Here’s an idea: Let’s stop keeping money in banks in order to remove the incentive for people to rob banks. When asked decades ago why he robbed banks Willie Sutton said, “because that’s where the money is.” So why not just stop keeping money in the banks? Because it’s a stupid idea. We don’t need banks if we can’t put our money there for safe keeping. We need to deter bank robbers by capturing them and dealing with them severely, not by giving in to them.

But that’s exactly what President Obama wants to do in closing Gitmo, give in to elements that want to harm us. He says that it has become a symbol that helps Al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. He provides no evidence to support that claim but so what if it is true? Should we cease to defend our country when doing so encourages our attackers? Should we not punish our attackers when doing so infuriates their supporters? No, the only effective way to deal with them is to punish them hard and often.

Placating the enemy is never an effective strategy; it is only seen as a sign of weakness. Irritating them as often as possible is better; when angry they will make mistakes.

It’s interesting that Obama apparently believes that the radical elements around the world are stupid enough to not notice that he is just moving the detainees from Gitmo to other prisons in the US. That is, he plans to close Gitmo, not release the detainees. Or, he thinks that the radical elements are upset about the symbolism of Gitmo itself rather than the fact that their comrades are incarcerated.

Anyway, I’ve long questioned the idea that there is an endless supply of hothead fanatics ready and willing to give their lives for the cause of destroying the US. If Gitmo has been such an effective recruiting tool where are they and what have they done? To the US homeland, that is. I think it’s more likely that immediately after 9/11 they celebrated a lot and then started to ask themselves what they really accomplished. The US mourned the loss of the victims but hardly skipped a beat on the whole. And they recognized that things were now a lot tougher on them. They all had to leave Afghanistan and go find new digs (literally) in Pakistan.

Perhaps too they came to believe that the 9/11 attack just turned out to be a huge recruiting tool for the Americans.

President Obama is embarking on another of his fantasies. He thinks he can rid the world of nuclear weapons. I would like to think that he is launching some very clever scheme to convince everyone else to destroy all their nuclear weapons while we secretly keep our own. But I don’t give him that much credit. I think he actually believes that giving up our nuclear advantage is the right thing to do.

Utopia would be a wonderful thing to achieve, but there is no chance that it will ever be achieved. No matter how nice we try to be there will always be someone looking for a weakness, a crack in the armor, an opening.  I would estimate that 99 percent or more of the world population would like nothing better than to live in peace, but it’s that other one percent that we have to worry about.  Among them are the power hungry and the crusaders. We can not afford to let our guard down for a second.

But that seems to be exactly what Obama wants to do. He wants to start destroying our nuclear capability as soon as the other nations possessing or developing a nuclear capability agree to do the same. I would expect Iran and North Korea to be the first two in line to sign the agreement. And then go back home and continue their development programs while laughing their asses off.

It’s an impossible goal, and Obama should know that. Sure, we can destroy all our nuclear weapons, but there is no way to ensure that everyone else destroys theirs. And there is no way to ensure that new weapons aren’t built to replace those destroyed.

Can you imagine a crime-mob boss seriously embarking on a mission to get the other mobs in his territory to destroy all their weapons and promise not to acquire more? Can you imagine the mobs actually abiding by the plan even after agreeing to it? Of course not. That’s why they’re called criminals. They don’t follow rules unless the rules work to their advantage. It’s a hard, cold fact that many nations are little different from crime-mobs.

Too many nations and factions know too much about the production of nuclear weapons for any kind of control to be 100 percent effective. Unfortunately it only takes one breach of the controls for havoc to be wreaked.

I’m in the mood today to solve some of the world’s political problems. Having Israel sitting smack-dab in the middle of Arab country has been a constant problem ever since some genius came up with the idea about 60 years ago. And the accelerating Islamization of Western nations has more recently been seen as building toward a dramatic confrontation between two very different cultures. My solutions to these problems are simple in theory but difficult to implement — which seems to be a prerequisite for world-changing ideas these days (democratize the Middle East, end world hunger, stop the use of illegal drugs, invent a thermostat for the earth). I expect some resistance to my plans, but here goes:

Israel: Move all the Israelis to Wyoming. Let the Arabs fight over what’s left behind for the next hundred years or so. We can stay out of it because we won’t have a dog in the fight (and neither will Michael Vick). We can forget about Iran for several more years because they will be busy developing the capability to deliver their nukes to Wyoming. By then our missile defense system should be able to take them out anyway.

But what about the people now in Wyoming you ask? No problem; there aren’t that many there. They can choose to stay and become Israelis or move to neighboring states and remain Americans. Those cowboys aren’t likely to organize and start lobbing rockets and mortars across the border. Some (most?, all?) of them will resist but they will have to just suck it up and take one for the Gipper.

The Israelis can rename Cheyenne to Jerusalem and Casper to Bethlehem. I think they should leave Chugwater, Ten Sleep, Tie Siding, Bar Nunn, Crowheart, Gas Hills, Lost Cabin, Point of Rocks, Bill and Cora alone. But these names might not sound as colorful in Hebrew.

