Military Intelligence, Military Muscle, Military Fabulosity

by Andrew Tibbetts

I read yesterday that the U.S. military once considered developing a chemical weapon which when dropped on enemy soldiers would fill them with irresistible homosexual desire for each other. This “distasteful but completely non-lethal” bomb was conceived to deliver a punishing blow to the enemy’s morale.

Um.

Okay.

There are so many things wrong with this idea that it’s hard to know where to begin. My biggest fear is that I will miss some of them.

Let’s dive in: This plan assumes that ordinarily warriors aren’t hot for each other. Haven’t they heard of the navy? It also assumes a gay army will be an easier adversary. Haven’t they heard of Sparta? Don’t they remember how gay England acted when it had an empire? And just on the basics: the plan demonstrates a breathtaking lack of scientific knowledge, a stunning social psychological ignorance and a flaming insensitivity to irony. Who runs the military’s R+D department? Eleven year old boys? (Apparently the same proposal suggests a fart bomb, and a chemical that gives enemy spies easily detectable bad breath- so perhaps ‘eleven’ is a too sophisticated a conjecture.)

If you’ve ever done a group brainstorming exercise for some corporate job or other, you know the perky hired consultant will encourage you to come up with your craziest, most creative ideas- “at this stage of the game there are no bad ideas, folks, let's send our inner critics out for lunch, think outside the box, I want nutty, I want wild!”- and despite that, you know that no one will suggest a gay bomb.

Sure, I would like to drop a gay bomb on the cast of Ocean’s Thirteen (as long as I wasn’t next to Elliot Gould at point of impact) or on Stephen Harper’s next speech at the Empire Club (as long as I was only watching on closed circuit TV, and hadn’t just eaten,) (do you think this sentence will set off a bell in some CSIS office and get me on a list?) but I know wishes aren’t horses. And gay wishes aren’t pink unicorns cavorting under a giant rainbow- DUCK!- are you gay now? Gayer?

Can you picture the insurgents in Iraq suddenly taking time off their insurgency to spruce up their hidey-holes, invite some of the boys over for a fabulous brunch and settle down to watch My Life on the D-List?- “Omar, have you lost weight? You’ve been working out? Who is he? Is it that Mohammad from the bunker on Fifth Street? I knew it! Girlfriend, you are shameless!”- Eventually, they’ll pair up and adopt Chinese babies. Invest in the Fallujah IKEA now, folks!

Crippling blow to morale, my ass! The world would be a damn sight better after a good gay bombing. Happier, more stylish and with less depressed women. Get to work, military! It’s not getting any more fabulous out here in the real world on its own.