by Chris Cannon
Our recent operations in Guantanamo Bay have been productive in introducing a line of fresh, excruciating torments, such as forcing captives to watch countless reruns of Friends, edited to include only scenes relevant to the romance between Ross and Rachel. Terrorists who have lived among Westerners for an extended period of time may prove resistant to this technique, in which case we recommend withholding the final episode so they won’t know how everything turned out for the couple. Alternatively, you can force your prisoner to watch the entire first season of Dexter, but with all of Dexter’s parts edited out, leaving behind only hammy overacting from two-dimensional ancillary characters.
Should your secret detention facility be located in a low-tech environment, such as Chechnya, Baghdad, or Alabama, more primitive techniques might be called for. Nothing gets under the well-read terrorist’s skin more than bad punctuation, so in the absence of digital (i.e., spell-checked) torture techniques, try planting errors in your prisoner’s forced confession. Research has shown that misplaced apostrophes especially weaken resistance, so instead of sentences like “I was the architect of the bombings at your World Trade Center,” try “I was the architect of the bombing’s at you’re World Trade Center.”
A more potent version of this technique involves utilizing the contracted form (“it’s”) when the possessive form (“its”) is called for. For example, instead of “I am dedicated to the annihilation of the Zionist state and all its infidel supporters,” try “I am dedicated to the annihilation of the Zionist state and all it’s infidel supporters.”
Lastly, while everyone loves a good waterboarding, the sophisticated terrorist has trained against this technique, so more drastic measures might be called for. We recommend forgoing the boutique labels (such as Idaho Ice and Essentia) and waterboarding with a selection from our list of more pedestrian brands, including Dasani, Aquafina, and Poland Spring. If your detainee is suspected of environmental terrorism, it is particularly effective to waterboard with a brand that carries a heavy carbon footprint—Aqua Fiji, for instance—and then throw the empties right into the garbage. For the direst of situations, when information is crucial to prevent an imminent attack, our legal advisors have approved the use of tap water. (Please note, however, that the Geneva Convention prohibits using water drawn from aquifers in New Jersey.)
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Canafact
Canadian spies cloak themselves in politeness so as not to be mistaken for American spies.
It’s a Promise!
Guantanamo Bay will be closed and the prisoners moved to the arctic, where they can be legally snowboarded.
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2.3 Weaponizing Politeness: Fight like a Canadian!
We know how much Americans like war. Who wouldn’t? Rockets’ red glare, bombs bursting in air, all that jazz. And when there are no wars to be had, there are always metaphorical wars to fall back on, like the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism.
Sure, they’re not as sexy as real wars, but at least they are never designed with an endgame in mind—declaring “war” on something allows a country to commit unlimited resources for unspecified political purposes for an indefinite amount of time without having to worry about little things such as principles or facts. It’s like the Fox News research department on a national scale. [We’re kidding, of course. Everyone knows Fox News doesn’t have a research department.]
Don’t get us wrong—Canada is always up for a good scrap when the situation warrants, and as America’s pinkie buddy, we’ve got your back. We paved the way for you in World Wars I and II. We smuggled the American diplomats out of Iran during the 1980 hostage crisis. Even now we are backing the U.S. effort in Afghanistan, suffering our highest number of casualties since the Korean War. And rest assured, should the terrorists ever declare a jihad on the Baconator or the McRib, we will lounge with you, side by side, defending the salted meat-substitutes of freedom.
But do you know what we really like in Canada? Syrup. And peace. We are totally into the peace thing up here. We know it’s not sexy, but it is cheap. And peaceful.
Canada has gotten far more mileage out of peace than out of war. Our humanitarian and negotiation efforts during the Vietnam and Cold Wars saved countless lives and helped bring about resolution to both conflicts. Our “Operation Yellow Ribbon” on 9/11 welcomed 33,000 passengers in more than 220 airplanes diverted from U.S. airspace, our communities opening their doors to feed and shelter Americans until they could return home. The very concept of “peacekeeping” was invented by future Canadian prime minister Lester B. Pearson to bring about an end to the 1956 Suez Crisis, earning him the Nobel Peace Prize (and, we’re guessing, no small amount of cred with the ladies).
As your president, we will bring to a battle-weary America a notion of peace as something other than “the brief moments that happen between wars.” Or, to borrow the metaphor one more time: once elected, we will declare War on War.
War is an after-the-fact expenditure, meaning we go to war only because we failed to address the conditions (poverty, bigotry, ignorance, and greed) that bring it about. If we had seriously addressed global warming in the 1980s when we started pretending we cared about it, it would be a minor issue now. If we brush and floss like our dentists tell us to do, we won’t have cavities later. And that is our plan for America—instead of a dental drill, America will be the world’s fluoride, preventing economic and social decay in those hard-to-reach places.
