As we all know, a tragic event occurred on Eleven September, in the Year of our Lord Two Thousand and One. Many thousands of innocent Americans were slaughtered in a senseless and random act. And before the victims were finished bleeding and burning in the rubble, our leaders had declared war upon someone. The identity of that someone is not yet clear, but will be Osama bin Laden as soon as our government agencies have forged sufficient links from the perpetrators to him. And our government will then find this hitherto unfindable man, prosecute him and find him guilty in a court of law, if he lives that long.
But before the war on Someone-bin Laden was even declared, there were protestors. Some of these subverters may be agents of bin Laden himself, but are more likely just the spoiled whose parents spared too much the rod. These un-American cowards go by many names. They are called Conscientious Objectors, Buddhists, Pacifists, Lefties, Hippies, Longhairs, Commies, Gandhi-fans, Fluoridators of Water, or some combination thereof, or sundry other innocent-sounding names. For the purposes of this proposal, however, we shall, purely for convenience, place them all under the umbrella of the term, Peacenik. These Peaceniks have tried to deny us our rightful revenge with the seemingly thoughtful suggestion of alternatives, such as legalizing the drugs which likely provided much of the funding for the horrible act, and protecting the minority communities who were likely shaken down for the rest of it, and the establishment of the World Court which the US alone has been blocking for many years, which would evenly apply human rights treaties to every country on the planet, (including Israel and even our own land.) They propose the impartial distribution of humanitarian aid in coordination with the rest of the nations in our world, they propose that we stop selling or giving away arms to anyone who gives lip service to our ideology (and sometimes both sides of a struggle. The implementation of this suggestion alone could collapse our parasitic economy.) They propose that we lift the sanctions that have starved hundreds of thousands of Iraqis while failing to change its leader's behavior one iota, they propose friendlier relations with the increasingly moderate government in Iran, they propose diplomacy to make more consistent trade laws, and banking laws, and diplomacy to close other loopholes which our enemies have likely exploited. They propose simple anti-terrorism measures for airplanes and prominent buildings. They say protecting living Americans is more important than avenging dead ones. They say war will only provoke more violence. They compare our enemy to the Hydra, who sprouted two heads for every one that was severed. Endless is their creativity as they search for reasons not to die for their country. Cowards. Naive Children.
To paraphrase the Good Book, before we can invade the mote in our neighbor's eye, we must silence the plank in our own. United we stand. If we do not, I fear the corruption of our culture. One day these clever traitors are advocating the use of violence and coercion and partiality as a last resort if at all on the world scene. The next day they will propose the same thing in the household. They will take away our right to humiliate our children, forcing us to treat them as well as--or even better than--we treat our dogs. They will raise a whole new generation of spoiled Peaceniks who do not seethe with the rage to smite their enemies. Then come the all-night dance parties. Then come the whores and the drugs. America will be eaten from within by this fungus of level-headedness. This scourge must be wiped out. To this end I make my first modest proposal.
Any good American who has argued with a Peacenik knows its futility. Again and again we point at the immorality of our enemies, and again and again they offer their mealy-mouthed excuses masquerading as basic human decency and common sense. We hop up and down in rage and they offer us flowers. No amount of arguing will remove the inadequacy which is in the Peaceniks but not in us, the war-advocates, and especially not in your humble Proposer. But I digress.
How to make a Peacenik listen? The Peaceniks have infiltrated our government and outlawed all of the traditional methods, such as torture or imprisonment without trial (execution is fortunately still legal, but requires a lengthy appeals process.) We true Americans can and do still use these methods, we just have to keep them quiet, so we can't use them on a scale large enough to silence all of the Peaceniks, as our ancestors in other lands have done in the past. And so we are left with a single alternative: flag-waving. We must wave our flags proud and large, hang them from the windows of business and home alike, and ignore and brutally ostracize all who do not, since flags are to our internal oppressors as garlic is to vampires. Concerned citizens can carry those American flags on toothpicks that come on club sandwiches, and wave them in the faces of any who may approach to discuss an upcoming anti-war protest, and in such a way good citizens may protect their purity.
