Dispatches From the War Fronts III: We Stole It Fair and Square!

Our boys are ready to take our canal back!

 

 Dispatches from the War Fronts

Editors' Note: It turns out that the Dear Leader, laser-focused as ever on lowering the price of bacon and eggs to reward his loyal white working-class supporters, is starting wars faster than we can report on them. Just last week we brought you news about the second war the Tangerine-Faced Fascist intends to start once he is succeeded in his putsch. Not content with grabbing more of Mexico (without offering, as he did to Canada, to make it the 51st state for some obscure reason), he has focused his black Sharpie even further South, toward the Panama Canal, which according to him is ripe for the plucking. This week, we bring you the exciting third installment of our Dispatches. Spoiler alert: And there’s more to come.

By War Correspondent Douglas MacArthur with
Central American Correspondent William Walker in Panama City
 

“We stole it fair and square.” 

With this cogent argument, former California Republican Senator S.I. Hayakawa, a relic of the era when California was Republican and students were expelled just for protesting a war (can you believe it?), explained why he opposed President Jimmy Carter’s decision to return the Panama Canal to its country, Panama, back in 1979.

The controversy had been forgotten up until last week, but one of the largest and nastiest Republican disinformation campaigns in the long-ago pre-Reagan era (so before American was great) was the tumult incited by Republicans over the decision to give up US sovereignty over the Panama Canal Zone, a narrow strip of land bordering the Panama Canal and bisecting the country of Panama, which we conveniently created to then seize the strip for our glorious canal at the turn of the 20th Century.

This is what the Panama Canal Zone looked like. 

It's a little hard to see, but the Zone was a strip 10 miles wide stretching from ocean to ocean and  bounded by Panama on both sides.   

And if you were in Panama, it was like pre-1961 Berlin: there was a sign and a few MP’s but you could in many places cross freely between Panama and the Zone at the edge of the Panama City metropolis.  But like East Berlin outsiders (like Panamanians) were subject to random arrest and interrogation.  Eventually, the Panamanians tired of alien rule in the middle of their country and demanded the Canal back.  In 1977, President Jimmy Carter agreed.

The blowback was terrific.  Republicans used the deal as a cudgel to smear Democrats as unpatriotic surrender monkeys not to mention as a launching pad for their own ambitions:

Whatever happened to that guy?  (PS Once in office, he did nothing to undo the handover of the Canal Zone or the Treaties.)

Underlying the decision to hand back the Canal and terminate the Canal Zone was an indisputable military fact:  even though it was protected by 10,000 American troops and lots of impressive planes and stuff, there was no way to protect the Canal should the Panamanians decide to use force to take it back or in the meantime render it useless:

The Panama Canal is the United States' most important defense asset in Latin America but it is also highly vulnerable to a wide variety of threats, ranging from sabotage to nuclear attack.

Source: Central Intelligence Agency.

The Panamanians never had the Bomb, but they sure had the ability to knock a 50-mile canal out of commission with a single mortar.  So there was in fact no alternative but to negotiate the best deal we could with Panama and give them their country back.

That's what Jimmy Carter did and he got a pretty good deal to boot. Then he lost to the hack who built support by opposing the peaceful handover.

In the intervening half-century, the Panama Canal has pretty much worked as Carter said it would: just fine.

But the America-first brainworm that devoured the Republican Party has now placed all this peace and prosperity at risk:

President-elect Donald J. Trump this week escalated his threats to retake control of the Panama Canal, falsely accusing Panama of allowing Chinese soldiers to control the vital shipping route and of overcharging American ships.

Mr. Trump has claimed Panama charges U.S. vessels “exorbitant prices” and warned that if they are not reduced after he takes office next month, he will demand that the United States be granted control of the canal “in full, quickly and without question.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump went on another tear. Announcing his choice for ambassador to the central American nation, Kevin Marino Cabrera, he accused the Panamanian government of “ripping us off on the Panama Canal, far beyond their wildest dreams.” ...

Coming soon to an ocean near you?

While it is unclear what prompted Mr. Trump’s recent obsession with the Panama Canal, some Republicans have long objected to turning it over to Panamanian control. When Ronald Reagan ran for president, he said the people of the United States were the canal’s “rightful owners” and brought audiences to their feet with the line: “We bought it; we paid for it; we built it.”