War is so 1940s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’90s, and 2000s. If the level of funding that America has wasted on the less focused wars (about $2 trillion over the past ten years) had instead been invested in human potential, the root causes of war would be largely obliterated, and our soldiers would now be refereeing Lincoln-Douglas debates in Libyan high schools and sculpting sand art for a thriving ecotourism industry in Yemen.
As America’s commander-in-chief, we would also take advantage of underutilized weapons in the American arsenal—the entertainment and technology industries, for instance. America has effectively used public-private partnerships in the past to address domestic issues. Imagine if we used them on an international scale. North Korea wants to conduct nuclear tests? Bam! We bench Kobe Bryant until Kim Jong-un relents. India decides to invade Pakistan? Bam! Microsoft cripples the Bangalore economy by recalling its tech-support staff.
We understand our efforts will fall short of achieving world peace, but perfection is not something to be achieved, it is something to be aimed for. If nothing else, the public-relations benefit from repurposing the world’s most dominant military—redefining its primary mission as building things rather than blowing them up—is nearly incalculable. Winning wars is costly and bloody. Winning hearts and minds is cheap and effective. In no time, protestors will stop burning American flags and start burning DVDs of the Star Trek: Enterprise series, as nature intended.
Within a few short months, the U.S. is back in style. Pro-American hashtags like #Tehranlovesusa and #chubforAmerica will resonate through cyberspace. The world will return to its doe-eyed admiration for everything American: jeans made in Vietnam, iPhones assembled in China, apple pies made with fresh Mexican apples and picked by fresh Mexican immigrants. Eventually, the metaphorical use of “War” will change as well, and the Wars on Drugs and Terrorism will be rightfully prosecuted as Wars on Poverty and Ignorance.
It’s impractical to assume every petty tyrant will climb right on board the peace train, as many of them seem to enjoy slapping around their own people when they can’t find a smaller country to pick on. When governments attack their own citizens, the United Nations usually responds with warnings that the country will be warned, again and again, the way your dad warned you he’d pull the car over if you didn’t stop screwing around in the back seat, but he never did, and that was the day you learned the meaning of the phrase “empty threat.” To bypass this toothless process, we have created a template lette
r that will be issued to the offending government once—and only once.
Dear (leaders of offending country),
Please stop attacking your citizens, even though all the (shooting/grenading/bombing/tanking/raping) makes our democracy look pretty damn good in comparison. We understand your lack of (nuclear weapons/fresh water/Victoria’s Secret outlet stores) makes you feel inferior to other nations, but punching yourself in the face doesn’t make the other people in the room less attractive.
We would prefer not to bomb your home at (address) because we honestly don’t have a (security/economic/new Disney park) interest in your country right now. Please remember that it is an election year, and war (does/does not) seem to be trending favorably at the moment.
However, since we are suddenly taking heat from our (country of origin)-American community, we need to at least look like we are doing something. Hence, we have set up a committee to look into the situation, which should buy you the time you need to solve this crisis on your own before we FedEx Seal Team 6 to your (palace/summer retreat/“secret” bunker at coordinates 40.762469, 73.974155).
We respectfully request you stop being a douchebag to your own citizens. Immediately. Our oil mappers are already hard at work.
Kind Regards,
President Canada
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It’s a Promise!
Every declaration of war, no matter how small, will include a partial draft to hold citizens accountable for the officials they elect. Video gamers will be the first to go, since they are already trained and have nothing better to do.
Canafact
We gave you Shatner. You gave us Bakula. (Who? Exactly. Do the math.)
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2.4 Showing Nature Who’s Boss
Human beings exist in a gaseous state—we expand to fill the space we’re allowed. Give us an ocean, and we’ll build boats. Give us gravity, and we’ll build rocket ships. Give us purple mountain majesties and amber waves of grain, and we will cover every square inch of it with billboards promoting “Purple-Mountain Souvenirs” and “World’s Amberest Grain Kernel.” If global warming hadn’t come around, global elbowing would have eventually wiped us out anyway.
You know what else has elbows? Polar bears. How do we know? Because we see them rotate out of the water every time they take a breaststroke across what used to be a glacier field but is now a summer pond.
The good news is, Americans are not without a proud history of genuine conservation efforts. In 1916, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson founded the National Park Service, a decision that would one day draw millions of travelers from around the world to the Grand Canyon Visitor Center, where they would watch Grand Canyon: The Movie in pants-pooping IMAX, and then go home without bothering to see the actual Grand Canyon, which is only seven miles away.
Nearly a century of environmental awareness later, the world’s five largest oil companies have raked in more than a trillion dollars in profit in the last decade alone, while enjoying $22 billion in U.S. government subsidies to support the private jets and country estates that have proved vital to stopping international terrorists, which of course are just polar bears with exploding backpacks strapped to their elbows.
We of the vast, untamed northern wilderness share with our southern neighbors this fondness for pretending we give a shit about the planet. We realize that environmentalism is more a fashion statement than a devotion to actual change, but to make the fashion an actual “statement,” there needs to be a certain level of commitment, and we fear that we are just not pretending hard enough.
