Dear Mr. President:

As a sound thinker I realize that the reason most political work is concealed from the public eye is the general public would not understand it, and would not approve of the bits and pieces it did manage to understand. As a member of the public, I have no idea what is really going on in the world. I don’t mind. It’s okay. Nevertheless, here is something I would like to suggest that may or may not have been suggested to you, our Commander-in-Chief, regarding our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. I just want to help out, is all. If you are already familiar with what I’m going to describe, please, just ignore it.

One of the problems our soldiers face is the so-called “insurgence” which hampers your efforts to achieve whatever it is you wish to achieve over there. A whole bunch of local thugs are getting in the way all the time for reasons they themselves would be at a loss to explain coherently.

I call them thugs because a person who is neither a member of an official military unit, a policeman, nor a secret service agent; and to whom non-violent means of occupying one’s time are available; insists on carrying weapons and firing them at human beings is a thug, more or less by definition.

The problem with most thugs is not that they are inherently evil, far from it. They live in fear. The one thing that frightens them is boredom. As things stand in Iraq and Afghanistan, most thugs over there seem to have NOTHING BETTER TO DO than running around brandishing automatic weapons. A lot of them are very young and wish to be entertained all the time, and firearms, when all is said and done, is the best entertainment they can find over there these days.

Not too long ago, we had a similar problem in these United States, and if there is one person who really should get credit for at least partly solving it, it would be Bill Gates. Despite their well-publicized love of violence, few thugs are stupid enough to ignore the risks associated with it. Computer games provide continuous entertainment, some of it pretty violent, without exposing their users to danger. A typical thug’s intellectual and spiritual needs are few. It does not take much to keep them entertained, and out of harm’s way.

To the best of my knowledge, there are currently twenty-five million people living in Iraq. Not all of them are thugs. Some of them are actually pretty intelligent and/or peaceful. Just to be on the safe side, though, let’s pretend that ALL of them are thugs, women, children, old hags, geezers, all. Now let’s do the math.

Twenty-five million top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art personal computers, with LSD monitors – surely the magnitude of the order would induce Dell or Gateway or HP to offer the customer (the United States government, in this case) a huge discount. One thousand dollars each.

Twenty-five million PC video game collections, containing twenty to thirty newest games each, with impressive graphics: two hundred dollars each.

Twenty-five million top-of-the-line color TVs, five hundred dollars each.

Twenty-five million Halo-3’s, with some games thrown into the bargain, one hundred dollars each.

Game controls, joysticks, wiring: free (considering the number of units being paid for).

Sum total: forty-five billion dollars. Throw in a few billion for complete electrification of all Iraqie territories, and you have a PERMANENT solution to the insurgency problem for LESS than it costs us to keep our soldiers over there EACH YEAR. Certainly some thugs who are too dumb to even handle video game controls would continue their unseemly practices, but their numbers would dwindle so dramatically that the “insurgency” would soon morph into something very much like ordinary street crime – a police matter rather than a cause for military concern.

Just a suggestion.

Sincerely,
Ruggero T. Ricordi
Mighty Niche Books