George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 106

< Episode 105 >

“What is this?”

German Chancellor Schröder stared at the report in his hand, rubbing his eyes and looking again. It was quite an exaggerated gesture, but there was a reason he had to do it.

In the 21st century, a mass migration of people was unfolding. Of course, stories of people or nations moving were common events throughout history, but no one expected this to happen in the early 21st century.

Except for the people in Iraq.

First, there was West Iraq. Despite extensive support from Europe, Iraqi citizens were burdened with absurdly high taxes. The West Iraqi government’s plan was as follows:

‘Let’s use the money from Europe for large-scale national projects, such as infrastructure reconstruction, and use taxes to create a heavenly welfare system on West Iraqi soil that surpasses any other country on Earth!’ At first glance, it seemed like a perfectly achievable goal.

Because even though it wasn’t quite the Cold War era, the desire to compete between the Eastern and Western blocs still remained. In fact, it was more like ‘We can’t lose to those bastards!’ but that alone was enough to ignite competition to support Iraq.

Iraq was planning to use the money it received from Europe to build everything from roads to water pipes, and even dams. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had just done this, but both the West and the East had the same thought: ‘We absolutely cannot lose to those bastards!’

East and West Iraq thought similarly to Europe and Russia, but this is where a slight divergence occurred. The infrastructure that East Iraq envisioned was somewhat different from what West Iraq had in mind.

East Iraq thought like this:

‘Let’s use the money from Europe for large-scale national projects such as infrastructure reconstruction, and use taxes to create a heavenly welfare system on East Iraqi soil that is superior to any other country on Earth!’

If you’re thinking, ‘Isn’t that exactly the same as West Iraq, word for word, except for the speaking entity being East Iraq!’ the problem was that the ‘entity’ was different.

West Iraq’s idea of infrastructure was secular, including parks, department stores, hospitals, police stations, or the reconstruction of ports destroyed during the war, while East Iraq’s infrastructure was mostly mosques. Large prayer halls where Muslims gather to pray. If West Iraq tried to create a welfare paradise, East Iraq tried to create a gateway to heaven on earth.

West Iraq’s ‘can’t lose’ was focused on ‘infrastructure scale,’ while East Iraq’s ‘absolutely can’t lose’ was focused on ‘religious scale.’ This was due to the unique characteristic of the Islamic fundamentalism of the East Iraqi government, which tried to go in the opposite direction of West Iraq no matter what.

Islamic fundamentalism basically advocates anti-Jewish and anti-Western sentiments, so it could be seen as a kind of ‘antithesis to the West.’ However, since the East Iraqi government was receiving money from Russia, it was trying to promote the view that Russia was an exception to the public, but even this was only a small part, and most of them had the view that ‘Now, Russia, get out!’

It was a contradictory view considering that they were being maintained with money from Russia, but what could they do since that was their nature? Of course, they weren’t stupid enough to not think that the system had to be solid in the face of both internal and external conflicts, so it seemed that all men, from children to grandfathers, had to receive military training.

Usually, this would create a disorganized mob, but ironically, it turned out like this:

“Number 102! You’ll die on the battlefield if you do that! Get down! Adjust your sights as you go down! We’ll do it as we come up! 50 repetitions!!!”

“Adjust! I will! Adjust!! I will!!!”

Thanks to Russian capital and military advisors, the East Iraqi army was gradually transforming into a strong, human-weapon force.

Thus, the places where East Iraq’s budget was spent were usually the restoration of infrastructure and oil fields that existed before the war. However, the development of oil fields fell into the hands of Russia, and East Iraq received various military equipment in return.

The other place where the budget was spent was the construction of the largest mosque in history, the ‘Baghdad Mosque.’ Since Islamic fundamentalism had seized power in East Iraq, the idea was proposed to build a mosque that was larger and more magnificent than any other mosque in the world, and it was immediately approved.

Russia saw this and thought, ‘Well, it could happen,’ but it didn’t take long for them to realize that this judgment was a fatal mistake.

Because they realized that what they were trying to build was not just a huge building, but a kind of giant structure that could easily dwarf skyscrapers.

What East Iraq was trying to build was not simply the largest mosque in the world, but the tallest and largest building in the world. A huge construction project that could take years. Even finding an architect was a difficult task.

They despaired at the fact that they couldn’t find someone who suited their tastes domestically, but unfortunately, some sage from the government appeared and said:

“It doesn’t matter what race they are, we can just teach them the doctrines of Islam!”

And as luck would have it, this argument worked, and the matter was dramatically resolved unanimously, and things gradually started to work out. It was an opinion that would never have been accepted under normal circumstances, but the East Iraqi government was that desperate.

Of course, Russia said, ‘If you’re going to spend money on that kind of thing, we’ll stop supporting you!’ before things got even more twisted. At best, they were issuing threats of terrorist attacks on East Iraqi oil facilities, such as ‘You’re ignoring us! Try to stand up to us! We’ll show you what a spicy taste of large-scale terrorism is like!’ or ‘You’ve never seen anyone set fire to their own house, have you? Hey! Try it! I’ll kill you!’ But amazingly, the East Iraqi government replied like this.

“We will attack West Iraq.”

The Russian government had to doubt several times whether the interpreter was crazy or whether the official document had been tampered with, as it was such an unimaginable nonsense.

