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A True Story
My daughter came up to me and asked me "Daddy why are we at war with Iraq?"
I told her "Daughter, go look out the window."
She walked over to the window, "Ok Daddy i'm looking out the window."
"Daughter," I said "I want you to think of every house on this street as another country. Our house it the United States."
"Ok Daddy," she said giggling.
"You see that house over there?" I ask pointing at a house down the street.
"Yes Daddy," she says nodding.
"Well imagine that house is Iraq. Except imagine that it's actually three small houses, that have been connected together by shoddy carpenting, so it's not so much one house as it is three that have been loosely nailed together."
"That's silly, Daddy." she says.
"I know it's silly, but you see Iraq was a nation created by that house there," I say pointing to a blue house kiddie corner to ours. "You see about one hundred years ago those six houses all around the Iraq house were all owned by one man. But then we had a block party and the family in the blue house forced the man in the six houses to give up five of them. Except the Iraq one was three small houses, so the people in the blue house thought it would be a smart idea to loosely nail those three small houses together."
"Uh," she thinks. "I guess I understand."
"Good. Well you see there are actually three families living in that house, two of them are much larger than the third, and the third and smallest family tells the two smaller families what to do."
"Why do they do that Daddy," asks my daughter.
"Well the three groups never really were very happy at having their three houses forced into one, but they made the best of it and were working well together, that is until we got involved."
"Us Daddy?"
"That's right honey. You see we thought that it would be better for our house to have one single more powerfull man in charge of the whole house, so we helped sponsor the man from the smallest group to be in charge. We did the same thing in a bunch of other houses up and down the street."
"We did that."
"We sure did honey. And it worked out great, because at the time we were fighting a big bully from down the street, in that big red house there. We needed people on our side, so we helped sponsor lots of these single people to control their houses in order to help us fight the guy in the red house."
"Did we ever fight the guy in the red house?" asked my daughter.
"Not directly, but eventually the guy in the red house gave up and painted his house a different color, so we won. By that point though we had made a bunch of people who were really mean. That guy there in the green house? See he's in charge because originally the man we put in charge of that house was abusing his people pretty badly, but that was ok with us, because he was helping us fight the guy in the red house."
"He was hurting his own family?"
"Sure but we helped him. We provided him with weapons to hurt his own family, so that he would help us convince the bully to paint his house a different color."
"That doesn't seem right, daddy." said my daughter.
"No it wasn't honey, and eventually the family kicked that man out of the house and put their own man in charge of the green house. Even though he's almost as bad as the guy we put in charge, he talked to his family about how bad we were, so they liked him better."
"That house is right next to the patched together house." noticed my daughter.
"That's right honey." I said. "After the family in the green house kicked out the man we were paying to beat up his own family, we got the man we had in charge of the patched together house to go next door and fight and kill that man's family for us instead."
"Why do we hate the people in the green house," asked my daughter.
"We don't hate them honey," I said. "We just don't like it when people don't do what we say, plus the electrical lines which power some of our house, comes from that house. We can't have someone who doesn't like us being able to keep our power from us."
"Can't we just use less power?" asked my daughter.
"We could honey, but we don't want to. Our family feels that we have rights to the energy coming from the green house. Anyway so we got the man in the patched together house to beat them up. We even helped him at the same time beat up his own family."
"So we helped a bad man hurt his neighbors as well as his own family members, so that the power coming from the two houses would be uninterupted coming to our house, and we would keep the two houses from helping the guy in the red house?" asked my daughter.
"That's it. You're getting it." I said. "Ok, so eventually the fighting between those two houses is just too much on even the guy in the patched together house, so they stop. At this point, he decides that he needs to have more power to supply to us, so he goes over to the house on the other side of his and beats up that family and says it's his house."
"And we were ok with that right daddy?" asked my daughter hopefully.
"No, honey, that we didn't like, because the people in that house have always been very nice about giving all their power to us without question. In return we helped them beat up their own family, just like so many other houses on this street. We didn't want our power to be interuped from that house, so we went over and made the bad man go back to his own house and leave the neighbors alone to beat up their own family."
