George Carlin - Napalm and Silly Putty

I’d like to talk a little about that “war” we had in the Persian Gulf. Remember that? The big war in the Persian Gulf? Lemme tell you what was goin’ on.

Naturally, you can forget all that entertaining fiction about having to defend the model democracy those lucky Kuwaitis get to live under. And for the moment you can also put aside the very real, periodic need Americans have for testing their new weapons on human flesh. And also, just for the fun of it, let’s ignore George Bush’s obligation to protect the oil interests of his family and friends. There was another, much more important, consideration at work. Here’s what really happened.

Dropping a Load for Uncle Sam

The simple fact is that America was long overdue to drop high explosives on helpless civilians; people who have no argument with us whatsoever. After all, it had been awhile, and the hunger gnaws. Remember that’s our specialty: picking on countries that have marginally effective air forces. Yugoslavia is another, more recent, example.

Surfing Unnecessary

But all that aside, let me tell you what I liked about that Gulf War: it was the first war that appeared on every television channel, including cable. And even though the TV show consisted largely of Pentagon war criminals displaying maps and charts, it got very good ratings. And that makes sense, because we like war. We’re a war like people. We can’t stand not to be fucking with someone. We couldn’t wait for the Cold War to end so we could climb into the big Arab sandbox and play with our nice new toys. We enjoy war.

And one reason we enjoy it is that we’re good at it. You know why we’re good at it? Because we get a lot of practice. This country is only 200 years old, and already we’ve had ten major wars. We average a major war every twenty years. So we’re good at it!

And it’s just as well we are, because we’re not very good at anything else. Can’t build a decent car anymore. Can’t make a TV set, a cell phone, or a VCR. Got no steel industry left. No textiles. Can’t educate our young people. Can’t get health care to our old people. But we can bomb the shit outta your country, all right. We can bomb the shit outta your country!

If You’re Brown, You’re Goin’ Down

Especially if your country is full of brown people. Oh, we like that, don’t we? That’s our hobby now. But it’s also our new job in the world: bombing brown people. Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Libya. You got some brown people in your country? Tell ’em to watch the fuck out, or we’ll goddamn bomb them!

Well, who were the last white people you can remember that we bombed? In fact, can you remember any white people we ever bombed? The Germans! That’s it! Those are the only ones. And that was only because they were tryin’ to cut in on our action. They wanted to dominate the world. Bullshit! That’s our job. That’s our fuckin’ job.

But the Germans are ancient history. These days, we only bomb brown people. And not because they’re cutting in on our action; we do it because they’re brown. Even those Serbs we bombed in Yugoslavia aren’t really white, are they? Naaah! They’re sort of down near the swarthy end of the white spectrum. Just brown enough to bomb. I’m still waiting for the day we bomb the English. People who really deserve it.

A Disobedient American

Now, you folks might’ve noticed, I don’t feel about that Gulf War the way we were instructed to feel about it by the United States government. My mind doesn’t work that way. You see, I’ve got this real moron thing I do, it’s called “thinking.” And I guess I’m not a very good American, because I like to form my own opinions; I don’t just roll over when I’m told. Most Americans roll over on command. Not me. There are certain rules I observe.

Believe You Me

My first rule: Never believe anything anyone in authority says. None of them. Government, police, clergy, the corporate criminals. None of them. And neither do I believe anything I’m told by the media, who, in the case of the Gulf War, functioned as little more than unpaid employees of the Defense Department, and who, most of the time, operate as an unofficial public relations agency for government and industry.

I don’t believe in any of them. And I have to tell you, folks, I don’t really believe very much in my country either. I don’t get all choked up about yellow ribbons and American flags. I see them as symbols, and I leave them to the symbol-minded.

Show Us Your Dick

I also look at war itself a little differently from most. I see it largely as an exercise in dick-waving. That’s really all it is: a lot of men standing around in a field waving their dicks at one another. Men, insecure about the size of their penises, choose to kill one another.

That’s also what all that moron athlete bullshit is about, and what that macho, male posturing and strutting around in bars and locker rooms represents. It’s called “dick fear.” Men are terrified that their dicks are inadequate, and so they have to “compete” in order to feel better about themselves. And since war is the ultimate competition, essentially men are killing one another in order to improve their genital self-esteem.

You needn’t be a historian or a political scientist to see the Bigger Dick Foreign Policy Theory at work. It goes like this: “What? They have bigger dicks? Bomb them!” And of course, the bombs, the rockets, and the bullets are all shaped like penises. Phallic weapons. There’s an unconscious need to project the national penis into the affairs of others. It’s called “fucking with people.”

Show Us Your Bush

So, as far as I’m concerned, that whole thing in the Persian Gulf was nothing more than one big dick-waving cockfight. In this particular case, Saddam Hussein questioned the size of George Bush’s dick. And George Bush had been called a wimp for so long, he apparently felt the need to act out his manhood fantasies by sending America’s white children to kill other people’s brown children. Clearly the worst kind of wimp.

Even his name, “Bush,” as slang, is related to the genitals without actually being the genitals. A bush is sort of a passive, secondary sex characteristic. It’s even used as a slang term for women: “Hey, pal, how’s the bush in this area?” I can’t help thinking, if this president’s name had been George Boner…well, he might have felt a little better about himself, and he wouldn’t have had to kill all those children. Too bad he couldn’t locate his manhood.

Premature Extraction

Actually, when you think about it, this country has had a man-hood problem for some time. You can tell by the language we use; language always gives us away. What did we do wrong in Vietnam? We “pulled out”! Not a very manly thing to do. No. When you’re fucking people, you’re supposed to stay with it and fuck them good; fuck them to death; hang in there and keep fucking them until they’re all fucking dead.

But in Vietnam what happened was by accident we left a few women and children alive, and we haven’t felt good about ourselves since. That’s why in the Persian Gulf, George Bush had to say, “This will not be another Vietnam.” He actually said, “this time we’re going all the way .” Imagine. An American president using the sexual slang of a thirteen-year-old to describe his foreign policy.

And, of course, when it got right down to it, he didn’t “go all the way.” Faced with going into Baghdad he punked out. No balls. Just Bush. Instead, he applied sanctions, so he’d be sure that an extra half a million brown children would die. And so his oil buddies could continue to fill their pockets.