Disclaimer: The Op-ed editor warned me not to trivialise this issue. So I decided to skip the issue and concentrate on the non-issue. This entire article is a work of fiction, and any attempt by Monsieur Obamas cronies to construe it as a factual account should be resisted by the Foreign Office for at least a few weeks. In case the Americans do decide to invade and extradite me for revealing their state secrets, I will be forced to seek training from the Venezuelans in the art of Artful American Dodging. You have been warned, Agent Smith!
Picture this. Youre a highly trained professional agent, working for CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA or any other scary acronym thats backed by the government of the United States of America. You have been assigned to a backwater state in the post-Post Cold War scenario where nothing ever happens to you. Also by happy coincidence, you find that said backwater state is brimming with all the three vices the average hot-blooded American male needs in order to function, i.e. guns, drugs and alcohol. Given all of this, it would only be logical that you (the agent) would pop some acid every morning before going to work, drink a pint before breakfast and be merry and cheery all day long, stopping to roll and smoke a joint somewhere in the middle of a public park or something.
Youre entire day consists of sitting around a desk, dreaming up new ways to kill time in your highly fortified consulate, located right next to the local press club. The drive to work is possibly the worst thing you could have to deal with first thing in the morning. Protesters in tattered clothing, burning tyres and people with sticks shouting Death to America! every second day is not your idea of the perfect morning commute. So you skip the formalities and arrive fashionably late to work, at around 10:00PM local time every day. This is mostly because the other people in your department, at least the ones who smoke pot with you on weekends, also come in at around the same time, which is roughly morning time in DC.
Your desk job is mostly just a cover. You are in fact a Mr Fixit. You deal with problems others cant, wont or just dont want to. This can include clogged drainpipes, stalkers and/or annoying RJs on the local English pop radio who think they know what you like because they listen to the Billboard charts and get their music off stereomood dot com. Also, you kill people. Not indiscriminately, Oh No! That would be un-American. You only kill people who pose a clear and present danger to the collective security of all United States citizens in the free world. This includes pesky beggars in dimly lit alleys who just refuse to take no for an answer. But God will forgive you for that.
Youre very good at your job, and youre a pretty cool driver too. Having grown up in the car-crazy city of Detroit, your love for automobiles goes back to the days when you were the wheelman for your big brothers band of bank-and-diner robbers in the state of Michigan. If its got an engine, power steering and power windows, you can drive it. And if its got a stereo you can blare Metallica and other disturbing sounds from, youre in heaven.
But imagine your horror if, in the middle of bad traffic, two boys on a motorbike kept cutting you off. Since youre in a tank-sized Civic, you cant do anything about it, can you? So what do you do? You step on the gas and race them to the next large traffic junction. Upon arriving at Mozang Chungi, you look around triumphantly, thinking that youre superior driving skills (the ones that helped you get out of Tora Bora alive in 2005) had served you well. But ZOOM! You are shocked to discover that the errant lads on their measly 125 CC tricycle have zoomed past you yet again. You start getting paranoid, because the dope youve been smoking comes from Khost, known for their ability to grow tons and tons of opium and hashish in spaces no larger than the (imperialist American) state of Connecticut.
Then one of the boys, who are now in front of you, scratches his behind and in doing so, lifts his shirt to reveal a piece that hes carrying. Alarm bells and nuclear bombs start going off in your central command module. Who are they? What do they want? Who sent them? Does their gun have more bullets than mine? Not finding any answers fast, you decide to deal with them like you always do: Shoot first, ask questions later. Only when the five bullets leave your highly automatic state-of-the-art weapon do you stop to ask, What the **** am I doing here?
Maybe you should have asked yourself that question before you shot those boys, Ray. Shame on you. And shame on your country for asking that we return you.
The writer is a broadcast journalist.
