Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Pacifying Our Enemies

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We've made this point before, somewhat jocularly: Don't make war, make hamburgers. But there's something to it. Now, it seems, Vietnam is going ga-ga over golf.
Until last year, according to experts who have done the calculations, licenses for new courses were being issued at an average of one a week, for a total of more than 140 projects around the country.
So, 58,178 Americans died on the supposition they were saving the world from evil communism. It turns out, though, what they were really doing is clearing the war for the Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail -- a much more effective way of pacifying villages. Just read what Nguyen Dang Van has to say about it:
“Golf courses are for rich people, account for vast areas of land, cause pollution and affect food security... ,” he told the newspaper Tuoi Tre in July.
Can we learn from our mistakes? Instead of drones, robots, helicopters, machine guns, and risking tens of thousands of young people's lives, we ought to be flying C-130's over the landscape, dropping Big Berthas, Nike golf balls, and endless bags of tif dwarf grass seed.

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