Ed Wood "The Right Stuff" Published June 5, 2002

Here we go again -- again!

Let's see. Who is it this time, Iraq and Kuwait? No. Afghanistan and Pakistan? No. Israel and Palestine? No. This time it's Pakistan and India. Even Jesse Jackson can't keep up. He's off to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while current events have already moved on. Poor fellow. Always one war behind!

Was it $40 million or $40 billion we paid the president of Pakistan to be on our side against the conflict in Afghanistan? I forget. But then, what's a few triple-zeroes, more or less, among friends? Regardless, the money has apparently run out, and President Musharraf of Pakistan needs more. So what does he do? Why, he threatens another U.S. ally of long-standing - India.

Musharraf moves his troops away from his western border in order to challenge India, knowing that we will move U.S. troops in to replace them - at our expense, of course. Pretty smart. But that's not enough. How about a few nuclear missile threats? That ought to loosen up the U.S. taxpayers' purse strings. And sure enough, off goes Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and some underling from the State Department to mediate the conflict - "mediate" being the code-word for providing more U.S. aid.

So if I've got this right, Pakistan and India aren't about to bomb each other. What's the point? That would force the U.S. to choose up sides, and then we would have to finance only one of them.

The better deal is for each of our friends to just threaten the other. Even better if they can fire off a few "test" missiles to prove how serious their conflict is. And since each combatant is supposed to be our ally, then each can demand U.S. dollars to prevent one from harming the other. Sort of like when a "beaned" batter charges the mound, and then waits for his bench-mates to arrive in time to prevent him from taking a swing at the pitcher.

It's called playing both sides of the street. And Uncle Sugar is caught in his usual place, right in the middle.

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Ed Wood is a resident of Sparta, TN. His column is published each Wednesday in the Crossville Chronicle.