SPIN THE WAR
PLAY PIN THE WAR ON THE DONKEY
It’s time to play Pin the War on the Donkey, a new parlor game in which all players vie to see who can make the most outrageous claims about American “success” in the war against terrorism as a solid reason for more war, while at the same time blaming Democrats for everything that went wrong. [Note: There is a similar game called Pin the War on the Mexicans that revolves around claims of victory in the war on drugs.] Pin the War on the Donkey begins with each player choosing a likeness of a media “giant” as a game piece and then the first up spins the war wheel – a big circle with a large machine gun replica in the middle that serves as a pointer.
As illustration - you choose the Wolf Blitzer game piece, spin the pointer and it lands on “DIED IN VAIN”. You have 15 seconds to say something really profound about the war on terrorism that includes “died in vain” in the sentence - “If Obama lets Iraq fall to the terrorists, our soldiers who fought so valiantly for a free and democratic Iraq will have DIED IN VAIN.” The other players score your sentence at 1 – 5, with five being the highest level of complete bullshit. The scores are averaged and you move your piece ahead on the March to War game board. The first person to cross the “Mission Accomplished” finish line wins. The winner has succeeded in convincing the other players that a march to war founded on complete bullshit is a really good idea for America.
As with all good games, there are pitfalls along the way that make it harder to reach the Mission Accomplished finish line. In this case, if you land on an “UH OH” spot on the March to War game board, you pick a card from a pile and have to fill in the blank correctly or move backwards a designated number of spots. Following are some sample “UH OH” cards:
Senator John McCain says that all Shiite Muslims are _________ and should be confronted and killed everywhere so they don’t destroy the homeland. [Correct Answer: terrorists]
Senator John McCain says that all Sunni Muslims are _________ and should be confronted and killed everywhere so they don’t destroy the homeland. [Correct Answer: terrorists]
President Obama is too timid to lead the war on terrorism because he is a ___________. [Correct Answer: Communist]
The ___________ is a wake-up call. [Correct Answer: any of the following – ISIS march on Baghdad; Benghazi raid; restoration of Egyptian dictatorship; Israeli dire warning about anything and everything; Syrian civil war]
___________, ___________, and __________ are safe havens for terrorists. [Correct Answer: any three of the following – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Germany, Sweden, Russia]
Only ____________ can truly enable the development of democratic institutions in countries with absolutely no cultural or historical idea of what democracy is and in which centuries-old tribal and religious conflicts abound. [Correct Answer: American military intervention] [Note – in the British version of the game, substitute “British intervention using American soldiers” for the correct answer.]
Pin the War on the Donkey contains a bonus feature that is particularly appealing to right-wing Republicans, a group on which irony is completely lost. After you cross the Mission Accomplished finish line, you get to draw a Donkey Bonus Card which will give you points toward a ticket to PetraeusFest 2014, a Celebration of Surge. There you will be an invited guest of one of dozens of white, male, Republican generals who will explain in detail how and why we lost yet another war. They will glibly blame Democrats, immigrants, Jews, Hollywood folk, and, most of all, the left-wing media that ensured the election and re-election of a communist, black, Muslim-named, faux-commander-in-chief without the stomach to send other people’s children to kick ass in every corner of the globe. Then, to close the festivities with a bang, up will pop a video from some ranch featuring W and Dick talking of the good old days when real men started real wars where “mission accomplished” was a victory lap instead of a stop on the way to another failed mission.
So it seems that here we go again – killing to make sure that the brave lads who died in the last effort to save some faraway land from itself DIDN’T DIE IN VAIN, answering yet another WAKE UP CALL, and fighting to ensure that there is NO SAFE HAVEN FOR TERRORISTS. We have heard all of this before. It works as a board game but not in real life. The bottom line is that killing is only fun when none of your family or friends are killed and when your team is winning. It sucks when your friends and family die, and you lose anyway. Welcome to the wacky, wonderful world of American overseas killing strategy. Our revered leaders seem unable to admit that once again a lot of brave lads actually DIED FOR NOTHING, that they ignored the real WAKE UP CALL, and that there will always be another SAFE HAVEN FOR TERRORISTS.