Why We Should Have Invaded Costa Rica Instead of Iraq

A follow-up to my post yesterday afternoon. I was reading the NRO this morning to see what the tough guys and realists thought about the SOTU. (I didn’t hear it – the girlfriend and I purposely went for a walk at 6:00 PM PST.) Mark Steyn did not disappoint:

“You can argue that Iraq is not the most important part of the war but itÂ?s ludicrous to insist that itÂ?s no part of it at all. For one thing, any outcome that can be presented as a US defeat will be a huge boost for our enemies around the world, and be very revealing of our credibility.”

Granted, he was talking about Webb’s response to the SOTU (and no, I didn’t hear that either). But I wonder, if the US had invaded Costa Rica instead of Iraq and GW had managed to steer the campaign into a quagmire in Iraq, would Steyn’s analysis of the situation change? Well, no. After all, the enemies would still be emboldened by a US loss. Therefore, I would like to humbly suggest that it would have made more sense to invade Costa Rica than Iraq. Here are a few reasons:

1. Costa Rica has no military. None.
2. WMDs are no harder to find in Costa Rica than in Iraq
3. More Americans speak the Costa Rican lingo (I understand its some sort of Mexican) than the Iraqi one. That is also true of Americans in the military.
4. Smaller population – less home grown insurgents
5. Fewer bordering countries – less insurgents arriving.
6. Closer to the US – logistics are cheaper.
7. Active volcanoes – the place might be done in by a natural disaster anyway.
8. Voracious man-eating beasts – the Costa Rican population is already under siege from these monstrous predators with whom we can make an alliance.

The good news is that its not too late. Right now the tough guys and the realists are girding their loins to give a good Ledeen doctrining to Iran. (On the cheap, with a limited air campaign, of course – if the latte sipping goldbricking US soldiers had just left their airconditioned spas and gone after the bad guys like the tough guys and the realists told them to, all would be well.) But there is little that can be gained by attacking Iran that can’t be gained attacking Costa Rica. If anyone from the National Review crowd is reading this thing – can’t we just bomb the $% out of Costa Rica instead and save us some taxpayer money?

Update. Note that I am not implying that Iran is not trying to get a bomb. In fact, given the kid gloves toward North Korea, the invasion of non-threatening Iraq, and the now bellicose stance against them by the tough guys and realists, Iran’s leaders would be crazy not to try to develop one. And eventually they will get one (5 years? 10? It depends on how much they deal with the North Koreans and our good buddies in Pakistan.) But after Osirak, they’d also be crazy to build it in such a way that the program could be taken out from the air, and a ground invasion is no longer an option to an administration that can’t even subdue Afghanistan.