By Sukie de la Croix

I was interested to read about the dramatic increase in the issuance of moral waivers allowing criminals to join the Army and Marine Corps, including child molesters and rapists, while at the same time gay men and lesbians are being discharged as unsuitable.

Rather than allow educated and qualified men and women to serve, the government would rather the U.S. military be taken over by a gang of “heterosexual” thugs with prison tattoos. As if ex-cons have had no experience of sodomy while behind bars—yeah, right!

However, the more I think about it, the more an army of felons seems like a good idea, as long as the criminal recruits are assigned to the right regiments. You wouldn’t want Staff Sgt. Lucrezia Borgia, who poisoned five husbands and six of her children, working in the kitchens, now would you? You don’t want the Dame of Deadly Doses passing out MRE field ration packets containing a delicious spaghetti and arsenic sauce, with a side dish of rat poison and cyanide brûlé for dessert.

The lube that oils the wheels of the military is camaraderie, and troop morale is important even for a regiment of ex-killers, or should that be Killaz, e.g. you’d have to separate the Bloods and the Crips—when you’ve spent 10 years carving shanks out of toothbrushes and fighting over who controls the north right-hand corner of the prison yard near the comfy bench, you can’t expect those deep cultural wounds to heal overnight.

I also wouldn’t put deadbeat dads and child molesters in the same regiment either—deadbeat dads don’t care about their kids and child molesters care about their kids a LOT. The potential for pimping out your daughter—I don’t want to think about it.

I would also strongly suggest putting the East Coast Rappers in Iraq and the West Coast Rappers in Afghanistan, keeping black-on-black drive-by shootings at a minimum. White corporate criminals could wrap towels around their heads and glue on fake beards and be a covert force infiltrating the upper echelons of Al Qaeda, cooking their books and stealing the insurgents pension funds. That’ll teach ’em!! Latino prisoners should not be allowed to join the military at all. They should be sent to my house where I will find them little jobs to do—and I’m not talking about raking leaves.

Imagine a mud hut in the middle of the desert sheltering 300 heavily armed and hairy arm-pitted insurgents. What would be the best strategy for an army of felons? First you surround the building with flashers and burglars, then you send in a platoon of shoplifters, pickpockets and tax evaders on reconnaissance. Finally you bring out the big guns—the drug lords, burglars, money launderers, stalkers and polygamists. And if all that fails there’s only one weapon left that can wipe out 300 Islamic radicals holed up in a mud hut and that’s a damned good art forger. You need someone who studied at the Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and then went morally off the rails after getting screwed by a gallery owner, someone specializing in the etchings of Rembrandt who is flexible enough to knock off a passable Wassily Kandinsky abstract in a couple of hours.

I guarantee if you put a first-class art forger wearing a beret and sitting at an easel in front of a mud hut full of Islamic terrorists, those turbaned ruffians will become heady with the seductive gas of vigorous brushwork and pass out cold from the sheer romantic impressionism of it all.

Email Sukie de la Croix at delacroix@chicagofreepress.com.