A VERY WOODEN ANNIVERSARY. CIGAR STORE IRAQIS, ANYONE?

So, I looked it up, what to get somebody on their 5th anniversary. Apparently 5 years is not much of a milestone because the gift suggestion is something made of wood. The list I consulted doesn't specify exactly which wooden objects would be appropriate, so I'm goIng to improvise with the 5th anniversary of the Iraqi invasion. I figure Bush The Younger's head is made out of wood, but nobody really wants anymore of the sawdust that passes for his ideas, so we'll have to figure something else out for a gift to the Iraqi people on the anniversary of their "liberation" from Sadam Hussein and subsequent enslavement by America.

What's made of wood that these people could use? Maybe a cord of firewood to heat their homes when the electricity is cut off for half of the day? How about some lumber to rebuild some of those homes? A nice wooden plaque would be thoughtful. Maybe have the inscription read: "Thank you for five wonderful years of hospitality and brotherly love! Our relationship has lasted longer than World War Two." or "Has it been only five years? It seems more like fifty." Okay, maybe the plaque isn't the way to go. The Bush Administration fired all the guys who speak Arabic because they think they are gay and it would be tacky to give them a plaque written in English, sort of like the Roman Empire giving Carthage a plaque in Latin after they razed their cities and salted their farmland.

But one must observe the social niceties, and protocol calls for a wooden gift to the Iraqi people to mark this anniversary. We wouldn't want to forget their anniversary and get them mad at us, would we? Who knows, they might start forming insurgency groups and bombing our soldiers and their own fellow citizens with high explosives, and we wouldn't want that. No, we must show that we appreciate their good old Middle Eastern hospitality. But what to get them that would be made of wood and still appropriate for the Iraqi people? Wood isn't so good for stopping shrapnel and bullets so wooden body armor is out of the question.

We could make them a whole bunch of donkey carts. This way when we suck out their last drop of oil and leave their country in a hurry they will still have a way to get around. But that would mean getting them millions of donkeys, and a quick glance at the anniversary gift chart reveals there is no donkey anniversary. That's a regrettable oversight, since it seems an ideal solution for a nation we are rapidly sending on a time trip backwards. Dare we step out of convention and get creative? I don't know about that since these Iraqis seem a pretty strait-laced bunch, insisting on all sorts of traditional observances like the right to be ruled by a government of their own choosing and not living with a gigantic occupational army for years and years, you know, quaint notions like that. So maybe we'd best stick with a conventional gift and not think outside the box here.

We could get them a wooden Cigar Store Indian. Lots of people think they're a cool gift. But on second thought, that might only serve to remind them of the actual fate of real American Indians, a people who once roamed a giant border-free land and who today live on dusty reservations like lions on African game preserves, with the occasional gambling casino thrown in to make us feel better about the somewhat less than stellar way they were treated by our invading armies back in the day. No sense bringing up old bad blood when we've got plenty of new bad blood we're trying to live down.

So perhaps we should persuade cigar stores not to carve a bunch of Cigar Store Iraqis to put at their entrance to mark the 5th anniversary of the Iraq invasion. Even though they might be cute, it's probably like that whole black lawn jockey deal, rubbing salt into wounds best left to heal. No sense flaunting our insensitivity, at least not openly. Of course behind closed doors all bets are off. Like always, no? Why have a giant army and push the world around if you can't get all smug and condescending about it now and then? Nothing like mindlessly chanting "We're Number one!" over and over again to annoy the crap out of the rest of the world. If they don't like it, well, let them use their own damned army and hire private mercenary companies to terrorize oil-rich dictatorships and scare the hell out of their neighbors! Until then, they should just shut up and welcome the influx of an advanced culture such as ours that brings them sophisticated concepts like fast food, Gangsta Rap and Porkys movies.