 “There’s a certain wing of the Republican Party that’s always been skeptical of the handover,” said Ryan C. Berg, the director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

“Complaints tend to crop up around the anniversary, and now that seems to be coming to a head because of the China issue and the desire to compete with China in the region,” he said.

The American military could certainly invade Panama with ease and seize the canal.  The difficulty is what happens the next day, as Republicans learned in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What would happen if the Tangerine-Faced Fascist actually tried to lean on Panama?  Would they just give up the sovereignty that they fought so hard to get?  Or is it more likely that they will look around for some outside help?  How hard would it be for Panama to grant base rights and other concessions to say China?

Nothing would put the lie more quickly to Republican dreams of conquest than Chinese naval bases in Panama City.  Or worse yet, in Balboa on the Caribbean side, able to threaten US interests from Honduras to say Merde-a-Lardo?

This doesn't mean that Il Douche will not try to foment a war in Panama, to go along with his planned invasions of Canada and Mexico.  And don't expect a newly-supine American media to sound the alarm.

It just could be that the long-cherished wet dream of Ronny Rayguns and his far right plug-uglies may become a reality.  It's just a reminder of the iron law of Republican history: it repeats itself, the first time as farce and the second time as catastrophe.   

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UPDATE, Dec. 30, 2024 – James Fallows, who was present at the creation during the Carter Administration, confirms that Jimmy Carter realized he had no choice but to hand back the Canal Zone on whatever terms he could extract from Panama:

In fact, one of the most important reasons the US began negotiations to “give away” the Canal nearly 60 years ago was mounting fear from the US military that it would become impossible to defend such a large, sprawling asset if local sentiment kept turning more strongly anti-American.

It’s common knowledge that the transfer deal was signed under Jimmy Carter. But the serious talks began under Richard Nixon, out of realpolitik concerns about guarding the Canal in the long run. These strategic issues weren’t a big part of the in-public debate in the 1970s about transferring control to Panama. But they were a huge, perhaps decisive background factor.

....“Taking back” the Canal would be an open-ended invitation to disaster, as with the Iraq war. Even talking about it shows that you’re out of touch with reality.

Dispatches From The War Fronts, Part II: To the Meth Labs of Montezuma!

Our advance forces are already scouting the invasion beaches

 Dispatches from the War Fronts

Editors' Note: Recently we brought you news about one of the two wars the Tangerine-Faced Fascist intends to start once he is installed as President-for-Life. This week, we give you a thrilling preview of the second front, where he expects to take on our wily adversary just south of the Rio Grande. 

By War Correspondent Douglas MacArthur with Fred C. Dobbs in Sonora
 
While one mighty expeditionary force invades Toronto, thus securing a happy and co-prosperous future for the troubled realm of Canada as America’s 51st state, to be named Trumpland, another will be aimed southward at Mexico, according to strategists close to the omelet bar at America’s new capital, Mar-a-Lago.

These sources, after careful consultation with incoming Secretary of Defense Pete “The Ladies’ Man” Hegseth and his chief of staff, Johnny Walker, say that detailed plans for the subjugation of Mexico are well advanced. 

Already there is talk of bombing in and around anyplace in Mexico where Party Animal Pete suspects that drugs are either being manufactured, distributed, or stored.  Which is anyplace.  According to Vox:
 
One of the hottest new ideas in Republican politics is, apparently, launching a war in Mexico.

Three recent articles — in Rolling Stone, Politico, and Semafor — traced the rise of the proposal from obscurity to the party’s highest levels, finding ample evidence of the idea’s popularity in the GOP ranks. 

Former President Donald Trump, for example, has been asking for a “battle plan” to “attack Mexico,” specifically targeting drug cartel strongholds in the country. Every single declared Republican presidential candidate has endorsed treating cartels like terrorist organizations. And in both the House and the Senate, leading Republicans have proposed authorizing the use of military force in Mexico to fight cartels.

