Yankee imperialist running dogs

WHY HAVE old school communists, loathsome tyrants and bad guys (real and fictional) corned the market on the best quotable putdowns? From simple observations to truisms to insults, they always seem to have the edge.

Like perpetually being on the losing side of a “Yo Mamma” joke contest, us nice folks keep coming up short. It’s embarrassing. Oh, sure, we in the West come up with gems like “The Arsenal of Democracy” or “Remember the Alamo” or “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” or “I have but one life to give for my country.” And we congratulate ourselves for sloganeering profundities like “Hope you can believe in” or “Give peace a chance” or even “Shit happens.”

But none of these sayings hold a candle to Chairman Mao’s “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” KA-POW! Take that you miserable – wait for it – "running dogs of capitalism," yet another saying sourced to Mao. Don’t you hate when a Russian Marxist revolutionary like Vladimir Lenin is on the record – forever – for saying, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth?” He’s right, and there’s no getting around it. And then there is Joseph “Uncle Joe” Stalin, WWII’s version of Darth Vader. Where does an ex-peasant who was drunk on vodka half the time go to learn immortal but bloodcurdling zingers like “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic” or “Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.” Yikes.

Even despotic flunkies have gotten into the act. During China's Boxer Rebellion, a minor Chinese official succinctly expressed his disdain for foreigners: "Take away your missionaries and your opium and you will be welcome." The speechless Britisher on the receiving end of that brief obviously “got served” big-time. Oh, and on your way out, just disregard all of those “Yankee Go Home” placards, another anti-West slogan that has endured the test of time.

And who can forget Saddam Hussein’s timeless pledge to wage “The Mother of all Battles” against us in the first Gulf War. True, we kicked his butt and turned his phrase into a punch line. But Saddam words are hopelessly part of our vernacular now, right? Rhetorically, heads he wins, tails we lose.

Which brings us to our latest tormentor: Muammar Muhammad al-Qaddafi. Now that we’re bombing his desert nation back to the proverbial Stone Age, the “Mad Dog of Libya” has taken to calling us the “Crusader, Colonial Aggressors.” Happily, this doesn’t ring like, say, “Yankee imperialist running dogs.” Maybe we’ll get lucky and Qaddaffi’s words won’t stick to the sands of time like those of his fellow despots.

Let’s face it, when it comes to rhetorical putdowns, tyrants do it better. So, I guess we in the West will just have to live with being despised as the “foreign devils” as the price of our freedom – and our right to “make love, not war” slogans.