The war is not over, although we would like to see it wrapped up quickly. However, if the war were to end in two months, it would still be viewed as a quick war. Just look at World War II —- that lasted several years. After that war, Japan got rebuilt, Germany got a big wall, and Italy got screwed. Once we’re done with Iraq, we will just convert it to a place where families can bring their children to play in the pool. That seems to be what the United States does with aggressive countries. We feel it is our responsibility to reform them into something that will benefit us. Yes, another water park will do wonders for our leisure, but it will help their region even more, because the Middle East could use more waterslides and inner tubes. I’ve seen footage of that area, and there is a lot of sand. Plus, this gives Bush a loophole to attack Iraq again if he desires. He will want their water park.