We could plant some trees there, what with them being made out of wood and the place being pretty much a dust bowl. Maybe do one of those make-overs like Israel did with their desert land, irrigating it and farming it these days. But no, if they wanted that they'd have done it long ago. Iraq has the second largest oil deposist on the planet and had plenty of money to do what they wanted before the liberators showed up and convinced them how miserable they really were and they didn't plant any trees then. Now the country is pretty broke from 5 years of getting conquered (them versus us), guerilla warfare against the occupying power (us), civil war (them versus them), Turkish raids and everybody helping themselves to their oil. It's like the Great Depression all over again for Iraq.

Which gives me an idea for an anniversary gift. Pencils! They're wood and the unemployed Iraqis can sell them on street corners like destitute people did during the Depression. Lots of pencils, since they're going to be poor for a long time, oil or no oil. Five years of war rips up a place pretty good and there's a whole lot of infrastructure that needs rebuilding. The fireworks display the Pentagon put on for CNN at the beginning of the war blew up a lot of stuff costing a lot of money, things like buildings, highways, bridges, airports, electric plants, homes, apartment buildings, hospitals, presidential palaces, stores, you name it. Clean drinking water is but a fond memory for much of Iraq, as is 24/7 electric supply. Of course we didn't bomb any oil facilities, that would have been counter to the whole purpose of invading an oil producing nation.

Bush The Younger knows who's boss, and it ain't him. The Big Oil Cartel headed by Shotgun Dick Cheney and his Hole in The Head Gang is in charge. Being rich guys and all, they saw right away that there was no big money to be made in Afghanistan, a backward, mountainous, landlocked place nobody else wants so the people who wound up there are not exactly your history-making dynamos. The sort of people who settle for a remote gravel pit at the crossroads to nowhere aren't likely to build a wealthy civilization or at least form a decent mafia. If it wasn't for Osama bin Laden the only reason you'd have ever to think about Afghanistan was in relation to the opium trade, and even there the opium growers are satisfied to make a pittance doing the lion's share of the work while others make millions turning their product into heroin.

Which means that the Afghanis are so devoid of ambition and so obsessed with tribal warfare they have yet to produce a world-clas crime organization or famous criminal. Towards that end, our government has allowed the opium trade to flourish as never before, now supplying 90% of the world's raw material for the heroin trade but we're still waiting for a Mr. Big emerge, ala Carlos Escobar, to keep the huge profits of the drug trade in the nation that is its source. Bin Laden and his al Qaeda boys are plenty famous, but they are out-of-town muscle and not native Afghanis. How much they have to do with the heroin trade is anybody's guess since nobody seems to keep track of them much anymore.

That's probably why little note was made of the 5 year anniversary of our Afghani invasion. We still have a sizable army there so people will still think we're searching for bin Laden but Bush The Younger's focus turned from bringing him to justice long ago. Now, with less than a year to go in office, the Hole in The Head Gang is completely focused on squeezing big dough out of Iraq, handing out 30 year oil leases to their buddies and billions of dollars worth of no-bid contracts to gang associates. Of course the tab will be picked up by Iraq, pretty much guaranteeing Third World status for the foreseeable future in a formerly prosperous nation.

So I think pencils are a proper Wooden Anniversary gift. Every street corner could have its own disabled pencil vendor, and there's no shortage of maimed people over there. The sympathy factor is a big part of any successful pencil vending operation so in retrospect America had done the Iraqis a huge favor by maiming so many of them and making their nation an open arena attracting all manner of competing militias, terrorist groups and jihadists who will continue to supply suitably disfigured personnel for the pencil vending industry for years to come. Sometimes you just have to play the hand you're dealt, even when the dealer is giving you cards from the bottom of the deck.

As to what to get Bush The Younger and his boss Shotgun Dick, well, I think they have petty much everything they need and if there is something they want to acquire they do the old fashioned way; call out the Marines. And if that doesn't work, hire some more mercenaries. So here's wishing Iraq a happy 5th Anniversary. We got you these pencils as a token of our esteem. Feel free to sell them on street corners. We're looking forward to next years anniversary, which traditionally calls for a gift of iron or candy. We'll probably go with the iron.