Historical Punctuation

By Albert Danforth, Roving Historian

In a recent public address, President Bush proclaimed, “I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq*, it will look like just a comma…” Considering the over 2700 US military and untold thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths, infrastructural devastation, and fomenting and/or cementing of anti-Western sentiment in the greater Middle East, many people could label such an encapsulization as flippant, insensitive, callous, detached, or fucking retarded. I, however, wish to grant Mr. Bush Presidential privilege to define his war as he sees fit. Using the Bush benchmark, I will herein redefine some of history’s more important wars as punctuation marks in an attempt to confirm or dismiss his assessment.

*By “Iraq” of course, he meant the current conflict in Iraq as supported by surrounding context of the address. Said context not provided herein due to its balking, halted clumsiness – I prefer not to provide conclusive evidence that the stewardship of our nation has been entrusted to a redneck dullard when avoidable.

French Revolution- Grass-roots overthrow of the institution of royalty and class structure within France. Sent shockwaves throughout Europe, causing the universal citizenry to quit the concept of the Divine Right of Monarchs, forcing Europe’s royal houses to share power with the people in order to prevent similar overthrows. Called the domination of entire peoples by a ruling elite into moral question, thus effectively ending colonization and empire building among civilized nations. Thus, the French Revolution would qualify as a period – perhaps an exclamation mark – had they not turned the entire country over to one single short angry putz immediately afterward. Since its effect was to slow-then-redirect the development of the human condition, the French revolution looks like a semi-colon.

Russian Revolution – Ruling family that listens too much to a smelly insane horndog who won’t freakin’ die no matter how many times people tried to kill him is overthrown by a popular rebellion led by a confused intellectual who read Marx all funny. Bolshevism ensues and quickly evolves into a surreal, bleak police state with collective farming. Since Russia’s neighbors are somehow poorer and more backwards-assed than they are, their soviet system is “shared” throughout Eastern Europe, setting up a seventy-year-long us-against-them turd-slinging contest with the West that proved jack squat. The Russian Revolution looks like a question mark.

Korean War – America invades foreign nation on made-up premises. America is perceived internationally as a wrong-headed bully. Thousands of soldiers and untold numbers of indigenous civilians die. America takes a few years to realize its goals are impossible and leaves, so nothing really changes, just halts for a little bit. The Korean War looks like a comma.

Vietnam War - America invades foreign nation on made-up premises. America is perceived internationally as a wrong-headed bully. Thousands of soldiers and untold numbers of indigenous civilians die. America takes a few years to realize its goals are impossible and leaves, so nothing really changes, just halts for a little bit. The Vietnam War looks like a comma.

Iraq War - America invades foreign nation on made-up premises. America is perceived internationally as a wrong-headed bully. Thousands of soldiers and untold numbers of indigenous civilians die. America takes a few years to realize its goals are impossible… hey, it looks like Dubya got one right!