Now, at first glance, this can all look nuts. Just damned strange. But hold up! I know you at least got a high school education. So you mustah taken World History at some point, Homes. You couldn't have ditched that class every damned day! Well, if you turn on that memory bank of yours for a sec' here, you oughtah remember that back in the day, in Europe, they used to have all kinds of fightin'.

White folks have always liked to fight each other.

In the history books, of course, they had all these great names for what they was doin': The Crusades, War of the Roses, Hundred Years War.

Think about that one: Hundred Years War. Bunch of white dudes in armor and shit, hacking away at each other with battle axes, jabbin' pikes and beating maces against each others skulls, and it started gettin' good to 'em!

They said, "Whoa, Bud, it don't get no better'n this!"

Arrows fallin' outtah the sky like raindrops, villages burnin', children orphaned, and they wanted to keep at it for a hundred years!

Now some of the smart white folks, they mustah figured, "Hey, Maybe it's gettin' too crowded over here in Europe. We need to start looking for some new real estate." And one of 'em pipes up and says, "Yo! I heard that there's a New World across the ocean blue. Some Spanish guy ran up on it. Columbo, wasn't it?"

"Naw, mate, Columbo weren't Spanish," one of his dockmates corrects him. "He's Italian."

"Spanish, Italian, whatever. He's a foreigner. What we's talkin' about here is fresh real estate, away from these wingnuts armed to the teeth and ready to fight all the time."

"This New World sounds ripe for the pickin' to me," pipes in one of these guys. "Plenty o' land, and the few people over there is dirt poor. I hear they so poor they don't even have money! They goes around naked, they so poor. I seen pictures of 'em."(One of this guy's ancestors would go on to establish National Geographic Magazine.)

So Westward Ho! for these folks, lock, stock, barrel and social diseases.

All this considered, those white folks spoiling for a fight up in their enclaves don't seem so strange at all, Homes. They's always harpin' on their European ancestry. Them Hundred Years War genes had to come out sometime or another, I figure....

Radio Raheem

He's in his own country, in his own army, so the brother don't really expect this to be anything other than a boring-ass drive in the middle of winter.

Well, turns out he's wrong.

Half way down there, truck loses an axle, and come to find out not one vehicle in the convoy got the wherewithal to make the necessary repairs. So they leave the vehicle by the side of the road and head for the nearest town to get assistance. Thing is, they get back, no truck, no heat-seekin' missiles.

I know it looks bad. But this is the United States Army we are talkin' about here. These people are there because they mean to be all they can be!

Brother was up for Staff Sargeant before this went down, so he rallies the troops and says, "Hey, Ya'll, we got the training, we got the know-how, let's just track down these suckers and recover the government's property." (It's possible! Go with me on this, okay?)

He sends the rest of the convoy on their way, and he and a small unit remain behind in the piney woods to track down the perpetrators. Using their best skills, they soon locate tire tracks indicating the direction the truck was towed, and they follow.

After some false starts, some misinformation from malicious locals, and two days trackin', they close in on a wooded area only ten miles away. More tire tracks now, definitely their vehicle.

Nightfall settles in as the brother is following tire tracks, then lots of footprints in the fresh fallen snow with his flashlight. He starts to worry that the flashlight might give him away if he gets too close on the trail.

What's wrong this picture? THE FLASHLIGHT!

This the United States Army, remember? The most high-tech, sophisticated army in the world. Why is the brother worried about being given away by a flashlight? Why doesn't he just break out them night-vision, infrared goggles?

You remember back during the Persian Gulf War, CNN was constantly showin' everything in night-vision.

I was thinkin' that was what made it look so much like Nintendo, all those dark backgrounds with missiles streakin' through them and tanks blowin' up and shit! For all you could tell, everyone of our damned soldiers was like Terminator Jr.

Iraqui attack at night? No problem! This is the high-tech American Army. We can see and kill in the dark.

One thing, though, which kindah went as a footnote to this great show was that the Japanese were financing this deal. Wall Street had no problem with sending hundreds of thousands of troops over there, but hey! America was already in debt up to its eyeballs.

So what made George Bush such a darling, what sent his popularity ratings over 90%, was not that he had drawn a line in the sand, but that he had waged war on the cheap. He and Jim Baker had strong-armed the Japanese -- who wouldn't send any troops since they don't have much of an army anyway, but who would benefit from the oil -- into springing for part of the cost of the Gulf War and loaning the cash for the rest.

It's that second part which brings us to the brother in the woods: the Japanese loan.

Once the war was over, the bill came due and payable and started accruing interest. "Mr. President, the Japanese are on the line. And they say we can keep our cheap real estate, they already got burned on that once."

"What are our options here, Bill?"

"Well, we got some military bases we can shut down and sell off, call it part of the Peace Dividend. That means we could sell off some equipment."

"I like it!"

"Don't see much need for them night-vision goggles anymore..."

"Sell 'em! Sell 'em all!"

Meanwhile, you've got your urban police chief looking at the CNN footage and goin': "Mr. Mayor, can you imagine what a bite we could put on crime with those babies? Why we could root out the crack dealers, the scumbags, the hookers! Criminy, I'd love to get my hands on a few gross o' those for the boys down on the beat!"

These things have a way of converging...

But don't believe that inner city cops were the only folks in the market for night-vision eyewear. If you believe that, then you never heard of Soldier of Fortune magazine, have you, Homie?

Naw, you got any products with combat potential and the world is your oyster. That's why the United States is the biggest arms dealer on the planet. You won't find many clothes anymore that say Made in USA, but I dare you to go to any warzone on earth and not find Made in USA written all over it.

And then, of course, there's our own domestic-variety Hundred Years War bad genes types just spoiling to have somethin' jump off. You'll find a redneck in a mountain shack in Iowa right now guarding his right to bear arms from the vantage of a lookout post, wearing infrared night-vision goggles.

But stop your average American troop, say in Haiti, and say, "Yo, Brother, let me see them fancy, high-tech, night-vision goggles of yours."

"Get away from me, Fool, 'fore I have to hurt you!"

"Naw, man, I'm serious! I'd really like to take a look at them!"

"I look like Special Forces to you? You get your ass away from here!"

Like I said, these things have a way of converging... The brother in the woods? Well he and his team made out all right, even without them high-tech goggles.

They tracked down their quarry the old-fashioned way and recovered the vehicle and the missiles. Brotherman made Staff Sargeant and then retired to a civilized country: Belize, where there ain't so many folks armed to the teeth and spoiling to hurt each other.