Take, for instance, our tendency to judge a creature’s right to live based on some twisted Darwinian notion of “survival of the cutest.” We might throw ourselves in front of a bullet to protect a baby seal, like the arctic secret service, but we don’t think twice about ordering a chicken nugget that was born and raised in the animal equivalent of Auschwitz, fattened on arsenic and animal waste, then ushered into the sweet release of death to become the meatlike half of a bite-sized morsel. If baby seals were as ugly and tasty as chicken, they would appear on lobster bibs instead of the cover of National Geographic.
This commitment to simulated environmentalism also includes hunting, an activity that makes eco-narcissists swoon in faux disgust. [We strongly endorse the fashion sense of the good people of Dawson City, Yukon Territory, for what seems to be a mandatory “wear what you kill” policy.] But let’s face it—no wild animals die of boredom after a long retirement. If you were an old deer with a great rack, and someone offered you the option to die quickly and be made into a statue instead of being eaten alive by a predator, wouldn’t you jump at that? Well, you wouldn’t jump, because you’re old and supporting a huge rack, but after you were shot and stuffed, they’d probably make you look like you were jumping.
As your democratically elected leader, Canada is committed to pretending to care about the environment just enough so your grandchildren can play outside without donning a beekeeper’s outfit and an inch-thick coating of SPF 90. The world is equally doomed either way, but if we’re going to play pretend, let’s not phone it in—let’s wear the costumes and learn the dialogue to make the play as enjoyable as possible.
Therefore, in the hopes of winning a Tony for Best Scenic Design, we will replace the numbers on gas pumps with images of hidden costs, like trees and polar bears and little Timmy’s carcinoma. If you’re going to spend green at the pump, you should see what kind of greenery you are actually spending. Instead of numbers flipping by, there will be pictures of salmon and whales and melting glaciers. Instead of figuring out it will take twenty bucks to drive from Tulsa to Dallas, you’ll see it will cost eight oil-slicked seagulls and a wolf with a speech impediment. Instead of telling the attendant to “top it up,” you’ll say, “throw a humpback in the tank!”
To maintain the spirit of keeping up appearances, all members of our administration will be required to demonstrate they know the difference between “climate change” and “the weather.” We will close all highways that do not carve a straight line from City A to City B, returning nature to... well, nature. If you are too lazy to get out of your car to see a deer, then you do not deserve to see a deer. So-called “scenic” highways will be dismantled, as there are so many Starbucks that the grizzly bears have become jittery and started writing novels. It kind of takes the adventure out of it when you can drive through the hinterland of Yellowstone and the only wildlife you see is Gentle Ben foraging for dark mochas and free wireless.
A key feature of our environmental platform will be combating that most lazy of false practices linking the human and natural worlds: the anthropomorphizing of animals. Specifically, people who put hats on dogs.
Our solution: quit putting hats on dogs. No doubt humans share basic feelings with our friends in the animal kingdom—love, fear, joy, anxiety, and the occasional overwhelming desire to poop on our neighbor’s lawn. But do we really want to imbue our pets with a fashion sense? Does it further our species to treat other species as “people accessories”? It’s no wonder third-world countries don’t like us—our animals are dressed better than they are.
Animals dressed as people are the canary in the coal mine of Western civilization, where the chasm between the needs of our most desperate citizens and the extravagances of our leisure class has become irreconcilably vast. The more frightened we are by our own impending doom, the more we recede into the sanctuary of wheel rims, hair extensions, and little sailor outfits for dogs that we have spent centuries breeding to look like actual sailors. Everyone knows the fall of the Roman Empire was brought about by an increasingly soft lifestyle, an apathy toward worldly problems, and old ladies who made their sheep wear berets. We’re pretty sure that at the very end, the caretakers at the Coliseum were knitting toques for their lions.
We don’t need scientists screaming from the rooftops about global w
arming to see that we are a generation away from living in caves and fighting over pictures of food. We just need to glance out the coffee-shop window and see a Chihuahua sporting a yarmulke and matching tartan kilt to know the end of the world is near.
With that in mind, should we (somehow) not achieve the presidency, what follows are some tasty post-apocalyptic recipes for the new Stone Age.
End of Days Brownies
Ingredients
3 soup cans of cocoa-colored exterior house paint
2.5 handfuls of irradiated dirt
2 crushed or grated cockroaches
gravel to taste
Instructions
Whisk ingredients together and pour into a discarded hubcap. Bake under mushroom cloud for one hour.
Uncle’s Famous Rump Roast
Ingredients
1 buttock from an uncle (the other other white meat)
1.5 cupped hands of water
1 handful dry sand
1 bunch cauliflower
toe jam to taste
Instructions
Place buttock meat on a hot rock or discarded nuclear control rod and apply the sandy dry rub, thoroughly covering entire roast. When the meat begins to sizzle, spritz with water and toe jam. Decoratively arrange cauliflower on serving tray, place meat, and serve. (Do not eat the cauliflower. It is disgusting.)
