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America Foreign Policy War

Pre-emptive Candy-bombing!

Do we have to reduce a country to rubble before rebuilding it?

Since no one else seems willing to be President, I guess I’ll have to finally lay out my platform, officially. Despite all my rantings on widely varying subjects, I, heystupid, have only one plank to my Presidential platform: pre-emptive candy bombing. For those unfamiliar with the concept of candy-bombing, the original candy bomber, Gail “Hal” Halvorsen, dropped candy from his C-54 cargo plane to the children of Berlin in the aftermath of World War II. Soon, American candy makers were sending chocolate by the ton and Americans were mailing their own handkerchiefs to Halvorsen to use as parachutes. Almost 70 years later, Colonel Halvorsen was invited to carry the German team’s national placard during the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympics. There’s a school in Berlin named for him. Check him out here:

This is a terrific example of winning hearts and minds at the price of about 12 cents per heart.

However, it occurs to me that it’s wasteful and unnecessary to bomb a country with ordnance before we bomb it with food, water, clothing, medicine, malaria nets, soccer balls and, yes, candy. We should be mercilessly pre-emptively candy-bombing (and potato-bombing and water-bombing and amoxicilin-bombing and …) dozens of countries, especially our enemies. Let them tremble before our charity! Hal Halvorsen said, of his act, “It wasn’t the candy that was important. What was important was that somebody–an American–knew I was in trouble. Somebody cared.” Imagine how many fewer countries we’d have to invade if the people of the world felt like Americans knew their struggles and cared.

So, if elected my first priority will be to redirect one-third of the US military budget to humanitarian and rescue efforts. The US military already does a lot of humanitarian work, and they do it astoundingly well. Coupling these efforts with military capability will help ensure aid is directed where most important. But, let us go into this venture with open eyes. There will be American casualties from this, despite our best efforts. What could be more noble than to die that families may have enough to eat?

I propose we raise a worldwide generation whose first memory of the stars and stripes is attached to a Hershey bar and a bottle of Pepsi (or a SodaStream!). HeyStupid 2016!