Because the War on Islamic Extremism (the real meaning of “the war on terror”) is going to go on awhile. If Obama is elected, he will be likely to radically reduce the number of US troops recruited over the next 8 years (if he is a two-term president), meaning that my teenage son may be well into his twenties and established in a career before the president after Obama (or the one after that) finds it impossible to keep the USA out of war. Maybe my son can miss the war entirely. That’s good. I want grandchildren, and he has a disturbing sense of honor that might make him think he should volunteer, which won’t really be an option if Obama is just bombing from 30,000 feet like Clinton in Bosnia, or whacking tents and camel pens with Tomahawks, or whatever. Who cares if a couple of major US cities have serious terrorist attacks. I live in the boonies. All you urban twenty-somethings will just have to take what you get. Those of us with the good sense to live out of town aren’t too worried about bombs showing up in our PO Boxes.
Not so for the twenty-somethings, whose 5-10 year old children NOW are precisely the ones who are going to be fighting in the war that will inevitably follow 8 years of Obama “peace mongering” (that war will go on awhile, so that today’s 5 yr olds can enjoy it, too). My kids will be doing their part though, paying the taxes to fund the rifles and body armor for the children of the now twenty/thirty-somethings (but then thirty/forty-somethings). Your kids will have grown up seeing terrorist attacks getting feckless responses from THE ONE. They’ll be itching to volunteer when they come of age, and get some back, using all those skills gained playing Grand Theft Auto and Kill the Creeps on their WIIIIIs. Think how proud you’ll be.
I figure Obama will be the perfect Batman character (Dark Knight style, and no, that is not a racial comment…. don’t you go to movies?). He’ll refuse to run over the machine-gun-toting Joker when he has the chance (out of an excess of high moral feeling, even though the Joker has just murdered many innocents, and is threatening Batman), so that the Joker has a chance to murder dozens more… with the difference that it’ll be up to the next guy (Robin?) to go after the Joker and put an end to it (although Obama will spend lots of time talking about talking with the Joker before his presidency is over, and he will doubtless end his presidency feeling heroic and misunderstood, accepting salutes right and left from military officers glad to see him go).
The floor is open as to who President “Robin” will be. Certainly not Hillary. Or George Clooney. Maybe Bobby Jindal. Or Tim Pawlenty.
So: if you’re a twenty-something, a vote for Obama is a vote to keep my son out of war, and let your kids do it instead a few years later (they’re bound to have women carrying rifles by then…. hooray for equality). And anyway, I won’t need your kids to take care of me in old age… there will be plenty of nice, shiny new immigrants to do that (all legal, by then, of course). But cheer up: by then, the military are all going to have satellite computer connections in their helmets, so you should get lots of email from your kids, while mine will be visiting me most days in the old-muscians-home (extra luxurious), to make sure I have enough Doritos. I’ll bet live coverage of the wars will be incredible. Helmet cams for everyone.
Works for me. I like watching war movies on TV.
Tags: election 2008, Obama, politics, terrorism
