An alternative to bombing Iran

Let's have some fun today.

Let's all telephone and write the White House and tell Dick Cheney to bomb Myanmar and Zimbabwe.

If we can pull it off, it will be the biggest -- maybe the only -- win-win deal of the Bushcheney years.

I'm betting that even countries like France and Australia –- only recently come to its senses and out of Iraq –- will join us, and won't that be a hoot? Could be a great party.

Progressives and neocons alike would satisfy their basic desires. Liberals could support an action benefiting a large number of suffering human beings, and the Bushies would get to drop something out of airplanes onto people of tawny hue. With luck, they might even get to kill a few folks, though probably not many.

The only possible losers would be the bloody bastards who rule those two rotten and destitute countries, and not even Dick Cheney cares about them, really, even though they're his kind of people in a general sort of way. They recognize no law but themselves, and are perfectly comfortable with letting thousands of human beings suffer and die for the sake of maintaining their holds on power.

(Yes, I know. Cheney doesn't care about anyone, really, but he doesn't even need to coddle those butchers. Zimbabwe has no oil, and Myanmar produces barely enough to keep Blackwater's new Brazilian-made fighter plane in the air; it's 12,000 barrels of crude a day probably wouldn't pay the rent on Cheney's various secret hiding places.)

OK, I'll come clean. I'm not advocating that the American military drop explosives on the starving, parched, homeless and increasingly ill masses of Zimbabwe and Myanmar. I figure the neocons can live with the lack of explosive death and destruction, given the other goodies that undoubtedly would come their way.

What I am proposing is the biggest airlift in almost 60 years, maybe ever.

We could send cargo planes over Myanmar and Zimbabwe and drop huge quantities of drinking water, food, basic medicines, large tents, sleeping bags and whatever else international aid agencies say is necessary. To hell with the rulers and their refusal to let foreign help reach their suffering people.

We could keep it up until all of the Burmese and Zimbabweans are adequately cared for, until sufficient medical teams are on the ground and water supplies are adequate and safe and everyone has shelter.

It might even inspire the citizens of our two target nations and give them the strength to rise up against the tyrants and install democratic governments, and that is what we want for everybody, right?

Right George? Right Dick?

The Myanmar generals might send up a couple of fighter planes to threaten our cargo craft, but we could chase them off with war planes of our own. Maybe our pilots would even get to shoot down a couple of the generals' craft, thus giving the White House a taste of blood and a chance to strut in military fashion. George could haul out his flight suit for a press conference.

What's that, you say Mr. Minority Leader McConnell? It would cost too much and threaten our economy?

Ummmm.

We maybe could reduce the payments to various Halliburton entities by the amounts they seem to have stolen from us and use that for the humanitarian aid. Ditto a bunch of other crooked contractors. We could cut off all government contracts with Blackwater, which perpetrates one criminal outrage after another, and let the military do the jobs that are rightfully theirs. (Cheney can pay his private army himself, if he insists on keeping it around.) We could stop preparing to bomb Iran.

Or we could haul our sorry behinds out of Iraq over the next few months and come out billions of dollars ahead.

Yes, of course the Cheney cohort, supported and nudged by Israel's right-wing leadership, wants to kill Iranians by the thousands. The neocons -- please, may the day come when they are just cons -- figure killing more Muslims will put Bush III in the White House so they can continue gathering power and the world's wealth to themselves.

They haven't thought it through yet.

If we come around all big-time humanitarian, most of the world will swing quickly from despising the Bushies and all they touch to praising them. Many Americans who won't touch John McCain because of his taint of Bush will feel free to vote for him. Think the the relief they'll experience in the South and places like Kansas and rural Ohio because they won't have to stretch for excuses not to vote for the black man.

For a brief period leading up to this fall's election -- before everybody notices that Americans still are going broke, lack decent health care and are losing their jobs and homes –- the neocons will have a chance to hold power without getting into another shooting war that even they must recognize they cannot sustain. (They aren't that stupid, are they? Are they?)

C'mon, gang. Let's make those calls and send those emails.