I think the United States should take over Canada. To be honest, I’ve never been there for longer than 30 minutes, but it did seem nice. I do know some people who have been there longer, and they absolutely loved it. Based on their assessment, I think Canada would be a good acquisition.

The United States is due for some expansion. We haven’t added any land since we bought Alaska. Canada seems like our best option because it’s close and, aside from cheap booze, it has much more to offer than Mexico.

An invasion of Canada would finally show the Alaskans we care about them. Instead of bringing them to the contiguous United States, we’d be bringing the contiguous United States to them.

Also, we must keep in mind the benefits of making Canada a part of the United States. We’d have delicious spring water and a respectable Olympic bobsled team.

The initial takeover of Canada would probably go much smoother than our invasion of the Branch Davidian compound. As long as our troops don’t try to sneak any fruit across the border, our tanks wouldn’t have any trouble getting past the border patrol.

Canada’s military isn’t really anything to worry about either. Their 70,000 troops (World Almanac 1999) are fine to defend against, say, a boat full of drunken fishermen armed with rocks and crooked sticks. They’d have a hard time defending against our 1.484 million troops.

With Ottawa, Canada’s capitol, so close to the American border, we could complete our takeover in less than a day. I just hope this can be completed before the baseball season so we don’t have to sit through two national anthems whenever we watch a Toronto Blue Jays game.

The only real threat to this brilliant scheme is the possibility of other countries sending real armies over there to kick us out.

This concerns me for a couple reasons. First, I’m eligible for the draft, and I know that if I was in the Army I would quickly be shot and killed, probably by my own commanding officer.

Second, based on the caliber of the guys I know who joined the Army, we would lose. In fact, I’m kind of surprised they haven’t gotten us all killed already.

But before I made these wild claims, I called the local Army recruiter to see what he had to say about what kinds of individuals joined the Army. Based on what he said, he almost had me believing we have a bunch of Ph.D.s running around in camouflage and shiny black boots.

“[The Army] turns away more people than it takes in,” he said. “The Army is actually harder to get into than the police.”

After talking to this guy, I didn’t know what to think. Just the other day I saw how the Army was going to start recruiting more high school dropouts. Now, this recruiter was trying to convince me that the Army is filled with this countries finest young men and women.

I don’t know if everything he told me was true or not, but after thinking about it for a while, I realized it doesn’t matter who is in our Army, as long as we have one. There isn’t a country in the world who would be willing to fight us. Soldiers from other countries are too afraid of Americans.

This can all be attributed to movies and television. American movies are big hits all around the world. That means non-Americans get to see countless hours of American heroes such as Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Steven Segal and Wesley Snipes single-handedly kick the piss out of entire armies.

If that’s not enough to give them a warped view of Americans, they also get to watch us play fun American sports, such as football, on TV. To them, football is a cute little game where men in short shorts try to kick a little white ball into a net.

When they see America’s version of football includes large, bloodthirsty men chasing down other large, bloodthirsty men and trying to rip their heads off, they begin to get a little bit leery of Americans.

Soccer players will try to tell you that soccer is more violent than football, but they just have an inferiority complex.

Other countries may send troops to liberate Canada, but once they see our troops lined up, they will be reminded of all those movies they watched back home. They’ll think to themselves: “If one unarmed American can kill 100 men, just think what a whole army with bazookas can do!”

They will quickly drop their weapons and swim back to Europe thinking it their only chance for survival.

With Congress done with the impeachment thing, it’s time for them to realize that Canada is ours for the taking.

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Peter Borchers is a sophomore in advertising from Bloomington, Minn. He has been committed to the military’s mental ward for extensive testing.