Velociworld

The Amenable Dictator

Perhaps my fascist soul creeps unto nostalia at times, or I've suffered yet another debilitating pinstroke, but I swear I miss the good old days, when we had a string of amenable dictators around the world, protecting our interests. It was expensive, sure, but not as expensive as this clusterfuck in Iraq, where we won't do the necessary thing to win, i.e. punish them mercilessly.

Yes, I long for the days of the Shah of Iran, Somoza in Nicaragua, Pinochet in Chile, Napoleon Duarte in El Salvador. And yes, I know they were strong arm thugs. But who cares? I really don't care how many thumbs the Shah's SAVAK broke. Not my problem. As John Hiatt said,

There's only two things in life. I forget what they are.

Well, I remember. They are

1. Nobody's fucking with ME.

and

2. Nobody's fucking with ME.

And I cleave unto that philosophy (He may be a bastard, but he's OUR bastard). Everything else is just sophistry, and you know it. Don't like Persian jail cells? Don't piss off the regime, emigrate to America, and hew to the American Dream. And those other dictators? The non-amenable ones? Franco, Castro, Mao? Why, they were by definition evildoers because they didn't participate in the Dream. Moral equivalence? Maybe. I prefer to call it easy math.

The Shah may have been a right bastard, but you didn't have embassies sacked, hostages taken, Revolutionary Guards firing missiles into Israel, Shia insurgencies in Iraq, worldwide terror funding, under Pahlavi. Plus he kept the oil tankers full of light sweet crude at cheap rates. My kind of guy.

I'll tell you something else. Saddam was our boy once. We just fucked up and didn't tell him Kuwait was off limits. He thought he had the green light. He was killing Islamofascists by the thousands before that! I don't care how many mass graves he had.

1. Nobody was fucking with ME.

and

2. Nobody was fucking with ME.

At least, nobody Iraqi.

And finally, as if I have not been cynical enough, why haven't we hunkered down with the Chinese? They have a standing army of 400 million people or so, whose lifes are worth zip fucking kadiddle there. Our soldiers, on the other hand, are precious. We could cut the Chinee loose in a great Mongol-like swath, with caveats (leave the Tibetans and Israelis alone. Survivors get a Chevy Impala) that scoured south Asia of all vestiges of Islamonazis. The Chinees' thirst for oil would have to be slaked, of course, but I figure Iran would make a nice new territory for the Sinoregime. They might even gobble up North Korea if we let them.

Either I am an omniscient world power broker, or I should have laid off the LSD during those RISK marathons. Either way, at least I have a plan.