"Hearts and minds" rethink

Best Argument Against Jihad: David Letterman

As time passes since the latest Wikileaks document release, it's becoming clearer exactly why American officials are so angry, anxious and filled with vengeance against the organization's leader, Julian Assange.

It's coming to light that people in the middle east, particularly Saudi Arabia, are fascinated by US culture, and are absolutely eating up American television programming:

From The Guardian:"It's still all about the war of ideas here, and the American programming on MBC and Rotana [a channel part-owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation] is winning over ordinary Saudis in a way that al-Hurra and other US propaganda never could," two Saudi media executives told a US official in a meeting at a Jeddah branch of Starbucks. "Saudis are now very interested in the outside world and everybody wants to study in the US if they can. They are fascinated by US culture in a way they never were before," the May 2009 cable says.

This flies in the face of 60 years of American foreign policy that dictates the only way to win the hearts and minds of indigenous populations of countries America seeks to dominate is to bomb them into oblivion, destroy their infrastructure, kill their families and torture those left alive.

What a bitter pill to swallow that it may only have taken a few seasons of Leave It to Beaver, Adam-12, Good Times and the Cosby Show rather than Agent Orange, napalm, white phosphorus, daisy cutters and whatever new weapons systems were tested out during the invasion of Panama in 1989.

It's said that among Saddam Hussein's video collection (found after the US invaded Iraq in 2003) was the Tom Hank's film Sleepless in Seattle.

Surely someone at the Rand Corporation could have figured out a method for exploiting Hussein's taste for mid-90s romantic comedy schlock. I mean, that is an enormous character flaw that could have been used.

Apparently there is a "hearts and minds" rethink occurring at the State Department.

If these leaked diplomatic cables can be trusted, then maybe America's attempt to colonize the earth is still feasible -- though it may take longer than expected (Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney may have to undergo yet another round of implantation of young Peruvian kidneys, livers, pancreases and spleens, in order to see their goals realized).

On top of exporting its television shows, America should look at exporting it's cuisine, as well -- fattening up jihadists on Big Macs and Pizza Hut.

Getting Islamofascists cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, as it were.

Then, when the jihadists are winded just by going to the fridge for another Red Bull and just can't tear themselves away from the TV during the Lost marathon, the CIA could creep into the country and take control of all its natural resources.

This, really, could turn into a genuine cash cow for America.

Once the jihadists have Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, IBS, seasonal depression, dry sinuses, erectile dysfunction, gout, aches and pains everywhere from their new sedentary lifestyle, American-styled health-care-for-profit could come in and reap the financial benefits of the colonization.

But old habits die hard. And there are still so many bombs to be dropped, rounds of ammunition to be fired, lives to be taken, landscapes to destroy.

There remains a "hearts and minds" gap in State Department thinking.

Let's just hope that gap turns out to be the one between David Letterman's teeth.