Yap No 37

‘You know Bo’ said Big O philosophically ‘I’m beginning to get a bit of a guilty conscience’

‘Good heavens’ I said ‘what on earth have you done? Don’t tell me you’ve re-tweeted that stuff from Anthony Weiner’

‘No it’s worse than that’ said Big O ‘Ever since I was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize I’ve done nothing but fight wars’

‘Well they haven’t asked for it back’ I said ‘and at least you didn’t start them except that skirmish in Libya’

‘I know’ said Big O ‘but I haven’t finished them either. What’s more I think I’m becoming addicted to them. I’m already getting Afghanistan withdrawal symptoms’

‘But your decisions to wind down commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan’ I reminded him ‘were based purely on strategic considerations’

‘Oh sure’ he said ‘we’re running out of money and I want to win the 2012 election’

‘The problem’ I declared ‘is that lately we’ve been starting wars we haven’t got a hope in hell of winning. The first rule of wars is only invade countries which you know you can crush in a couple of weeks ’

‘You should have been an adviser to George W Bush’ said Big O ‘but I guess you can never solve anything through wars’

‘Hitler wouldn’t agree with you’ I remarked

‘The trouble is I can’t justify the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on a cost benefit basis’ said Big O ‘We haven’t scored any more oil, we haven’t found any WMDs and we could have rubbed out bin Laden faster by invading Pakistan instead’

‘I know’ I said ‘the trouble with wars is that they’re so unpredictable. We invaded Iraq to knock out the WMDs which weren’t there and we invaded Afghanistan to bash Al Qaeda only to find they’d scarpered to Iraq. Now we have to deal with that pain-in-the-arse Qaddafi before the world discovers he hasn’t got any WMDs, he doesn’t belong to the Taliban or Al Qaeda and he’s the honorary chairman of the Mother Theresa Sweetness and Light Foundation’

‘Libya marks the start of my new war strategy’ said Big O ‘I start them but I get everyone else to fight them’

‘Brilliant’ I said ‘but there’s just one problem. France, Germany and the UK aren’t into fighting wars anymore. If they were they’d still be fighting each other. They’re only fighting Qaddafi on a casual part-time basis and they can’t afford enough bombs to do it full-time’

‘I’ll fight the next war in the White House operations room’ declared Big O ‘personally directing the drones and navy seals to hit their targets. I’m an absolute wiz at computer war games. Who do you think our next war will be fought against?’

‘Either Mitt Romney or the Mexican drug barons’ I said ‘or it could even be against Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin’

‘If it was against Palin’ said Big O ‘I wouldn’t know whether to build a bomb shelter or a bus shelter’