Thursday, September 20, 2012

American Invasion!?




Apparently, we are not satisfied with the usual mythology of folks fleeing north if their candidate loses.  Now we are focused on the joke of the week: does the US have plans for invading Canada?  Because Canada was left out of US meeting with Mexico, a reporter asked:
"This isn’t some secret thing to invade Canada or something like that?"
Image: Eggo shortage"No, no, no," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said during a Tuesday briefing to laughter from reporters.
This raises, of course, two questions: what would be gained from a US invasion of Canada and how would the US go about doing it?

Obvioulys, the target of such an invasion would not be for oil as the tar sands are pretty far north and the US can buy the stuff anyway.  Nope, it would be to protect the global strategic reserve of maple syrupRecent Eggos shortages showed how vulnerable America is to an interruption in its breakfast foods.  Indeed, American success at maximizing the average weight of its citizens would be threatened by a maple shortage.  So, I am pretty sure that deep within the bowels of the Pentagon, there is now a group of staff officers working on a complex deck of powerpoint slides of alternative invasion plans.

How? Um, there are more folks in the US army base at Fort Hood than in the entire Canadian army.  The challenge, like invading Iraq, is not so much defeating the conventional forces but preventing or defeating the insurgency that comes afterwards.  Canada is already preparing by destroying the list of who owns long guns.  This would make it harder for the Americans to find the likely insurgents.  However, the US could avoid an insurgency through a few key moves:
  1. Move the most successful hockey teams from the US to Canada so that a Canadian team might win the Stanley Cup.
  2. Encourage McDonalds to promote McPoutine throughout the US, making it appear that the invasion is going the other way (plus that goes along with the weight maximization strategy).
  3. Have regular USO type tours where lost Canadian celebrities (William Shatner, Michael J. Fox, Elisha Cuthbert, Pam Anderson) return north, but make sure that Justin Bieber is left out of this program.  Perhaps even get Tricia Helfer named Governor-General.
  4. Give Robin Sparkles a new TV program to feature her uplifting Canadian nationalist songs.
  5. Give Canada access to Hulu, American Netflix, and other online media that are ordinarily blocked by lame copyright rules.
  6. Allow Canadians to buy books at the same prices as Americans.
  7. The US will assume full responsibility for handling the so-called Quebec problem, relieving the rest of Canada of this unpleasantness.
On the bright side, a US-Mexican invasion of Canada might improve the availability of good Mexican food up here (although I had a mighty tasty taco last night at a taco stand in a remote part of Ottawa).
Any additional tactics to placate Canadians to avert a potential post-invasion insurgency?


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