There has been some Internet blather about the U.S. “carpet bombing” Afghanistan.

Heh. In addition to fuel-air explosives, smart bombs, and about 8,800 M1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks, the United States currently maintains 5,113 nuclear warheads. The United States was the first to develop nuclear weapons and is the only country to have used them in warfare–the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought World War II to a close.

If the U.S. carpet bombed Afghanistan, there would be darned few men, women, children, poppies, or blades of grass left standing.

Let us switch hats for a moment. Regular readers know I usually wear the comfortable straw hat favored by Librarians at the beach. Today, let us pretend we are wearing the bicycle helmet of the Liberal Left so we can play “Let’s Pretend” with no worrisome consequences of political incorrectness.

Today we shall imagine that history has swapped our homelands.

Sunni is the largest branch of Islam but since the 16th century the Twelver Shi’i have become the dominant Shi’a sect and one that rules in several countries. The Shi’a led a precarious until the 16th century when the Safavid dynasty established Shi’a as the state religion of Persia. That gave the Twelver Shi’a support, protection, and state money. They built major theological centers in Esfahan, Meshed, Najaf, and Qom and looked to other worlds for expansion.

The iman Hassan as-Salat made the perilous journey to the New World in the mid-1700s and settled with his brethern and his 24 wives in the fertile lands of Virginia. Hassan as-Salat and his followers largely drove the Christian settlers into seclusion and, in 1776, declared America a Muslim state and cut its ties to King George.

At about the same time, George Washington gathered a group of rebels together and sailed the other direction. They settled in the Persian lands known today as the states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Egypt, the Emirates, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Yemen, where they fought an arduous guerilla war and formed the United States of Southwest Asia, at that time the only democracy in the world.

American Muslim voters elected Mahmoud Imadinnerjacket President of the Islamic Republic of America in 1995. He reports to the Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hoseyni Khamenei. Voters in the United States of Southwest Asia elected General Colin Patton as President of the U.S.S.A. in 2008. General Patton had planned an executed a stunning attack on American infrastructure in 2001 when he burned the World Mosque Center to the ground.

The seven building World Mosque Center complex was located in the heart of New York City’s downtown financial district. Its 13.4 million square feet included over two million set aside for worship and religious studies. Although not Mecca, it was the second most popular pilgrimage destination in the Islamic world. Mecca itself, located in the state of Saudi Arabia’s Makkah township in the United States of Southwest Asia remains the most popular Islamic pilgrimage. The U.S.S.A. granted unfettered passage and automatic visas to all Muslims to cross to Mecca at any time.

President Imadinnerjacket has the entire American arsenal at his fingertips with which to retaliate.

Will he send in the tanks to root out General Patton and to burn Patton’s statue in a public square? Or will he send the B52s to melt all of the United States of Southwest Asia into a puddle of glowing glass?

I’m pretty sure we know the answer to that.

Me? I’m off to buy a new hat before they all get incinerated.