10-25-02, Danny McBride
Weapons of M*A*S*H Destruction
By Danny McBride
IPS Features
Radar O’Reilly shields his eyes from the sun with his hand to the bill of his cap. He hears the helicopters and then, as they appear over the mountains of the Paramount Ranch in Agoura, California, he shouts “Incoming” as the theme song Suicide Is Painless begins to play under the now familiar opening to one of the longest running TV shows ever. (You didn’t know the theme from M*A*S*H was called Suicide Is Painless? There was even a vocal hit version by the Johnny Mann Singers in the 70s.)
Radar and Hawkeye and the gang have been fighting the Korean War on television for years and years. And guess what? It’s still not officially over- -the show in reruns OR the Korean War- -actually a “police action”- -never really called a “war” by the powers that be. Each is destined to run a few years longer.
And now we find a new chapter is ready to be written. First North Korea returns a bunch of Japanese citizens kidnapped from beaches 25 years ago and coerced into training spies, and now they proudly step up and say : “Treaty, Shmeaty! We’ve got “The Big One” and we don’t care who knows. In fact, our close personal friends the Pakistanis have been helping us for years. We traded arms for hostages- -no wait- -that was Reagan- -we traded missiles for fissiles- -fissionable materials used to make weapons grade plutonium, while Pakistan got missiles it could use to throw their nuclear bombs at India”.
So when did the North Koreans begin to curry favor with the Pakistanis? Apparently five or six years ago, and they’ve been buddy-buddy ever since. The Chinese and the Russians were supposed to make the North Koreans stop trying to become a nuclear power, but hey! They failed. North Korea’s Motto: A starving populace. A million-man army. Yeah, we’ve got our priorities straight.
China’s President Jiang Zemin visits the Bush Ranch this week. I wonder if they’ll have Mongolian Barbeque. (Say, have you noticed that we are now calling China’s leader “President” instead of “Dictator” or “Chairman” or whatever? Same with Pakistan’s Musharraf. But not so with Kim Jong Il, the leader of North Korea, not yet, anyway. We call them “president” when we want to make them seem more “normal”, or “human”, or like us. Last week Barbara Walters flirted with “President” Fidel Castro for an hour on 20/20, whereas in the old days he would have been known as “that Cuban Dictator”.)
So okay. We now have one of the “Three-Amigos-Axis-Of-Evil” nations saying just like the Staples ad “Yeah, We got that”. And one of our so-called allies in the “War On Terror” has made it all possible. Thank you General Musharraf!! Don Pardo, tell him what he’s won: “An all expense paid trip to Guantanamo Bay, where you’ll bask in the sun (should that be Basque?) with other malcontents from around the world. You’ll dine on roast goat and get the prayer alarm sounded five times a day- -and what’s more!! You can take any of your so-called friends with you that you care to travel with. Your flight leaves shortly. Doesn’t that beat a full set of Kelvinator home appliances?”
But Noooooooo! None of it. He’s a Korea/career military man, Musharraf is, and he ain’t goin’ nowhere. Ooo- -Eee. Ride me high. Tomorrow’s the day McBride’s gonna run.
Alright. Let’s see. Weapons of mass destruction in Islamabad with an iron-handed dictator. Weapons of mass destruction in Pyongyang with an iron-handed dictator. And soon-to-be weapons of mass destruction in Tehran with an Iran-handed dictator. Makes for an uneasy world. I’ve got the solution!! Let’s invade Iraq!! Let’s bomb Baghdad!! That will fix everything!! (By the way, isn’t the sound of a person wearing a thong bikini receiving a wedgie also called “Pyongyang”?)
There are Al Qaeda blowing up French oil tankers, killing Americans in Kuwait and bombing nightclubs on the Indonesian paradise island of Bali, as in “Bali Hai, they call you...Come to me, come to me.”
Last week someone woke up Wild Bill Safire, and he had dreamed that the Beltway Shootist could be an awakened sleeping Qaeda cell as well. What better way to terrorize America’s Capital than to send government and military workers, politicians and the media elite into a frenzied panic. It’s cost effective. They plan to die anyway--so what if they’re caught? And it scares everyone there into the middle of next week. Isn’t that the objective of terrorism?
When Robert Altman made the original M*A*S*H movie in 1970 it was an anti-war movie using the Korean War as a metaphor for The Vietnam War. Now the same people who were against the war in Vietnam are lining up in favor of a war with Iraq. When did they lose their perspective? Why is a dumb war okay now? Probably because they’re all too old to fight. Wouldn’t it be fun if they drafted Congressional leaders first? And the President still rode at the head of his army like Genghis Khan? Now our leaders have all the intestinal fortitude of Chaka Khan. (The late adorable Madeline Kahn? Sammy Cahn?) They need to be more like James Caan (and perhaps at the tollbooth).
We sure have got ourselves a peck of confusion. Or is that a BUSHel?
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