Breaking News: Iceland declares war on Azawad

In a canny move of triangulation, designed to distract the attention of the voters from the ongoing financial meltdown,  Iceland today declared war on the newly free and independent state of Azawad.   The reaction on Wall Street was favorable.  “You get the ‘moral equivalent of war’, so that the workers will get in line and drop their wage demands, but without the expense and bother of actually fighting.”

In a surprise development, the newly-founded free and independent Popular People’s Republic of Azawad, apparently having not got the memo to the effect that Western politicians need not mean what they say, took the declaration seriously, and announced the initiation of hostilities.  But in a comic mishap of the sort that history is filled with, owing to a typographical error, Azawad declared war on Ireland rather than Iceland.   (Professional historians will recall the amusing incident  in which the Neo-Cons, desiring to invade Iran,  accidentally invaded Iraq instead.)  That automatically triggered the Ireland - Scotland mutual defense treaty, which dates back to the Middle Ages (Concordia Eire - Caledonia);  this in turn dragged in the entire navy of the British Empire.

Feeling cornered and unfairly outnumbered, Azawad has accordingly launched wave upon wave of suicide bombers against all the major capitals of northern Europe.   The response of Europeans so far has been to panic and flee -- some of them, ironically, requesting asylum in Azawad, which has quickly become the #1 destination for opportunist exiles.

Icelandic warfleet  takes to the waves

Speaking through an interpreter in the Touareg dialect, newly-installed Azawadi Prime Minister Abu-Mitt ag Romney observed:  “We see this, not as a problem, but as an investment opportunity. In war-torn Iraq, Cheney and Halliburton demonstrated how easy it is for insiders to make out big-time; personally I shall be selling armaments to both sides:  Now that that upstart Victor Bout is off the playing-field, I shall have little competition. As for what Obama’s response might be, I condemn it in advance.”

Azawad’s Minister of Tourism le Docteur Justice (speaking in French) chimed in  in agreement:  “Ceci ne nuira à notre saison touristique en aucun degré.  Inscrivez-vous donc  chez  Tourisme Franco-Azawadi ®.   Simplement, il faut s’éloigner un peu  des régions en flammes.”