"Um, ok." said my daughter.
"So then we didn't let anyone go to the patched together house. We told anyone that if they went there or helped that family at all we would hurt them. Meanwhile he kept hurting his own family. The only way he could get food or medicine for his family was through us, and often he would just keep the food and medicine for himself and not give any to his family."
"Did we help his family?"
"No, because in return for that he kept providing us with the power we needed. We were just keeping him on a short leash. As long as he kept providng power to our house we could care less for him hurting his family which he did frequently in very very nasty ways."
"So why are we at war with him?"
"Well you see that man sitting up there on that hillside?" I say pointing to the hill above our community behind the patched together house. "That man convinced some people from that house "I say pointing to a white marble building across the street from the patched together house. " To attack our house. Our own house."
"How did he learn how to do that Daddy?" asked my daughter.
"Well actually, we taught him how to attack houses honey, because back before the man in the red house repainted his house and became our friend, the man in the red house attacked that brown house there. When he did that we got people from the marble house and trained them to go into the brown house and fight the man from the red house there. We provided all their weapons to fight the man from the red house, and taught him how to do everything to fight someone from a bigger house, and he won!"
"So why did he attack us if we helped him?" asked my daughter.
"Well he was upset that we had your cousin staying in his bedroom in the marble house. the family in the marble house provides us with a bunch of power as well, and we felt the best way to protect our power interests was to keep a man there, in case the man from the patched house was going to cross the street and attack the marble house. Well the man on the hillside, who we trained and equpied, didn't like the fact that we were living in his room and felt that he could protect the marble house from the man in the patched together house, and was upset that we wouldn't leave his room. so he started fighting with us. He tried attacking us once before and set off a pipe bomb in our mailbox, and harrassed us occasionally around the neighborhood, but we never really paid enough attention to him." I said.
"so that's when he attacked us?" asked my daughter.
"That's right, we let our guard down, and he threw a brick through the livign room window and it killed your brother. So we attacked the men in the brown house, and the men in the patched together house." I said triumphantly. "That's why we're at war with Iraq."
My daughter stood puzzled for a second and looked out the window. "So," she said. "We attacked the family in the brown house because they were letting the man on the hillside live there."
"That's right, that's why we attacked that family. We still think the man on the hillside goes there for food, and might even sleep there, but we're not sure."
"Why did we attack the man in the patched house though. Did he help the man on the hillside attack us?" asked my daughter.
"No, though we told the nieghbors that he did. We never really have had any evidence that he helped the man on the hillside. In fact we think they really didn't like each other very much since theman on the hillside always said bad things about the man in the patched house."
"Did we attack the man in the patched house because he was going to help the man in the future?" asked my daughter.
"No, though we told the neighbors that as well. We told people he was collecting weapons that could hurt you and the rest of our family, including getting really nasty yellow cake from that bakery two streets over, but he didn't. It was just a story we made up. He never was collecting any weapons and wasn't going to help that man on the hillside in the future."
"Did we attack the man in the patched house because he was going to hurt his family?" asked my daughter.
"Why would we do that, we helped him and a hundred other men for decades to hurt their families. Heck we paid for this guy to hurt his own family." I said.
"So why did we attack Iraq?" asked my daughter getting frustrated.
"Honey we attacked the family in the patched house because we had already attacked the family in the brown house, but hadn't captured the man on the hillside. Your mother and I felt that the best solution would be to attack the man in the patched house at that point, because people were still upset from having our house attacked from the man on the hillside. We wanted to look like we were doing something. That way also we could better secure the power from the patched house, who was threatening to give more of the power to the men in the black and yellow house, and the one in the white and red house over there. Oh and when the man in the patched house attacked the man in the house next to his, he tried to hurt your grandfather and I didn't like that."
"Daddy are you an asshole?" asked my daughter.
"Yes honey," I said with pride knowing she finally got it. "Yes I am."
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