Are you ready for a little good news?
With the president's approval rating sinking into the dirt like rain in the Texas panhandle, with ever-mounting evidence that he and his dream team of anti-terrorists lied every step of the way into Iraq and then grossly mismanaged the war once they got there, and with even Bill Buckley proclaiming the war a failure, it's time for some really good news.
And here it is. In spite of all you hear to the contrary, we've done what we set out to do in Iraq. We've planted democracy there, and we don't need any more elections to prove it. We've got our proof: ordinary Iraqis are buying guns.
They now believe, you see, in the right of the people to bear arms. They have embraced a fundamental principle of American democracy--the most sacred of all the rights for which our foremothers suffered and sacrificed and out forefathers fought and died.
Of course not every Iraqi owns a gun yet, and since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samara five weeks ago, gun prices are steadily climbing. According to the New York Times, a Russian-made Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle now costs $290 in Baghdad, more than twice what it cost a month ago. An Iraqi-made Tariq pistol now costs $806, nearly double the old price. It costs more now for even the bullets that fly over Baghdad: 33 cents apiece now, up from 24 cents.
But God bless those newly liberated Iraqis: they're spending whatever it takes to pack the kind of heat that warms the hearts of all red-blooded Americans. Akram Abdulzahra no longer trembles at his internet café job; he keeps a gun within easy reach. A Baghdad shopkeeper named Haidar Hussein (no, I don't know if he's related) has just bought himself a fully automatic assault rifle and is teaching his wife how to shoot it--which just goes to show again how democracy strengthens families and family values. Abdel al-Nouri keeps a rifle near the gate of his home; Nahrawan al-Janabi takes her Glock pistol back and forth to work; Elham Bayroti, a government employee, was given a pistol to use on the job but now carries it with her everywhere she goes.
It's springtime in Baghdad! As never before, guns and rifles are sprouting everywhere from soil we long thought hopelessly parched. Thanks to our heroic efforts, a long oppressed people are now free to blast each other to bits. Let's celebrate, America! We've done it at last! We've planted American values in the Middle East.
Now of course this wonderful springtime of fire and shot will make gun-control fanatics squawk. They will moan about innocent Iraqis caught in the crossfire; they will whine about Iraqi children fatally wounded by accident or impulse; they will drearily remind us that the death toll of Iraqi citizens already averages sixty a day; they will mourn this fresh tinder thrown on the growing blaze of civil war; they will weep at the prospect of still more violence, more killing, more bloodshed, more pain.
Heed them not!. Listen instead to those who truly understand what made American great and what keeps America great: guns. Our forefathers did not hesitate to give their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to make this country what it is. Why should Iraqis hesitate to sacrifice themselves and their children for the most precious of all rights--the right to bear arms?
The president has long said that when the Iraqis have learned to stand up for themselves, we will stand down. The long-awaited day has come. With rifles and pistols and assault weapons at the ready, Iraqis are standing up for themselves. It's time for us to recall our troops--and send in the National Rifle Association. That's all Iraq needs right now.