WASHINGTON (Rooters agency) – Politicians here are becoming restless as they return from their summer vacations and discover, to their surprise and dismay, that the country had not entered a full-scale war while they were researching the interests of their constituents in Paris, Venice, and similar locales.
“There’s a tradition here that should be respected,” said Democrat Senator Bobby “Blowhard” Mendentious. “When President Johnson got us into a surprise war in Vietnam, he did it while Congress was not in session. That way, later we could all plead ignorance after we’d spent the subsequent decade voting the funds for the war.”
Senator Mendentious, who bravely spent part of his vacation in the capital of the Ukraine, only 500 km or so from sporadic shooting in the country’s south-east, said, “We should be supplying the Ukraine with the defensive weapons necessary to protect it against Russia. As we know – they admit it openly – the Russians have nuclear weapons.
“It simply levels the playing field if we supply the Ukrainians with some nuclear weapons of their own. Or we could level the playing field – really level it – by exploding a few of our nuclear bombs along the border between Russia and the Ukraine. In the long run, the Russian people would thank us for our resolve – just as the Iraqi people welcomed us until they were intimidated by the jihadis.”
In fact, the dominant mood in Washington seems to favor tackling the jihadis before the Russians, although Senator Mendentious is rumored to be sending emails with the phrase “purity of essence” to Air Force generals.
The anti-jihad fervor was sparked when forces of ISOS – Insanely Saving Our Sectarianism – overran large parts of previously peaceful northern Iraq. The Pentagon proposed an immediate bombing campaign to destroy ISOS’s weaponry, but lawyers in the administration warned that this could create legal problems by destroying large amounts of US government property: namely the weapons that the Iraqi army had left lying around because they weren’t needed any more.
These reservations were soon overcome when ISOS began mutilating, torturing, and executing “heretics” who believe in things like other religions or evolution. While some analysts saw the crucifixion of biologists as an attempt by ISOS to reach out to sections of the US establishment, the suggestion was flatly rejected by the US Society for Biblical Science or Else, which issued a “press release” (the US term for “fatwa”) declaring: “If heretics are going to be killed, we’ll do it.”
In Congress, Texas Senator Ted Crude said: “We ought to bomb ISOS back to the Stone Age.” In northern Iraq, a spokestroglodyte for ISOS replied, “The Stone Age is what we’re aiming for. But to get Senator Crude into it – well, we think he would have fit in better in the Pliocene.”
The humanitarian and limited bombing of northern Iraq is not a renewal of the war in that country, the White House pointed out. The bombing is intended only to protect innocents threatened by ISOS, such as the US Special Forces who have been in Iraq training the Iraqi army in counterinsurgency – a task in which there is clearly still a lot to do.
There would be no US “boots on the ground,” the President declared. This implicitly raised the possibility of boots of other countries – such as Australia, whose government is seen as fishing for an invitation from Baghdad or Washington or anywhere to send troops. Indeed, an anonymous spokesperson explicitly denied that the term “mission creep” was used in the White House as a nickname for the Australian Prime Minister, Rupert Menzies II.
However, an alliance to intervene against ISOS might still be put together; the White House working title for this still unofficial goal is Coalition of the Dills.
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