By now you’ve probably heard that both Iran and North Korea are asserting themselves as serious nuclear threats. Whether or not it’s true about Iran, Colin Powell’s resignation might be the first in US history to be caused by “ironic self-loathing.”

But if it’s all true then we have to look at our 130,000-odd troops who are committed to Iraq and realize that as far as the Axis of Evil is concerned, we demonstrated that in the carnival of geopolitics, the US is just plain lousy at the ol’ shell game. Even a random guess oughta get the job done when there are warheads under two of the three shells. It looks even worse when you add the fact that we invest billions of dollars per year to analyze and investigate the shells, the carnies and their backgrounds. We videotape the game, slow it down and analyze each and every frame, imprison random attendees at the fairgrounds and question them over a period of months, and still we guessed wrong. We picked the country that had no nuclear weapons, no nuclear weapons programs, and no nuclear weapons related program activities.

Oops. It’d nice if the only consequences to this li’l miscue was that we were going to have to go home without the giant stuffed smurf and with a slightly disillusioned kid. But that’s where the whole carnival metaphor breaks down - I’ve yet to see a ring toss game where the penalty for losing was “the obliteration of your hometown.” [Then again, I don’t get out to the state fairs as much as I used to.]

But now we have to face the possibility that Iran and North Korea are arming and preparing to lash out at their enemies. Those enemies are, repectively, Israel and “anyone who makes wisecracks about short guys with big hair.”

So… now what? We obviously don’t have the personnel to commit to an invasion of another country right now. We can’t even mount a credible threat of invasion, at least not at the moment. So we’re going to have to call on our allies. That’s right, it’s time to use the goodwill and credibly that we’ve built up over the past 60 years of leading the world in the fight for freedom and international justice, to leverage the friendships that we’ve established by maintaining respectful and productive relationships with the rest of the planet’s militarily advanced democracies. To send out our international Bat Signal and rally the forces of good around our all-powerful yet always-humble banner…

…oh. Right.

Maybe we can offer the Iranians special discounts on “freedom fries…”