The ostensible excuse for starting such a war is the plague of fentanyl being smuggled across the border, almost always by U.S. citizens:   

 

Of course, the real reason that America is suffering from an invasion of fentanyl is because lots of Americans, including we suspect more than a few who voted for the Tangerine-Faced Racist (or would have if they weren’t so gorked out on drugs) enjoy taking fentanyl.  No one is going around kidnapping unsuspecting upright citizens and forcibly injecting them with the crap.  America has a drug problem, sure enough: we love us our drugs!

Whether that can be cured by bombing Mexico remains an open question.

We suspect that the real reason for going to war with Mexico isn’t fentanyl.  Or even the supposed invasion of desperate refugees seeking asylum in a country almost equally desperate for workers, as billionaire Republicans will admit:

A company owned by two of Donald Trump’s top mega-donors has routinely brought dozens of its workers from Mexico to staff its warehouses in Wisconsin and other locations even though they do not appear to have permission to work in the US, according to a Guardian investigation.

Uline – a giant Wisconsin-based office and shipping supply company controlled by billionaires Liz and Dick Uihlein – shuttles in its own workers from Mexico....

You don't say.

We suspect the real reason is that the Tangerine-Faced Fascist and his gang of drunken hooligans think that beating up on little brown people is fun, especially the women and children.  It also make you look strong and powerful, as any Storm Trooper will tell you.

Lest you think this is a recent example of Republican insanity, in fact it is a reprise of the real reason why President Dick Cheney and his front men and accomplices, many doing business today as our Wonderful Republican Allies, thought it would be just a swell idea to start a war with Iraq, despite the fact that it had zero involvement in the September 11 attacks on America.  

Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world.

That was foreign policy genius and Iraq warmonger Tom Friedman explaining that the reason to start a war with a country was to show how strong the United States was. Also there were terrorists in the neighborhood, just a few hundred miles away in other countries. 

By the way, it turned out great. Except for the 400,000 dead, the $2 trillion burnt and the fact that Iraq is a vassal state of that supposed sponsor of worldwide terrorism, Iran.

But Mexico is no Iraq and if the Tangerine-Faced Fascist rains death and destruction from the air on anyplace in Mexico that Tulsi Gabbard tells him is in the neighborhood of a drug dealer, what could those Hispanic weaklings do about it?

So far, according to Reuters, Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum does not appear cowed by the Tangerine-Faced Felon's threats to protect Mexico whether it likes it or not, even though she is of the gender that the TFF like to rape (digitally – please don't sue!) in department stores:

The drunken drug-addled psychopaths scarfing down sh***y gristly steaks at Merde-y-Lardo may not realize that the United States has already invaded Mexico numerous times.  The first one yielded Knott's Berry Farm and Las Vegas, so that constitutes a win.

The third time didn't go quite as well,  Fortunately, thanks to our extensive archives we can bring you our reporting from March 1916:

PANCHO VILLA ON THE RUN, PERSHING SAYS

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The Mexican Bandit Won't Be Able to Hide from the Mighty U.S. Army 

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Our Boys Enjoying the Tequila and the Senoritas! 

 

By Our Special Correspondent
Via Telegraph from Chihauhua

Our splendid Army has already achieved a magnificent success in the expedition to bring that notorious Mexican brigand and terrorist, Pancho Villa, to justice at the end of an all-American noose.

This correspondent accompanied our brave lads as they crossed into Mexico without opposition and established a forward operating base at the strategic hub that is Colonia Dublan.

The commanding General John Pershing, showing the dash and initiative that marks the leonine Anglo-Saxon race (as compared to the sluggish untrustworthy Hispanic), wasted no time in pursuing Villa, ordering a powerful column of American cavalry 60 miles south to bag the bandit.

Our brave boys on the attack!

The brilliant American plan contemplated a multiple-column operation to encircle and trap Villa and his gang of desperadoes.  General Pershing, showing the tactical genius that so marks American military leadership, boldly decided to move one column by train to its designated location.

Despite the brilliance of the scheme, it was frustrated as usual by the laziness and inanition of the local population, which refused to supply the railroad with the fuel needed to advance.  As a result, manly American troops had to stop every few miles to chop the needed firewood. 

Eventually, the rickety Mexican locomotive, lacking the power of its counterparts north of the border, broke down completely, forcing our troops to debark and proceed on horseback.