However, if they told them to try it, they would really set fire to West Iraq right away, and Russia’s face would be lost because they couldn’t control even a small country. If even a tiny country could not be controlled according to Russia’s will, how could they be called a great power or a superpower, and how could they discuss the glory and revival of the Soviet Union?

However, if they tried to suppress the government, the remaining people were only those who completely agreed with the government’s ideology, so it was almost impossible to do anything. Therefore, Russia decided to just stand by. But there was no way Russia would just stand by and take it. Russia siphoned money from Iraq’s abundant oil facilities to cover the money that would go into supporting East Iraq.

This was because they judged that it was better to have the country ruined by building a building than by war. Russia gained almost no real income from ruling East Iraq. At best, it was just being able to look forward to the future.

Let’s go back to West Iraq. At first glance, West Iraq doesn’t seem to have any problems at all, but if you look inside, there are quite a few problems. It’s good to rebuild infrastructure and attract investment, but they were squandering their support to create the best welfare in the world, and when they ran out of money, they naturally started squeezing the people’s taxes.

At first, they recognized that taxes were necessary for a proper government to function, and they faithfully paid according to the tax bills, but as time went by, they quickly got tired of the increasingly inconsistent and complex taxation system.

However, they weren’t completely stupid, so there weren’t ‘yet’ any absurd things like a breathing tax or a life tax, but other than that, they had everything that they thought was absurd. In other words, taxes were levied on every action taken by West Iraqis.

All West Iraqi citizens were reluctant to live in Iraq, and by the time the government noticed, many citizens had already crossed over to Europe, and many illegal immigrants had been created in Europe. It wasn’t really all West Iraqis, but at least the majority of West Iraqis felt that way.

The West Iraqi government, which had been having a great time partying, wondered what was going on with the decreasing tax revenue, and only then did they investigate and realize that the population was decreasing due to emigration. Therefore, it would have been great if the West Iraqi government had lowered taxes because they couldn’t stand it anymore, but the West Iraqi government did not do so and came to the following tremendous conclusion.

“We have no choice but to import citizens from somewhere!”

It was a statement that was so absurd that it was almost suicidal, but who cares? In theory, it was excellent. Even the United States, which West Iraq admired, was a country where all the races on Earth lived together, wasn’t it?

The problem was where to import this ‘citizen’ product from, but this problem was solved surprisingly easily. It was none other than China who offered to provide it.

China, which had to pull money from anywhere, traded its own people. In fact, it was hard to call them their own people, as they were non-citizens who were not registered in the census register. China had a basic principle of one child per household due to the ‘Planned Birth Policy’ [a population control policy implemented in China from 1979 to 2015], which was a kind of birth control policy, but in rural areas, boys were basically preferred, so farmhouses often committed illegal acts.

The law itself was a law that violated human rights head-on, but there’s also the saying that even bad laws are laws. Socrates never actually said that, but Socrates did comply with bad laws. Anyway, by 2002, nearly ten million unregistered people, that is, non-citizens, had been created in China.

China decided to send these non-citizens to West Iraq in exchange for receiving a considerable amount of euros from Iraq. Thus, West Iraq prospered at Mach speed! It would have been great if that were the case, but the reality was not so easy.

“Is this China? Or is it Iraq?”

Newspaper articles like the one above came out every day. It would have been fine if that was all, but the biggest problem was that most of them were unskilled laborers who had not been educated. In addition, unlike the existing Iraqis who faithfully paid taxes even if they had complaints, the Chinese who became Iraqis did not pay faithfully. However, if they were put in prison, the prison would be full, and if they were to build new prisons and put them all in, that would cost money too.

The West Iraqi government decided to ‘consume’ them in most infrastructure reconstruction, expansion, and construction, thinking, ‘Isn’t this all for nothing?’ They decided to openly discriminate against Chinese immigrants to Iraq and offset them with very low wages. This situation was not outwardly revealed, but the difference was clearly revealed in the bank accounts and welfare treatment of Iraqis and Chinese-Iraqis.

The European Union, unable to bear to see this, demanded that this inhumane and outdated racial discrimination be ended, but there was nothing West Iraq could do. If they were to reduce the scale of infrastructure construction now, the jobs of Chinese-Iraqis would disappear and West Iraq would become a ghost kingdom, and if they were to pay proper wages, the country would dry up.

So what happened to those immigrants?

“Seriously, what is this?”

Chancellor Schröder had already rubbed his eyes once, but he still couldn’t believe it, so he washed his eyes again and looked at the report.

The report described that the number of illegal Iraqi immigrants had increased very, very, very greatly. They were flocking not only from Iraq but from the entire Middle East, and although they were initially filtered out in Turkey, the number was still enormous even after that one filtering.

Illegal immigrants from East Iraq, who were tired of their twisted faith, and from West Iraq, who were tired of high taxes, were pouring into Europe in large numbers. That alone wouldn’t be a big problem. Europe had been accepting many immigrants on humanitarian grounds, so this time would be no different.

The problem was that the refugees who had come in the past were from the same European sphere, but this time they were from the Middle East, which was a completely different cultural sphere.

“So, what exactly is this protest? Could you tell me one more time?”

“It’s a Sharia protest. It’s the foundation of Islamic culture and is autonomous…”

“Skip the detailed explanation and summarize it in one word?”

“It’s a protest demanding Islamic autonomy within Germany.”