Dude, Where's My Country_ - Michael Moore [32]
Only one problem: Hardly anybody wanted to join this “Coalition of the Willing.” So just who were the motley crew of oddball nations that signed on to Bush’s madness? Let’s take a look at the list. It beings with . . .
Afghanistan.
Okay, stop right there. Afghanistan? What exactly was their contribution going to be? Horses? Ten sticks and a stone? Don’t they have their own problems at the moment? Or did they have a warlord or two to spare to help us out in Iraq? I have asked the State Department to provide me with a list of the contributions that the nation of Afghanistan made to the war effort and so far no one has responded.
Batting next for the “Coalition of the Willing” is another heavy-hitter: Albania. Is this the same Albania where the main industry is survival farming, where there’s one phone for every thirty people? Let’s keep going . . .
Australia. Now that’s a real country! Except the polls in Australia leading up to the war showed that its citizens, by a margin of 70 percent, opposed the war. So how did they get on the list? George W. Bush dangled the prospect of a free-trade agreement in front of Australian Prime Minister John Howard. If you can’t join ’em, or they won’t join you, bribe ’em.
Meanwhile Aussie neighbor New Zealand, who refused to join the coalition, was then—surprise!—shut out of trade talks.
Back to the “Willing”: Azerbaijan (we’re coming to get their oil next so they had no friggin’ choice), Bulgaria (anytime you’ve got Bulgaria on your side, how can you lose? Plus I got to write “Bulgaria” twice in the same book!), Colombia (taking a break from that other war we’re fighting there), the Czech Republic (how embarrassing! We were going to let you into NATO anyway!), Denmark (this alone should disqualify them from membership in Scandinavia—I never thought they belonged in it anyway. Let Finland in, where it belongs!), El Salvador (we didn’t annex them for nothin’), Eritrea (where the hell is that?), Estonia (see, France, some Nazi collaborators love us!), Ethiopia (nothing like sending a squad of starving children to help!), Georgia, Hungary, Italy (that’s the second real country, with 69 percent opposed to the war), Japan (no way! I don’t believe this! Do the Japanese people, 70 percent of whom opposed the war, know they got put on this list?), South Korea, Latvia (more Nazi collaborators), Lithuania (even more collaborators!), Macedonia, the Netherlands (huh? Too much legalized drug use?), Nicaragua, the Philippines (maybe they should be spending their time routing out their own members of al Qaeda), Poland (didn’t they hear that the pope said the war was wrong?), Palau . . .
Palau?
Palau is a group of North Pacific islands with 20,000 citizens, barely enough to fill Madison Square Garden. They do have—as The Washington Post pointed out—yummy tapioca and succulent coconuts but, unfortunately, no troops. Of course not having an army is no impediment to being in the Coalition of the Willing. Other army-less members include Iceland, Costa Rica, the Marshall Islands, the Solomon Islands, and Micronesia. But hey, we don’t expect them to send their kids off to die! That’s our job! We just want them to be willing to do it!
Wait! News flash! Poland did offer to send 200 troops! Thank you for your willingness!
And while Morocco also was short on military assistance, they did offer to send 2,000 monkeys to help detonate land mines in Iraq. But they didn’t and, if you don’t cough up the monkeys, you don’t get to reap the benefits of being a member of the Coalition of the Willing. Anyways, the Coalition of the Willing doesn’t need monkeys when it’s already got a more advanced simian leading it.
But I’m getting out of order here. Let’s see, that