Volume CXXXII, Number 3 September 27, 2002 f

No longer popular, a nation pouts
KATHERINE CRANE
STAFF WRITER

We've decided we don't like Germany any more. In fact, we're so mad at those Germans we're not even going to talk to them, and neither are any of our friends. You won't see them sitting at our lunch table, and it goes without saying we're going to cross them right off our list of best buds.
You see, the German Justice Minister said something that really hurt our feelings, and we don't take kindly to having our feelings hurt. She said that we just wanted to go to war to divert attention from the economy, and that Hitler did the exact same thing.

Now, if you're going to be nitpicky about it (and just so you know, we really hate nitpickers), maybe she was right. The economy isn't doing too great, and people aren't too happy about that, but we really wish they'd quit blaming us.

Everything was so much easier last year. Almost everybody liked us, and the people who didn't like us were our enemies, and we knew who they were. The world was on our side, and we could do anything we wanted.

We could drop bombs on Afghanistan, and we did, and that was a lot of fun, but it was over too soon and we got bored. Then we looked around one day and realized that we weren't as popular as we used to be. We could do things wrong again, and that really scared us.

So we came up with this idea, which we thought was good, and we were pretty darn proud of it until the Germans had to come along and be rude: we decided to start another war against Iraq. We figured everybody already hated Saddam Hussein, so attacking him would be an easy way to make people like us. And just like in Afghanistan, we could have fun dropping bombs, and get points for fighting terrorism at the same time.

True, Saddam hadn't actually done anything to us, but we figured out a way around that little problem. We knew Saddam really, really didn't want to let in weapons inspectors, so we told him he had to or we were going to start a war. Only Saddam, being the world's biggest spoilsport, decided to agree unconditionally to what we asked for.

That really made us mad. If you ask us, the only thing more annoying than having friends who don't agree with you is having enemies who do.
So naturally, with Saddam being so darn unhelpful, all we could do was increase our demands, and sure enough, that worked. So right now, we feel pretty proud of ourselves, and if anybody tries to say that Hitler did the same thing in Czechoslovakia, we're just going to stick our fingers in our ears and hum loudly until they go away.

That's what we've been doing whenever Germany comes around trying to apologize. They're probably feeling pretty alone and unpopular right now. Not that we care. After all, how do they think it felt to be publicly criticized by one of our best friends? When we heard that Germany was still against us going to war, we decided right then and there that we were never ever going to be friends with Germany again, no matter how much they begged.
Just to rub it in, we didn't call the Gerhard Schröder like we were supposed to when he got reelected. He probably sat by the phone that whole evening, waiting for us to call. He should have known you don't criticize our judgment and get away with it.

After all, it's not easy being popular. You have to know who your friends are.