May 16, 2009

Squirrelly Foreign Policy

By Randy Fardal
from the American Thinker

"We'll call this one Barry," I said to my neighbor, as we smiled and continued to watch the trapped ground squirrel. By now, he was oscillating frantically from one end of the cage to the other. No, it wasn't redneck criticism of the way President Obama looks or sounds; it was a thoughtful reference to Mr. Obama's suicidal foreign policy.

I started trapping ground squirrels when our neighborhood became infested with them. Yes, animal rights activists, I know -- "Blah, blah, blah". (Sigh)

Before you rodent worshippers launch paramilitary missions to free any I've trapped, please realize that I'm not the sinister Boris Badenov, and ground squirrels aren't Rocky. Some carry plague fleas. Consequently, civilians are encouraged to trap ground squirrels in residential areas, and after one has been caught, it is unlawful to release it alive -- even in Berkeley.

A colony also earns its pest status by turning the landscape into an HO-scale mining area, as local residents are learning. Ground squirrels probably attract rattlesnakes too.

After successfully luring a few of these yard rats into my cage trap, I ran out of bait, so I reset the trap and left it next to the woodpile. My bait is apple cores, so I simply need to get more apples. Then I'll eat one and toss the core into the trap, beyond the trip plate. As a side benefit, recycling apple cores probably gets me at least some atonement for my countless sins against the cult religion of Leftism.

Today, while I was awaiting a new shipment of apples from the grocery store, one squirrel somehow managed to get caught in the un-baited trap, and that's the point of my story. As an amateur political observer, I instantly equated the hapless squirrel to Barack Obama, and joked about it with my neighbor. The trap represents foreign dictators and terrorist organizations. Just like Mr. Obama, the squirrel gave everything and got nothing in return. Not even a dried out apple core.

We've seen this before, with similar results. Former president Jimmy Carter walked into the same allegorical trap with virtually all of his foreign policies. Even after he left office, Carter foolishly helped the Clinton administration arm North Korea with nuclear weapons. Like Mr. Obama, he gave everything and got nothing.

Perhaps my trapped squirrel -- "Barry" -- naively believed I would honor his altruism and stop terrorizing his fellow squirrels. Walking into my trap, he thought, would demonstrate that they mean me no harm.

Think again, infidel. We will settle for nothing less than total extermination of your entire colony. Your weakness only encourages us to press on in our quest for total victory.

Sounds just like something an Islamic terrorist would say, doesn't it? After all, they think the rest of mankind carries some sort of theocratic plague, simply by being non-Muslim. Diplomacy will be about as effective for my trapped squirrel as it will be for Mr. Obama.

Some psychiatrists and political analysts say that Mr. Obama suffers from narcissism. Such behavior can be caused by an inferiority complex, and the Obama foreign policies certainly appear to be symptomatic of a patient with that neurosis too: Sensitivity to criticism, blaming others, endless apologies, bowing, unilateral concessions...

Could that be the reason my squirrel surrendered? Was he anxiously seeking praise and adoration from the skunks and possums? Was he ashamed of his colony and subconsciously wanted to help me destroy it?

Suppose thousands of other ground squirrels previously had risked or sacrificed their lives to capture and imprison some deadly venomous snakes. Would this low-self-esteem squirrel leader release them into his colony's burrows? Our dithering Mr. Obama apparently wants to do that with the Gitmo detainees.

As a candidate for top squirrel, my trapped critter might have preached last summer at the varmint equivalent of the Brandenburg Gate. Throngs of intoxicated skunks, possums, andsleeper cell vipers would have cheered wildly when the candidate promised to release the snakes into his own burrows. But later, as elected leader, my squirrel would get only condescending laughs when he asked those same skunks and possums to accommodate the killer snakes in their burrows too.

Here's another possible explanation for my ground squirrel's irrational behavior: Some irresistible but invisible bait attracted him. For instance, he might have been drawn into the trap by the residual scent of the female squirrel I caught yesterday. If that's the reason, I suppose we should have named him "Bill Clinton" instead.

Like my trapped squirrel -- and Bill Clinton -- perhaps Mr. Obama is lured by something that the rest of us don't see. That brings us back to the narcissism theory. Is Mr. Obama so self-obsessed that he would sell out his own country to solicit artificial praise from foreigners that secretly hate and want to destroy him? If so, he's pursuing admiration that's invisible to normal people because it doesn't really exist.

Well folks, I can see by the rising moon that it's time to take my trapped squirrel for a little swim at the local pond -- Chicago style, which includes the cage. I was unmoved by his impassioned teleprompter oratory, though I was quite pleased to accept his magnanimous apologies and diplomatic concessions. He even bowed, but later claimed he was just trying to shake my hand.

My eradication of these furry fleabags might seem cruel to some, but I'm only following my government's instructions, just as Hamas members follow instructions from their leaders. I obviously have no nuclear weapons or even a shoulder-fired missile launcher, but most Leftists will be more upset by my actions than those of the human exterminators in Iran, North Korea, Hamas, or the Taliban, even as Mr. Obama walks into their traps.

My backyard also has a problem with squirrels. Socialists who raid the bird food believing "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". The birds pay for their food with pretty songs and displays of color. The squirrels are ravenous, greedy, destructive little bastards. My solution for the squirrels is a pump-up air rifle. The number of pumps determines whether the squirrel receives a stinging warning or a career ender.

I have never been a hunter and never had shot at anything that wasn't shooting at me, so I had to overcome some scruples before declaring war on the squirrels. Seeing them as little socialists helps a lot. I will not go into whether I assign names to any of them. One of my "additional duties" in the military was security education and motivation, which included a module on "protection of the president". I remember from those lessons that if you say gun and president in the same sentence, the secret service will probably be visiting you real soon. (It's probably okay to wish for him to get an aggressive brain tumor, though.)

Anyway, back to the squirrels, unfortunately for them I'm extremely accurate. That's thanks to the military which prepared me well for 2 years in Southeast Asia trying to keep Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from being taken over by socialists. Now, thanks to being a veteran and having some strong moral and religious beliefs, I've been branded as a right-wing terrorist suspect by the socialists who have taken over our government. Is it my turn to wear black pajamas and set punji traps and throw satchel charges into government positions? - I'm getting too old to crawl around in the dark.