By Nathaniel Moher
I know most of you have noticed that I haven’t really weighed in on the whole Russia invading the Ukraine thing. For the most part, I was afraid to because Putin and I belong to a bear wrestling club together — and you don’t want to have your spotter mad at you while you’re wrestling with a bear.
However, I can stay silent no longer. I’ve seen the error of Putin’s ways, and I need to let him know what he’s done wrong.
Putin, buddy, if you’re going to invade Ukraine, you’re going to need to come up with a better reason than: “We just want it!” People don’t respond well to that. Remember when America wanted to invade Iraq, but didn’t really have a good enough reason, so they just made up that whole thing about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction? That was a smart way to handle that situation.
If America had just said: “We want to invade Iraq because we want all their oil,” people probably would have been less inclined to go to war with a country for no reason, or at least for that one. But, when you come up with false pretences, it works every time.
Another prime example of this in the recent history of the world was when my ex-girlfriend wanted to sleep with other dudes. She broke up with me saying that I “had a lot of growing up to do.” That doesn’t make any sense, because I was older than she was. How does that make sense? Huh?! What an idiot, right?! God, I love her.
Either way, by saying that, it gave her an excuse that wasn’t just, “I want to go sleep with other dudes” (which, apparently, she didn’t really need to start sleeping with other dudes anyways).
Now, Putin buddy, unfortunately for you, America has kind of gone and ruined the weapons of mass destruction argument. It’s kind of a man-boy-president-who-called-wolf situation now. So you probably want to stay away from claiming that the Ukraine has weapons of mass destruction, at least for the time being. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other false reasons you could use to attack Ukraine.
For instance, maybe Ukraine attacked you. That’s a really good reason to go and attack another country. Obviously you’re not actually going to get Ukraine to attack you for real, but just go ahead and attack yourself, but dress the guys up like Ukrainians.
However, at this point, some people might think that Ukraine was justified in attacking you — you know, what with everything you’ve done to them lately. Maybe you’ll need to come up with a better reason to attack them.
And I have just the thing for you to use, Putty (can I call you Putty?). I know your wife just divorced you — What if you convince everyone that the reason your wife left you is because she had an affair with Oleksandr Turchynov, the president of Ukraine?
It’s believable because, well, your wife was married to you, so she’d probably have an affair with literally anyone. But, it’s also the perfect reason to go and attack Ukraine. I mean, when my girlfriend cheated on me, all my buddies were like “Natty, you gotta go kick that guy’s ass.” I didn’t, because I was the bigger man (I mean, not literally, he was two feet taller than me . . . and those were just his biceps). But you ride bears and stuff, you can totally pull this off.
That, or just say you want to liberate its people . . . that seems to work most of the time.
Nathaniel Moher is a TV and screenwriter living in Vancouver. This column first appeared in The Flying Shingle.
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