What an incredibly beautiful weekend we had here in Beautiful Dunwoody. It rained the entire time my sister was here, so I only got one of my outdoor projects done while they were here. I was hoping to get lots of weeding done and plant some more bushes. Alas, it wasn't in the cards. So after they left, the weather turned beautiful. Today I weeded the Great Berm of Dunwoody. I was also able to plant some more creeping phlox and scatter six bales of pine straw.
As I was working, I got to thinking about our new budddy Matthew. Matthew thinks there is an American Empire. For example, he thinks that we have conquered Canada and Mexico. Here are his exact words:
America has already conquered Canada and Mexico, it's called NAFTA and the FTAA.
I'm sure Mexico and Canada would be surprised to hear about that. It's too bad we couldn't get them to help us in the UN. But he's not done.
It's been established that the coup against Hugo Chavez is linked to Bush, so I guess the American government has already tried to take over Venezuela as well.
And we have space aliens at Area 51 in Roswell.
Since Matthew is so fond of giving us definitions, I looked up empire in the dictionary. An empire is a nation having sovereign power over a group of nations.
So, let's look at some of our provinces. Let's see, there's Canada. Dammit! Why are we paying for their oil? Let's just take it. What about Mexico? Same thing.
I'm sure Puerto Rico is also an example. Puerto Rico holds periodic elections to decide whether it wants statehood, independence, or to remain a US possession. I guess we rig the elections. Since Puerto Rico has no oil, why do we even bother with it?
He also states that we're an empire because we have troops stationed in other countries. Didn't see that definition anywhere, but let's address that.
In WWII, we kicked the Germans out of Matthew's country, France, (You're welcome), so I guess you could say we 'conquered' France. Any troops stationed there? We were asked to leave. We did. We're really fucking up this empire bullshit.
We do have troops in Germany, which we 'conquered' in WWII. I guess Germany must be another one of our provinces. Now if we were a half-assed decent empire, dontcha think we would be making the Germans pay for our troops? And why was Herr Schroeder against us? Jesus, we can't even install decent puppet rulers in our provinces. Dumb Americans. We don't do anything right.
What about the Philippines? We used to own them. We gave them their independence. And a few years ago they asked us to vacate the Subic Bay Naval Station. Guess what? We did.
How about our province of Japan? We have troops stationed there. We're not charging the Japanese anything for those troops. And we run a balance of trade deficit with them. Not a very well managed empire. The damn provinces are supposed to pay for themselves and they ain't doing it.
Now, let's talk about the Middle East. I won't even ask the obvious question about what would France do if someone flew a Concorde into the Eiffel Tower because everyone knows that they would try to find someone to surrender to.
Contrary to what we have been telling y'all, we did not go into Iraq for WMD's. That was just an excuse. We went in because it is a state that sponsors terrorism. The prime example is paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers $25K. I'm sure we will find that Iraq sponsored other forms of terrorism.
By taking down Iraq, we have made the other Middle East states realize that we are tired of being fucked with. If you kill Americans we will get pissed off and we will respond. And Matthew, I do believe an American life is worth more than an Arab life. We don't brainwash our children to grow up and strap on explosive belts and blow up women and children. They are evil. They are depraved. They are fucking cowards.
We will do the same thing in this war that we have done in our other wars. We will rebuild Iraq, just like we rebuilt France (You're welcome. The Marshall Plan was paid for by American taxpayers. By the way, where is the money you owe us from WWII you ungrateful assholes?) and Germany. We will try to leave Iraq a better place than we found it. Maybe an Arab country will not be able to have a democratic form of gummint. Yeah, I know, I said a democratic form of gummint. In this context, I mean self rule. And, then we'll go home. Before that, we may have to have a little talk with Syria and Iran. We may have to clean up the entire Middle East. Why us? Because we're the only counrty with the power to do it. We're the only country willing to do it.
And, if we succeed, we'll pack up and go home.
There will be no American Empire.