When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When life gives you human body parts raining from the skies, you make . . . no, not stew! How disgusting! But you can still make a buck! If not for yourself, then at least for your friends in the defense industry, who may in any case—not that it’s either here nor there—decide to honor you one day with a lucrative board of directors membership. If some or all of this has to be funded by American taxpayers, or the ultimate consequences borne by future victims of continued violence in the Middle East, then the wealthy shareholders of Lockheed-Martin will just have to—Hey! Is that a terrorist over there?! Ha-ha, made you look!
And that’s why good ole’ American optimism is the perfect antidote to easily predicted catastrophes stemming from reckless military intervention in the world’s most volatile hotspot. Yes, that’s why. And even though Saudi Arabia may technically be a rather brutal autocratic regime that puts a lot of resources into exporting a particular strain of xenophobic, fundamentalist Islam around the world, still . . . that in no way cheapens or compromises our nation’s commitment to democracy and the freedom from religious tyranny. After all, the Saudis are the enemies of our enemies in Tehran, and even though by extension they could also be seen as the enemies of over half of the population in Iraq, and all of our friends in Israel . . . let’s see . . . the enemy’s friend of my friend’s enemy is my . . . yeah, I think that still works! Deal on!
Above all, our recent experience should have taught us that having second thoughts about unwise decisions is the worst way to help the terrorists. By that I mean simply that we can’t not afford to play ball when al Qaeda is out there and Iraq is burning, and not doing something—almost anything at all—might be seen as being defeatist, or not supporting the troops, or something. Do you see where I’m going here. Let’s not waste time with petty squabbles about who did what to whom, or how it will all blow up in our faces some day a few years down the road. Being American is about making deals, dammit! Let’s just get on with it.
