A Plan for Afghanistan

A message received from a friend, edited to remove the profanity and add the graphic:

The White House is "exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan." A "wholesale reconsideration" of strategy is involved. Ideas are being sought.

I have one. If the main idea is to win hearts and minds and thereby destroy the Taliban, why not employ the same strategy Corporate America uses to dumb-down the American public, drive them into credit card debt and re-make the nation into a land of passive, self-absorbed sheep? Take all those billions of dollars and give it to McDonald's, Walmart, Best Buy, Blockbuster, Disney, and a bunch of condo developers! Flood Afghanistan with fast food restaurants, cheap but flashy clothes, amusement parks, electronics stores, video shops and fancy-looking condos.

In no time at all, we will have sucked the intelligence and political energy right out of everyone in Afghanistan, just as Corporate America did to us here. The sheepherders will be too busy shopping to worry over politics or religion or individual rights. The Taliban will be trading in their weapons for big screen TVs and heaping plates of french fries. Peace will reign supreme.

And though the price be high, it's likely to cost far less than the precious lives of our young and the three trillion dollars we blew in Iraq.