Cheat Seeking Missiles: Give Peace A Chance

The other day, I saw a car with one of those "Coexist" bumper stickers on it -- the one adorned with various religious symbols, as if the only thing lacking from successfully coexisting is someone actually having the idea that we ought to give it a try -- and I thought, "Why not?"

Why not give peace a chance?

We'd have to start, of course, with Guantanamo and Palestine, the two places upon which most of the blame is heaped for not having peace (not that we're blaming the terrorists and Palestinians, mind you; heaven forbid).

We are told that "no word is more poisonous to the reputation of the United States than Guantanamo," so let's be done with it, licketysplit. Here's how:

Our UN Ambassador will stand up Monday in the Security Council and tell the assembled thugs, dictators, kleptomaniacs and genocidal oligarchs that we're closing the terrorist prison in Guantanamo next Monday, so they'd better get off their fat butts and come up with an internationally sanctioned alternative to holding these bloodthirsty #$%&!s in a place that's actually safe.

If they don't, Mr. Ambassador will continue, we'll put the #$%$!s in chains inside a diplomatic pouch, and fly them to their home countries, where we'll have a cadre of Marines deposit them on the steps of those countries' halls of justice.

That's giving peace a chance!

Now, to Palestine, where, we're told, "To empower Muslim moderates, we must take away the extremists' most potent grievance: the charge that the United States does not care about the Palestinians." Never mind that the federal budget includes $150 million for Palestine; we clearly are at least a billion short in the caring department.

So here's my plan. Condi Rice will announce that we've got $1 billion to give to Palestine to use on schools, hospitals, orphanages, elderly care, infrastructure improvements and other peaceful uses. We'll give it to them with one caveat and one carrot.

The caveat is we don't trust them all that much, so we will need full access and oversight to make sure not one dollar of the billion goes to unpeaceful cases like antisemitic education or weaponry. Take it or leave it.

The carrot: If they handle the money responsibly and respond peacefully, we have another billion.

Of course that's only half the story; it is, after all, the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. So we'll pick a day when the Palestinians are one up on the Israelis -- a rocket has been fired from Gaza or a homicidal paradise-seeker has detonated himself on an Israeli street -- and declare it Day One.

We'll ask the Israelis to not retaliate as a symbol of goodwill and peace. If they don't retaliate and nothing else happens, we will have brought peace. Kumbayah.

If they don't retaliate and the Palestinians pull off yet another self-destructive idiotic obliteration of innocents, we'll give the Israeli's an extra billion dollars, wash our hands and have our UN ambassador stand up the next Monday and say, "We really care about the Palestinians. We've done all we can. Your problem. See ya."

Let them give peace a chance.

Now on to the matter of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let's give peace a chance there, too.

The president will go on television next Monday and say,

"It is my feeling and the feeling of my generals that if we leave Iraq and Afghanistan, two things will happen. First, both countries will experience bloodshed of unprecedented proportions as the only stabilizing force in the land is extracted. And second, the hoped for diminishment of Islamist terrorist action against the West will not occur. Rather, the terrorists will be encouraged.

"But others, the Democratic leadership in Washington, the editorial boards of most major newspapers and the academics at our universities, think my generals and I are wrong, and they appear to have convinced a strong majority of the American people that we are wrong.

"So, with a plea for forgiveness from those who lost loved ones on 9/11, and from whose sons, daughters and husbands will have now died in vain in Iraq and Afghanistan, I am putting the war in their hands and following their instructions. Next Monday, we begin the total and complete withdrawal of our troops back to our shores.

"May God have mercy on the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, and may he also bless America, although I can't for the life of me understand why he would."

Then we'll see what happens when we give peace a chance. We'll see if we can get to next Monday without some serious second-guessing about the leadership of the Dems, the media and the intelligentsia.

That leaves the matter of the Islamofascists' quest for nuclear, biological and other weapons of mass destruction. Surely, after all these efforts by us to give peace a chance, they will give that up and let the infidels live in peace, won't they?

There will be no need now to maintain surveillance and diligence, no need for the Patriot Act or the NSA. There simply will be no one left who hates us. Surely, since we've given peace a chance, we won't have to worry about some day seeing a mushroom cloud raise into our spacious skies, over our amber waves of grain.