Once in position in Barbicora, the American troops learned that the perfidious Villa, instead of standing and fighting like a man, had slipped away into the countryside.  Whereupon our boys commenced a thirty-two day search of the vicinity, frustrated by the lack of cooperation from the surly, untrustworthy locals.

Our troops, having surrounded Villa on one side, learned that he had retreated south to Guerrero.  Although the dashing 7th Cavalry reached the rebel stronghold without serious losses, their movements were spotted by the Villa bandits in the town, who safely fled into the nearby mountains.  

After wisely staging a retreat to reequip and rearm, the American expedition expects to resume the pursuit and remains confident of its eventual success.   

Eventually, the Americans gave up the chase and went home, leaving Mexico to its own devices.  The good news was that this same Army having sniffed powder and shot in Mexico was well prepared to take on the German Army in the killing fields of France, which also turned out great.

If you're interested in the brilliant Mexican Invasion of 1916, you can read the official U.S. Army history here.  

This time the crack-addled [Surely, crack? – Ed.] military masterminds will likely employ a different strategy: long-range bombing of Mexican targets.  How it will end and how many innocents will die are of course unknown.  But, in the great tradition of Republican military geniuses like John “Bomb Iran” Bolton, what happens after the bombs fall is not their problem. 

Billionaire Republican plutocrats seize power and it's the fault of - Democratic elites!

By Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling

Before the year and American democracy ends, we thought we'd take a look back at the post-election explanations for why a candidate who ran on a platform of decency, integrity, tolerance, hope, and economic opportunity lost to a demented corrupt Russian-owned rapist.

It's taken a while for us to calm down enough to go back to the election aftermath.  Let's see how far we can get before our blood pressure threatens to blow off our heads.

The prevailing narrative, at least on the op-ed pages of our supposedly great newspapers, was that Democrats were a party ruled by a shadowy elite who were fatally out-of-touch with the hopes, dreams, fears, and goals of average Americans.  Average white Americans, that is.

Having recently downed a hearty breakfast, we can cite only a couple of examples before getting queasy.  Here's that well-known anti-elitist and champion of Italian deli meats, Professor David Brooks:

We were going to summarize his argument, but we couldn't find one. It seemed to be that Trump voters held a grudge against supporters of Democratic policies which they equated with “elitism.”  The meat in his logical sandwich was the oft-expressed resentment against Democrats and those perceived to benefit from Democratic policies.  Like, you know, Black people.

That might suggest an alternative explanation for white support of a white racist.  Not to Il Professore.

You might be shocked to know that Brooks had the explanation – those nasty Democratic elites – before he had the outcome he was trying to explain.  Back in 2023 he explained that those nasty elites were responsible for offenses such as enforcing the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, opposing the Vietnam War, and “building systems that benefit only themselves,” like Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.

It sounds cracked but you can read it here.

His sister in bloviation, journalism's Norma Desmond, inveighed with all the fury of two-terlet Irish (and that's a lot of fury) against those loathsome elites who always looked down on middle-class Irish-American cop daughters who had to go to Catholic University instead of Harvard:

Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism — Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and second-term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like “Latinx,” and “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). ...

“When the woke police come at you,” Rahm Emanuel told me, “you don’t even get your Miranda rights read to you.”

There were a lot of Democrats “barking,” people who “don’t represent anybody,” he said, and “the leadership of the party was intimidated.” 

So the Tangerine-Faced Fascist won because 49.87% of those voting were sick of being corrected over their use of language.  

There are two things going one here.

First, as someone else observed (and we tried to find them but we couldn't), the ones who are most butthurt about being called out for their insensitive use of pronouns or epithets are the very same bloviators who grace our op-ed pages.  They're pissed off, and if they're angry, then brother you better believe that everyone else should be too.

By the way, what happened to Rahm Emanuel when the woke police came after him?  Unlike Laquan MacDonald, shot dead by a white Chicago policemen he did not threaten with deadly force, nothing.  Also unlike Laquan MacDonald, the outrageous injury to Rahm Emanuel was not covered up by – wait for, Rahm Emanuel, one of Maureen's many non-elite buddies. 

