As the carnage continues in Iraq, one question keeps coming up: “How do we get out?” We can’t just cut and run, but the prospect of a 30-year occupation/police action is equally uninviting. The solution, and I’m surprised neither presidential candidate came up with it, is this: Admit Iraq as our 51st state.
Before you measure me for a padded cell, consider this: If the reason for our problems with the insurgents is that they are jealous of America, then the obvious solution is for them to become Americans. A person does not get jealous of himself. Sure, Iraq’s got a third-world economy with a low standard of living, but how’s that any different from Mississippi? And with a population of 26 million, they’d have a congressional delegation the size of California’s, with the electoral votes to match. With that much clout, it won’t be long before the representatives from Iraq are raking in the pork barrel projects, and, rather than trying to drive away the U.S. military, they’ll be competing to attract bases and the associated federal spending. If some troublemakers still don’t like it, they can be shouted down with cries of “America – love it or leave it,” and the insurgency will collapse like waterlogged halvah. Besides, why blow yourself to Kingdom Come when, as American citizens, all Iraqis would be entitled to travel the world wearing Bermuda shorts and cowboy hats, and to be condescending to the locals?
For the rest of us, statehood for Iraq would allow the U.S. to become a member of OPEC, and it might provide another home for the Expos (if D.C. doesn’t work out), or maybe another NASCAR track. But there is a possible unknown – when Iran discovers that it has The Great Satan right on its borders, will they ask to become our 52nd state?
Robert Hayman
Marysville
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