Is it just me, or does our Secretary of Defense look like a certain comedian from the 1950s? I mean, it’s hard to take this guy seriously. Not because of that, but because of what he says. Take a gander at this article.
It seems our illustrious SecDef has made the earth-shattering discovery that people die in wars. Gee, I thought they just went directly to jail, did not pass Go, and did not collect $200. “This will have consequences for Russia itself which is rightly fearful of attacks … in coming days, the Russians will begin to suffer from casualties,” Carter said at a NATO meeting in Brussels (Home Of The Original Brussels Sprouts!) No! Really? Gee, Ash, and what was going to happen to us if our planes got shot down over there, huh? Were they just going to invite the pilot to tea and cookies? No, more like they’d have invited him to a barbeque—his own.
So, what, this is supposed to scare a country that soaked up ten million dead in military casualties alone during World War Two? Come on, Ash, you’re going to have to do better than that. I don’t think this is going to convince them to take their ball and go home. Gee, what did we do in this case? We smuggled home our dead on discreet military transport planes, flown in secretly during the middle of the night. Then we quietly whisked them away like contraband so no one noticed that Americans were dying in Iraq. And we censored pictures of those caskets, too, when we didn’t outright forbid taking the photos. Yepper, learned that little trick in the after-action assessment of the Vietnam War, we did.
Our SecDef has a certain panache for irony, too. “They have shot cruise missiles from a ship in the Caspian Sea without warning; they have come within just a few miles (kilometres) of one of our unmanned aerial vehicles,” Carter said. Yeah, not like us, right? Yeah, when’s the last time America fired cruise missiles at other countries without warning? Oops, gosh…well, since the 1990s and right up until we got the drones online which could do it cheaper. Now we’re whining that Russian cruise missiles might hit those drones. This is like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups moment. Remember that old TV commercial? “You got chocolate in my peanut butter!” “No, you got peanut butter in my chocolate!” Yes, indeed, they’re getting cruise missiles in our drones! How DARE they! Cue theme song: Ash Carter’s Peeeea-nut Butter Drones! Hooray! I bet they taste fantastic! Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t. Wait, that’s a different candy. It’s also the motto of the Pentagon, by the way.
“They have initiated a joint ground offensive with the Syrian regime, shattering the facade that they are there to fight ISIL,” Ash tells us. Right, unlike the United States that invaded Iraq in 2003, shattering the façade that the U.S. was engaged in war to fight terrorism. Ash, Ash, Ash…do you have a U.S. history book that doesn’t conclude at 1812? Tell us what the reasons were for, I don’t know, the Vietnam War? Didn’t a little bathtub toy clash in the Tonkin Gulf lead up to a ground invasion of Vietnam? And that’s giving credit to the United States in saying the bumping up of the North Vietnamese Tommy the Tugboat against America’s Rubber Ducky actually happened and wasn’t another lie engineered to gull us into a war. That war left a ring around the tub that took some serious scouring from Reagan Noble Cause Cleanser to finally go away.
Ash told reporters that Russia was backing the wrong horse in Syria and nagged Putin to sign up to the U.S. goal of a Syria without Assad. Excuse me, SecDef, but WE are the ones who backed the wrong horse. Except it wasn’t a horse, it was actually a donkey. All, what, 50 of them you said were left a few weeks ago? Seems these Syrian “moderates” that Russia is shuffling off this mortal coil via high explosives are probably ISIS and it’s the U.S. saying they aren’t. I mean, if Ash told us there were only 50 of them a few weeks ago, how then are there enough now to warrant spending cruise missiles on? What, they appeared through a time-space wrinkle from another dimension? “You’re entering another dimension…A dimension of lack of foresight…A dimension where things the United States says actually make sense…that’s the signpost up ahead! Joint Chiefs of Staff!” I’m sorry, but not even the Twilight Zone could have hatched a plot line such as that. This is more like Love, American Style—or else.
Now we see why Obama asked this guy to be SecDef: He can say all of this with a straight face! That’s always the deciding factor in what makes a good comedian. Keeping a straight face no matter how many pies are flying around the room. I bet this guy could do some great improv. Wait, he already does. They’re called press conferences.
Yeah, ya gotta love America! Can’t afford cable? Hey, who needs it? You want great comedy? The government provides that for free! The Roman Empire had this thing called the Annona where the government passed out free bread to everyone. Our government has taken that to a whole new level. They’re passing out free comedy to everyone. And Ash Carter’s Peanut Butter Drones.