The second thing is that Maureen had her finger on something.  Something vile.  It's true that many TFF voters were angry because they felt that they weren't being allowed to say certain things.  Like calling Black people n*****s.  Of course, they clean that up a little for public consumption in a New York Times focus group:

We're not too sympathetic to their anger, to put it mildly, but there's no doubt many white and Latinx voters cherish their right to impose racial slurs on the rest of us.  How Democrats should appeal to these very fine people remains a mystery.

And before we leave Kevin's sister: how tf is Michael Dukakis, who rode the subway to his job as Governor in a $99 suit and makes broth from old turkey carcasses, an elitist?  Maureen must be listening to the voices in her head again.

Prof. Brooks knows whom to blame.

No one can accuse America's great white bloviators of originality.  Stigmatizing Democrats who seek social justice and a world in which not 100% of the rewards are siphoned off by a tiny, um, elite of crackpot plutocrats has been a mainstream Republican position since at least 1968, when it was weaponized by the former champion of divisiveness and disloyalty, Dick Nixon.

Anyone remember Spiro T. Agnew, Nixon's Vice President?  When he was not stuffing his pockets with crisp honeybees from Maryland contractors, he was used to make the case that the real elites were Democrats:

[Nixon] dispatched Agnew to map out a cultural description of another enemy, the op-ed unfriendlies and the network mandarins of what was beginning to be called the media. The views of “this little group of men” who “live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C., or New York City,” Agnew noted darkly, “do not represent the views of America.” He inscribed himself in history, and in famous-quotation anthologies, forever, when he said, “In the United States today, we have more than our share of nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H club—the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”

The exuberant playfulness of Agnew’s language (as scripted by William Safire) seemed to signal that the bluster need not be taken too seriously.

You'll be shocked, shocked to learn that the flack who led the attack on anyone daring to criticize Nixon and his expansion of the Vietnam War went on to a glorious career as, wait for it, an op-ed columnist for The New York Times! 

What began as an attack on a free press was expanded to cover any and all opposition to the Republican project of plutocratic rule under the flag of white supremacy.

It was a bit of rhetorical ju-jitsu because then as now it was successfully used by Republicans to hide their ruthless campaign of enriching the rich through tax cuts and deregulation while further impoverishing the working class.

The result was 40 years of increasing income inequality until hapless old Joe Biden managed to turn it around just a bit:

 In fact, as any fool (other than those employed as a columnist) can plainly see, the return of the Tangerine-Faced Fascist was fueled by elites.  Billionaires like Leon Musk, Dick Uhlein and lovable Miriam Adelson together coughed up more than $400,000,000 to con the plebes into voting for a man and a party ruthlessly devoted to f***ing them over.

And it worked.  Now that the TFF is about to seize power for good this time, other billionaires, including the steroid-enhanced nerds Bezos and Zuckerberg, have kissed the orange taint and pronounced it delicious.  

The bottom line: America's plutocratic elite, in wallet and deed, have lined up to support the Tangerine-Faced Insurrectionist.

Our mainstream media seems unable to cover the objective truth: the average wage-earners are indeed being screwed by elites.  Just not the ones with the inclusive pronouns.

Dispatches from the War Fronts: 54-40 or Fight!

 Dispatches from the War Fronts

Editors' Note: For many years one of the Spy's most well-loved or at least tolerated features was its war correspondence.  For most of this century, America has been either engaged in or preparing for pointless bloody war.  Sometimes both.  And the Spy was there:

 

Unfortunately, that wet blanket Joe Biden ended all the fun by getting out of Afghanistan and failing to replace it with something equally otiose like attacking Iran.

But thanks to the wisdom of 49.87% of the voting American electorate, we're back in business.  This time, the warmongers are pointing us away from distant desert sands and much closer to home.  Today, we'll look at one of the fronts of our next glorious defense of freedom!

By War Correspondent Douglas MacArthur with Canadian Correspondent
Ramona Flowers reporting from Canada's capitol, Toronto. [That's not Canada's capitol, you nitwit – Ed.]

