How To Fight a War, American Style

Marc Dion
Thu, 01 Jan 2026 21:00:00 -0800
Opinion

No matter how terrible a thing you do, if you do it over and over again, a pattern will emerge.

So, the serial killer picks up young prostitutes, strangles them in his car and dumps them on the side of gravel roads. He does this while thinking of his mother.

The United States of America cheers and slogans its way into continuous wars in lonely corners of the world, and we dump our dead bodies in veteran's cemeteries while rifles loaded with blanks are fired at an empty sky, as though we had declared war on God. Our wounded, we all too often dump in a fentanyl haze in the kind of neighborhood where serial killers pick up their prostitute victims. We do this while thinking of revenge/glory/money.
Updated: Fri Jan 02, 2026

No matter how terrible a thing you do, if you do it over and over again, a pattern will emerge.

So, the serial killer picks up young prostitutes, strangles them in his car and dumps them on the side of gravel roads. He does this while thinking of his mother.

The United States of America cheers and slogans its way into continuous wars in lonely corners of the world, and we dump our dead bodies in veteran's cemeteries while rifles loaded with blanks are fired at an empty sky, as though we had declared war on God. Our wounded, we all too often dump in a fentanyl haze in the kind of neighborhood where serial killers pick up their prostitute victims. We do this while thinking of revenge/glory/money.

And that is how any possible declared/undeclared war against Venezuela might go.

We're already blowing up boats that contain either methamphetamine or mullet, depending on who you believe. We do this because Venezuela is "poisoning America with drugs."

This is, of course, a lie. We have drugs in America because Americans want drugs. We buy drugs. We will stand in line to buy drugs. Blowing up boats transporting drugs to solve America's drug problem is like burning down your neighborhood bar to fix your drinking problem.

But America is an ambitious nation. We weren't happy with the little boats, so we started stealing big boats, oil tankers full of thick, rich Venezuelan oil. We do this because the Venezuelans stole back the oil we stole from them, so it's only Christian for us to steal it back. That concept comes directly from the Apostle Elon's Third Epistle to the Petroleumites.

If our pattern continues, the next step is to bomb and missile the hell out of Venezuela. We will destroy their air force, demoralize their army and kill tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of civilians. This is known as "The Iraq pattern."

Once Venezuela is militarily defenseless, we will send in the troops. The troops will wander around in circles for five to 20 years, sustaining minimal casualties, and controlling minimal territory. Pictures will appear in America of a clean-limbed young, white Marine cuddling a Venezuelan puppy he has saved from starvation, and pictures of a clean-limbed, young white Army private kicking a soccer ball around with several smiling brown children, all of whom are skinny and dressed in dirty rags.

Signs reading "Support Our Troops" will appear in the yards of American homes. Various charitable groups will send our troops packages containing snacks, batteries, shampoo, skin moisturizer and other items, packages suitable for our warriors, or most teenage girls in Ohio.

We will not surrender. Americans never surrender. Americans hate to even say "surrender."

However, Americans are perfectly able to say, "Ooops," and "We're leaving," which we will say after we get bored with the lack of measurable progress in a war with no clear objective. We'll say both those things, and pictures will appear in America of a chaotic last day when those Venezuelans who aided American troops will cling desperately to any plane, helicopter or boat that is leaving their country for America. We will leave behind billions of dollars in military equipment. This is known as "The Afghanistan and Vietnam pattern."

That's it. America's next war in a little less than 600 words.

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called, "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle and iBooks.