With Israel located in the heart of the USA it should be a lot easier and less expensive to protect them. And it would take away one of the biggest gripes that the Middle Easterners have with us.

With the implementation of my next plan there will be no Muslims in the USA to bother the Israelis.

Islamization: Turn Europe over to the Muslims. Move all the non-Muslims in Europe to the USA, Canada and Israel* — liberals to Canada, conservatives to the USA, Jews to Israel. Move all the Muslims in the USA and Canada to Europe. Require all Muslims that want to leave their hopeless countries to emigrate to Europe.

Some of the European countries are projected to go majority Muslim within the next few decades anyway. When that happens non-Muslims aren’t going to want to stay there and the Muslims will be glad to see them go. This will give the Muslims an opportunity to establish the Caliphate that they seem to want. They can just pretend that Europe and Asia constitute the world.

Besides heading off a tragic clash of cultures, this can become a gigantic socio-economic experiment. I’ve always wondered, if an Islamic society is so great, why do so many Muslims want to go live amongst the infidels. I’ve come to suspect that it is because an Islamic society is simply not conducive to strong economic development. But then it might be just part of a grand plan to Islamize the world. Anyway, turning Europe over to the Muslims will give us a chance to see what they will do with it. Will they send its economy into the crapper or will they prosper? Some, though, might argue that this won’t be a fair experiment because Europe’s economy is already headed for the crapper.

If you have a better plan, tell me about it.
_______________

*Remember, Israel is now where Wyoming used to be.

According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and MSNBC, Jimmy Carter believes that the George W. Bush Administration is the worst in history. He’s probably very happy about that because before Bush his Administration was generally thought to be the worst. Many people might disagree that Bush has replaced him as the worst president. Currently I’m on the fence, but if Bush succeeds in granting amnesty to all the illegal immigrants and fails to secure our borders, I will have to agree with Carter for the first time.

They report that Carter also said:

“We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered,” Carter said.

Did Carter sleep through the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Operation Desert Storm, and the operations in the Balkan States? None of these represented a direct threat to the USA and all but Operation Desert Storm were initiated by Democrat Presidents.

The White House says that Carter has become irrelevant. I think he is more than irrelevant; I think he is getting a little soft in the head.

Carter later admitted that his comments were careless.  Now that becomes the first time I have agreed with Carter.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told a security forum attracting top officials that “we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations” and that “one state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.”

Putin shouldn’t fret so much. He should just relax and wait for the situation in Iraq to deal a crushing blow to our influence in the international arena. That is, if he believes the Democrats. He might also consider the assessment of the terrorists that we are weak willed and cowardly.

But no, Putin is not the one hyperventilating about the magnitude and application of our military strength. It’s the Democrats and terrorists. The Democrats will say anything in their zeal to elect more anti-Americans to office. The terrorists are just delusional.

Pat Buchanan makes good sense in a column on Townhall.com.  He argues that Americans’ disposition to sacrifice for altruistic ends is waning.  The people, if not the government, are ready to pull back and let the rest of the world manage on its own.  He says:  “Interventionism has failed us. Americans are groping toward a new foreign policy that puts America first and a trade policy that puts Americans first.” 

I tend to agree with him.  I’m fed up with our endless sacrifices and their constant carping.  If they hate us so much let’s just come home and let them stew in their own juices.  In the process we should leave the United Nations and kick them out of the country.  Think of the money we could save.

Kofi Annan, the corrupt head of the ineffectual United Nations has shared his thoughts on Iraq with the BBC. CBSNews.com reports on that interview:

The current situation in Iraq is “much worse” than civil war, the outgoing United Nations secretary-general said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. broadcast Monday.

Now how did you determine that Kofi? Do you have a ‘war badness meter’? Anyhow, if you think things are so bad in Iraq why don’t you do something about it? Could it be that you know you can’t? That you know your organization is as useless as teats on a boar ‘coon? You can spend billions of dollars each year but all you can do is make dopey statements to anyone that will give you a venue.

During the interview with the BBC world service, Annan agreed when it was suggested that some Iraqis believe life is worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“I think they are right in the sense of the average Iraqi’s life,” Annan said. “If I were an average Iraqi obviously I would make the same comparison, that they had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets, they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back home without a mother or father worrying, ‘Am I going to see my child again?’

Kofi, how can a dictator be brutal without hurting someone? Even you should be able to figure out that most Iraqis did not feel safe under Saddam. Perhaps most of the Sunnis did. But they represent a minority of Iraqis, and even young Sunni women had to be careful not to attract the attention of Saddam’s sons. Ask the Shiites and Kurds how safe they felt under Saddam. They might tell you about the hundreds of thousands of their friends and relatives that he killed. The only way to feel safe under a brutal dictatorship is to be very careful not to offend the dictator or his minions.

On your way out Kofi, don’t let the door knob hit you where the good lord split you.