Jericho: Starve a Cold, Feed a Terrorist

I'm not feeling very well today. The weather changed rapidly and that usually sparks my sinuses. We've been back to serious dieting for a week and the lower half of my body is hating the change - or I have a stomach bug. I just want to go to bed - which is a typical reaction when I don't feel good.

With my mind on food and pain, I struck on an interesting idea.


A dog might bite the hand that feeds it, but not while it's actually eating.


Simple, but true, no? What does it mean? Oh, well, if you are sole support of even the most insane, pissed off creature, that creature will make exceptions to their anger to allow you to continue to support it.

Let's look at Al Quiduh, or however it's spelled this week. These people are pissed at us because we break their very fundalmentalistic ideas of right and wrong. We are free to express ourselves, they feel those expressions corrupt everything around us. We take their oil, in order to enrich our already decandent lives. We're a big, easy target. And, when challenged, we put up our dukes and fight. Especially when there is a Republican in the White Bunker.

You can't reason with them. We are infidels and unless we convert and radically change EVERYTHING about ourselves, we will never be good enough. No thanks. You can't kill them. Every one of them that gets killed is another martyr - this just inspires more of the young ones on to fight us. This will go on forever.

So, cut it off, not at the neck, but at the waist. We keep going after the top guys and new top guys step right up. It's the troopers that are the problem. The young ones, inspired by the sacrifice of those before them, ready to bring the word of Allah to the infidel, even if they have to blow up the infidel to get them to pay attention, they are the key.

If you were an angry young man, ready to fight, ready to die for the glory of Allah, ready to slay the infidel dragon, if all you had was poverty and hatred, driving a car bomb might not sound like a bad idea. But, what if you had something else to live for?

I'm not saying pull out the troops. It's too late, we screwed up. We need to leave the troops. But, as we arm them with guns and armor their Humvees, lets also arm them with a different, but very effective, weapon: food.

This was done early on in Afghanistan and Iraq, but I think it needs to be ramped up and repeated. We should pull back some of our troops, just to free up some cash - not to mention getting those boys and girls home. With that money, we can buy food. Lots of food. Food is cheap here in the land of plenty. And, I'm not talking rice and beans. I'm talking the good stuff.

They originally dropped stuff with long shelf lives, like peanut butter and pop-tarts. I think that was bloody brilliant! I don't know all the details of a fundamentalist muslim diet, but I bet pop-tarts fit. Who doesn't love peanut butter? It's peanuts, salt and sugar - awesome! Protein in a jar and tastes freekin' great! If you carpet bombed Baghdad with peanut butter and pop-tarts, no one would object. People would lay down their arms and surrender!

Why stop there? Pork is definitely out of the question, so no Spam. But, there are other products out there that are insanely great - and we can get them on the cheap. I have four words for you: Dinty Moore Beef Stew. I'm sorry, that stuff is king of canned stew! Ain't no one gonna say no to that. It can live on a shelf for a century it's so packed with salt. It's simply the best. If a group of soldiers drove up and said "I'll trade you this deuce and a half load of Dinty Moore for all the guns you can find" - that village would disarm in an hour. If they promised to come back the next week, you would find an even larger pile of guns waiting.

I'm thinking bags of Frosted Flakes, Doritos, Twinkies and then the classic Hershey bar. Pump enough of that into these counties and there will be no fighting. Would you aim a gun at somebody if he was your only hope for more Cheetos? I think not. All the while, instead of making bullets, we've put some American farmers back to work and gotten money out of the over-rich defense sector and back into the manufacturing sector.

There's one other way to put some farmers to work, but we might have to keep it secret. What's one of the largest cash crops in this country, is illegal to own or use here, but is very popular over there? Yup, hashish. Also known as hash, doobie, grass, weed and mary jane. Marijuana is smoked all over the middle east. It grows real well here in the US, extremely well. At one point I heard it was the third largest cash crop in the state of Missouri. Probably that way elsewhere, too.

So, get some farmers, hell, grab some inmates who are good at this. Find some land, and get to work. Tons of this stuff could be grown in a very short time. Then, put it in baggies and carpet bomb populated areas with that. Now, they have weed and pop-tarts for their munchies. Perfect.

What about our angry young man above? Well, first, he's put on weight. He's been so well fed for the last year he's not sure about anything anymore. It's hard to be mad at people who have been so generous. Our young friend also has gained a new hobby. He and his friends go grab the weed after it's been dropped, sit around the hookah discussing Allah's goodness and love and eat Pringles. Yes, there are some old men who keep screaming about America and how it's corrupting the youth, but who cares?

In the end, the young men, all the people, will grow to think of America as a rich, generous uncle. The extremists will find ways to kill themselves off or fade away - you don't see Bin Laden driving any car bombs, do you? And we continue sending them millions of dollars of food instead of billions of dollars of troops. Everyone wins.

Want to make it a cinch? After all of the above - drop a few million Xboxes ...