Having assured the consistent loyalty of our nation with flag-waving, we may now turn to our enemies and part of the second problem to which I propose a solution. The enemy has no infrastructure. He hides in the burned-out rubble of a country destroyed by a war which our noble government partially funded. So bombing is out of the question; we need a large ground assault in the great tradition of ugly slaughters such as the World Wars and the Viet Nam conflict. Send our young men--so idle and hence troublesome in our own country, vulnerable to the wiles of the Peaceniks--to hostile environments to shoot at an ill-defined enemy, as our fathers did before us. We are their elders, we have a right to decide who among them lives and who dies, except for those who have already been mildly infected with the Peacenik scourge, and they can help the war effort without actually shooting at anyone.
And it is now that we encounter the rest of our second problem. Our enemy--cowardly as the Peaceniks--does not wear uniforms and march in ranks like a proper army. He slithers like the Serpent in the Garden of many a land, indistinguishable from the innocents in his community.
Taking a page from history, we could successfully kill such an enemy. Hem him into an area and render it unlivable. Burn the crops, poison the wells, and burn the forests, too. Leave nothing behind to live on and then leave the enemy and those who hid him to starve or die of cholera. Our unwillingness to do this completely enough in Viet Nam is what cost us that war and allowed Communism to spread.
But I do not make such a proposal. I have taken an inoculatory dose of Peacenik "philosophy," and will use it now to mitigate the damage we Americans cause in our righteous anger, for I would not be the villain they thinkest for all that is in Someone-bin Laden's grasp, and the rest of the rich East to boot.
I suspect that the enemy, like all enemies, wears some mark or symbol of his evilness, not unlike the witch's mark sought by the glorious Inquisition in medieval times (when governments were so much wiser!) or the red stenciled tattoo of a cobra on the index finger of the bad guys in the G.I. Joe cartoons beloved of my youth. We must therefore strip naked every man, woman and child and search him all over for such a mark. The Proposer personally volunteers to be the first to undergo such an examination and conduct it upon his family and friends. But the heathens from whom Someone-bin Laden draws many of his recruits cover up their women and would never consent to such a thing. And so it must be done against their will--these are the sacrifices necessary in war. But in my infinite patience, like a parent who makes his arbitrary command two or even three times before striking the child who may not understand him, I again make concessions to the pernicious Peaceniks, and do not propose that we simply strip them all at gunpoint in public. Let us use subversion as the Peaceniks have in our own country. We can purchase what few buildings may still stand in Afghanistan, and put signs above their onion-shaped doors that say, "America-Haters Welcome Here. Free Beer and Pizza." And only when Satan's little brown dupes are in a private setting shall we examine them for the mark. But I make still further concessions to the un-American who have infiltrated us. It would indeed be the sheerest of cold-hearted cruelty to ignore the needs of the starving people who will surround us in that distant land by burying in mass graves what would be perfectly good cold cuts. Let us cut the flesh from the arms and legs of the enemies we find with our Inquisitorial methods, and boil them in enemy blood. At which point we can form soup kitchens, such as the Peaceniks run in our own country, with signs above their doors saying, "Free Soup Without Pig Products, Guaranteed." for I am told that the Arabians do not eat pig, and I find the enemy more likely to be a member of the rodent family.
And so it is with these two devices, flag-waving and global inquisition, that I propose we rid ourselves of all that is impure, first in ourselves, second in the world. There will be not a trace left of weakness, of fear, of cowardice. With these techniques, we must prevail, for we are right and they are wrong. We are innocent and they are guilty. God will love us best. The Father will finally show His unconditional approval to us, for we will have beaten from the world all that He has told us that we should be ashamed of. His will, not ours. To His greater glory, let it be.

[tedious copyright notice: Copyright Greg Pool October 8, 2001. Anyone may make an unlimited number of copies of this piece and distribute them freely in any medium, provided that no money is charged, the work remains unchanged and this copyright notice remains attached.]