I admit, at first glance the Governor and I seem equally incapable of leading a nation to war. Neither one of us has any military experience. Some of my critics have said that Romney showed greater strategic gifts by ducking service in Vietnam by being a missionary in France than I did by being born too late to be drafted for that conflict, but I maintain it's a draw.
Neither one of us has any résumé in operating any of the machinery of modern war. Fighter planes, aircraft carriers, tanks…both of us would be well-advised to let someone else drive if we found ourselves in one of those things.
I've ridden horses. So has he. I know which end of a bayonet to hold. He probably does, too. It's not that tough to figure out.
Hand to hand combat? Romney, with an assist, once cut off a fellow prep student's hair. Me—limited to a few years I spent as a bouncer at a bar. Sure, I've been in a few more rough spots than the Governor, but I've never tried fighting anyone who was sober.
Where then would I find the hubris to claim I would be able to invade Iran more capably than a guy who gets daily security briefings from the State Department?
Because I know where it is.
I don't think it's a landlocked country that borders Syria, as Romney does. I know that there are no landlocked countries that border Syria. Romney may be thinking of Azer-something, which is a country that lies north of Iran and is landlocked. I apologize for calling it Azer-something. Sometimes I call it Azer-hoodle, or Azer-thingy. Like the name of the fellow that leads Iran, Ahmeda-hopple, the name of the country starts with an A followed by a disconsolate jumble of vowels and soft consonants that my mind refuses to learn to pronounce. So I call it Azer-et cetera when called upon to discuss it, just like I call the leader of Iran "five feet even of beady eyes and scruffy beard," or the "midget, bad-haired loony of the Middle East" when I need to comment on him.
Romney may well know how to pronounce these names, so I acknowledge he has that advantage over me, but you have to admit I'm way out front in the geography field because the Governor apparently does not know where Iraq is, either. I know that it lies between Syria and Iran, meaning they don't border each other. Romney wants us to leave 20,000 troops in Iraq. As your military leader, I would make sure I left troops where I could find them again.
He may be mixing Iran up with any of a whole heap of countries that were formed when the Soviet Union was dissolved whose names end in "stan" and are all landlocked countries. That's a rule of geography—if you used to belong to the Soviet Union and your country's name ends in "stan," you have no beachfront property.
Iran has lots of beachfront along the Persian Gulf, which is named after what Iran used to be called. Romney may be confused because Persian can be a type of carpet, too, and also a kind of cat. US warships patrol the Persian Gulf on a regular basis, just to keep an eye on the Iranian Navy, which would not exist if Iran were a landlocked country. Maybe that's why Romney thinks our Navy is perilously tiny—he's not counting those ships in the Persian Gulf because he doesn't know it's there.
Landlocked countries almost never have navies or gulfs named after them. There is no Swiss Navy or Gulf of Switzerland, for example. You cannot sail directly from the Cayman Islands to Switzerland even though your money can.
I understand Romney's background as a quarter-billionaire makes it easy for him to forget where he's left his stuff—he may not remember where one of his particular homes or Cadillacs or trust funds is at any given time, but troops and ships aren't his stuff. They're our stuff.
As your leader, I might not know any better than Romney how to use it, or whether I should, but I guarantee I would at least know where it was.
Neither one of us has any résumé in operating any of the machinery of modern war. Fighter planes, aircraft carriers, tanks…both of us would be well-advised to let someone else drive if we found ourselves in one of those things.
I've ridden horses. So has he. I know which end of a bayonet to hold. He probably does, too. It's not that tough to figure out.
Hand to hand combat? Romney, with an assist, once cut off a fellow prep student's hair. Me—limited to a few years I spent as a bouncer at a bar. Sure, I've been in a few more rough spots than the Governor, but I've never tried fighting anyone who was sober.
Where then would I find the hubris to claim I would be able to invade Iran more capably than a guy who gets daily security briefings from the State Department?
Because I know where it is.
I don't think it's a landlocked country that borders Syria, as Romney does. I know that there are no landlocked countries that border Syria. Romney may be thinking of Azer-something, which is a country that lies north of Iran and is landlocked. I apologize for calling it Azer-something. Sometimes I call it Azer-hoodle, or Azer-thingy. Like the name of the fellow that leads Iran, Ahmeda-hopple, the name of the country starts with an A followed by a disconsolate jumble of vowels and soft consonants that my mind refuses to learn to pronounce. So I call it Azer-et cetera when called upon to discuss it, just like I call the leader of Iran "five feet even of beady eyes and scruffy beard," or the "midget, bad-haired loony of the Middle East" when I need to comment on him.
Romney may well know how to pronounce these names, so I acknowledge he has that advantage over me, but you have to admit I'm way out front in the geography field because the Governor apparently does not know where Iraq is, either. I know that it lies between Syria and Iran, meaning they don't border each other. Romney wants us to leave 20,000 troops in Iraq. As your military leader, I would make sure I left troops where I could find them again.
He may be mixing Iran up with any of a whole heap of countries that were formed when the Soviet Union was dissolved whose names end in "stan" and are all landlocked countries. That's a rule of geography—if you used to belong to the Soviet Union and your country's name ends in "stan," you have no beachfront property.
Iran has lots of beachfront along the Persian Gulf, which is named after what Iran used to be called. Romney may be confused because Persian can be a type of carpet, too, and also a kind of cat. US warships patrol the Persian Gulf on a regular basis, just to keep an eye on the Iranian Navy, which would not exist if Iran were a landlocked country. Maybe that's why Romney thinks our Navy is perilously tiny—he's not counting those ships in the Persian Gulf because he doesn't know it's there.
Landlocked countries almost never have navies or gulfs named after them. There is no Swiss Navy or Gulf of Switzerland, for example. You cannot sail directly from the Cayman Islands to Switzerland even though your money can.
I understand Romney's background as a quarter-billionaire makes it easy for him to forget where he's left his stuff—he may not remember where one of his particular homes or Cadillacs or trust funds is at any given time, but troops and ships aren't his stuff. They're our stuff.
As your leader, I might not know any better than Romney how to use it, or whether I should, but I guarantee I would at least know where it was.
RSS Feed
