Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng

Every day, dozens of people ask me for my opinion on what has gone wrong with the war in Iraq.
"I know you are merely a stunningly attractive tech-geek, but what is your opinion on the current state of affairs in Iraq?" they generally ask.
In answer: A lot of things. Smarter people than me have come up with theories about troop distribution and supplies and non-traditional weaponry.
I tend to place the blame squarely on Hasbro, Marvel Comics and Sunbow Animation.



Explain anything to someone who graduated high school between the years 1985 and 1995, then end with, "and now you know."
If they do not respond with, "And knowing is half the battle", then this person is an extremely poorly-trained sleeper agent placed into our society by . . . um . . . the Cubans? Or maybe al-Qaeda? Either way, end the conversation as quickly as possible and dash off to notify Homeland Security.
In the glorious Reagan Era, the youth of America did all their real learning after school, with the lessons taught by none other than G.I. Joe.

Never trusting to unreliable subtext, G.I. Joe straight up told us in no uncertain terms that, indeed, "Knowing is half the battle".

The other half of the battle is kicking Cobra's terrorist ass. And with the coolest soldier codenames ever --Snake Eyes, Duke, Lady Jaye, Stalker, Shipwreck-- winning the war on terror should be no problem. Good will always win out over evil, because good guys work together, while bad guys are ruthless cowards who turn tail and run whenever G.I. Joe's laser guns are fired anywhere near them. Cobra is a lot like the french (The lack of capitalization is intentional, I mean because, like what are they going to do?) that way. As Sergeant Slaughter once said: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people and neither do we."
Now that's some good strategery.
How it affected us as adults: Actually, I'm pretty certain that our strategy for the Iraq War was conceived after a two day long G.I. Joe marathon in the Pentagon (thank you, BitTorrent). They just implicitly trusted that the good guys were going to win, that firing off our guns would make the bad guys run for the caves and that giving everyone cute nicknames was somehow endearing. When things didn't turn out the way they'd planned, the administration placed the blame on faulty intelligence, or in other words: "Knowing is half the battle, and we unfortunately didn't know shit."
That is just my opinion, but now you know . . .