Once upon a time there was a graceful bird that was known by everyone as the Maid of the Seas. The Maid of the Seas was sleek and beautiful and she carried people across the ocean and brought them safely back home.
In the same period of time, there was an evil dictator who tortured and killed his people and spread his violence to all of the other countries in his region. He hated the United States. Some might have said that he hated our freedom, but he didn’t give a crap about our freedom. As a matter of fact, he probably would have laughed had anyone suggested he hated our freedom. He probably would have said that anyone who said he hated our freedom was some kind of dope, and he would have been right.
“Oh, Mother Goose,” many of you are probably saying, “You’re talking about that awful Saddam Hussein, aren’t you?”
No, children, I’m talking about someone who was so much worse than Saddam that he made Saddam look like, well, some kind of pussycat. I’m talking about a man who called himself “the Colonel.”
“Wait a cotton-picking minute, you Mother,” some of you are saying right now. “If you’re going to start bad-mouthing Colonel Harlan Sanders, you’d better bet that we’re going to open a king-sized can of whup ass.”
No! No! No! I would expect to have my ass whipped if I spoke irreverently about Colonel Sanders. I’d welcome it, because I would deserve it. I’m talking about Muammar Qaddafi, one of the lowest-life pieces of crap you’d never want to meet.
Anyway, the Colonel saw the Maid of the Seas carrying Americans from one side of the pond to the other and it ticked him off. He sent his henchmen to bring her down. It was a few days before Christmas—a holiday the Colonel disrespected—when his secret police brought down the Maid of the Seas, killing her and the Americans she carried. This atrocity would remain the worst act of terrorism against Americans until that sunny September morning in 2001.
Many years later, in that great country which was to have been the destination of the Maid of the Seas, the third character in our fairy tale, the Idiot, sought to be the leader. Somebody pulled some serious shenanigans, miscounted some votes and the Idiot was “elected” to be the leader.
The Idiot wasn’t smart enough to do the job he was elected to do, so he had some of his terrorist friends knock down a couple of buildings on that previously-mentioned September morning and his people were so frightened they would eventually make the mistake of electing him again.
Then the Idiot started a war and de-stabilized another foreign country, giving the terrorists a place to run around and do what terrorists do. There were as many terrorists there as there were maggots in a steaming pile of dog feces warming under the August sun. If one were to ignite a flare in that country in the dark of the night, it would illuminate scores of terrorists scurrying across the desert floor, like cockroaches spotlighted by a sixty-watt light in an urban tenement kitchen.
The Idiot had made the world a haven for terrorists, but he still was not happy. What could he do, he asked himself, to aid and abet yet another terrorist?
The Idiot went to the office of his second-in-command—a man who was known as Shotgun, after the weapon he loved to discharge when he had gotten a few drinks in him. Shotgun was cleaning his namesake weapon when the Idiot paused outside his office. The Idiot was careful to announce himself before entering Shotgun’s office so as not to take a load of birdshot in his smirking countenance, as Shotgun was known to shoot from the hip (first, and ask questions later).
“I want to bring the Colonel into the fold. I want to restore diplomatic relations with him and his country,” said the Idiot. “He was the one who brought down the Maid of the Seas.”
“They say that the camel jockey used Semtex,” said Shotgun. He racked his signature weapon and added, “Give me this baby and a pint of Old Granddad and I could’ve done her just as good.”
“So we’ll do it, then,” said the Idiot.
“Sure as hell,” said Shotgun. “Now hand me that bottle from inside the top drawer.”
So the Idiot decided to make friends with yet another terrorist, because one never knows how much help one will need if the other party ever gets into power. And so the Idiot, the Colonel and Shotgun became fast friends. Legend has it that even to this day, if you listen really closely, you can hear the three of them, firing away, blasting their empty bottles full of birdshot.
From the looks of things, my children, this appears to be one of those fairy tales where not everyone lives happily ever after.
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