Never one to let legal niceties like not being in office yet to hold him back, President to be for Life Donald J. Trump has already moved boldly to make America great again by realizing its long-held dream of conquering, wait for it, Canada:

This thrilling image of our 47th and last President standing at the Canada-Switzerland border looking out at the Matterhorn has naturally led to speculation that, ever laser-focused on average working class Americans, Trump wants to give them plenty of lebensraum, albeit on the cold side.

The speculation was also fueled by reporting of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's groveling journey to America's capitol, Mar-a-Lago, to beseech the Orange Rapist for relief from Trump's threatened 25% tariffs on all Canadian exports to the US, including oil and lumber.  

Was Trudeau really worried about tariffs or was he just seizing on any excuse to escape the bitter December in Canada's capitol, Canada City?  [That's not Canada's capitol, either – R.F.]

We may never know. What we do know is that, in response to all this begging, various media sources reported:

Donald Trump reportedly suggested to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that if he didn’t like the tariff the president-elect threatened to impose, perhaps Canada could become the 51st state and Trudeau could serve as its governor. Trudeau laughed nervously at the apparent joke.... 

Has Donald Trump ever elocuted a joke in his life?  Of course not.  He makes threats, he dishes out insults, he boasts, he lies, and he leers.  But a joke?  Not so, Pete Hegseth breath.

We think he means it.

The question is why. I mean, as countries go it's perfectly nice.

It's right there.  It has oil and white people, two things the Tangerine-Faced Racist likes.  And as every high school senior in Boston knows, the drinking age is 18.  Road trip!

And on the dollar-store Mercator map the TFR stares it at Mar-a-Lago, it looks huuuuuge!  He may also be able to discern that Canada has a long coastline.  Lots of them.  He probably thinks that there will be plenty of prime oceanfront property on which he can build one of his crapcan golf course resorts with Saudi money.

Imagine the size of the resort he could build on say Baffin Island.  He may not be aware that a lot of that coastline has a few disadvantages that limit its value as a resort venue:

That's not ideal golf weather.  When it's that cold, the ball sticks to the tundra, making it impossible for him to cheat by kicking it  back to the green.

He also might want to think what would happen to his narrow House and Senate majorities even if Canada joins as a single state (it's about as populous as California).  Those two Senate and 50 House seats aren't likely to go Republican.

The Tangerine-Faced Fascist may think he can bring Canada to its snowshoes merely by strangling its economy.  He better hope he's right because an invasion might not turn out exactly as he hoped.

Fun fact: we've tried conquering Canada by force of arms.  It didn't go great.  Fortunately, thanks to our extensive archives we can bring you our reporting from November 1813:

AMERICAN FORCES STOPPED SHORT OF MONTREAL

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Courage of Troops Not Matched by Quality of Generalship

By Our Special Correspondent
Via Post Express from Ft. Ticonderoga

Although the situation remains sadly clouded by uncertainty, reports reaching Ft. Ticonderoga suggest that the American forces failed to break through the Canadian defenders at Châteauguay, southwest of Montreal and short of the goal of the St. Lawrence River.

The American forces, under the command of a Southerner named Wade Hampton, whose family we can safely predict is destined for no great place in our nation's military history, attempted to ford the Châteauguay River on 26th Oct. last.

Gen'l Hampton squandered his splendid troops

The river crossing was made without serious opposition.  But the wily Canadians retreated into their forests and took advantage of such terrain to inflict serious injuries on the American columns.  Further, certain French-speaking forces taunted our soldiery with crude insults, followed by volleys of cows and other forms of livestock.

A portion of the Canadian forces remained on the southern bank of the river, thereby harassing the American flank.  Although the great mass of American troops and their brave Mohawk allies remained intact, the irresolute Gen. Hampton unaccountably lost his nerve and withdrew to the south, thereby abandoning the planned conquest of the great city of Lower Canada, Montreal.

The debacle was especially bitter because it followed hard on the heels of the smashing success of our forces in York, the largest city in Upper Canada, which had led the American forces to hope that the demise of British authority in Canada was at hand.

It is the view of this correspondent that with improved generalship, the American Army can return to the Canadian Front with the wholesome and entirely achievable goal of ridding the Great White North of the British enemy and embracing that land as part of our rightful inheritance, even if it takes another 200 years.

Of course, next time under the command of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and his liberal administration of liquid courage, the results will undoubtedly be different.