Think you're smarter than Cobra Commander? Prove it!

The upcoming live-action GI Joe movie makes me wonder which Doper among us is best suited to conquering the Earth, given resources. The fact that I’m waiting to get my oil changed prompts me to start the thread now.

Here are the rules. For purposes of this thread, you have all the resources that Cobra had in the first 80s mini-series, except that you’ve taken the elementary precaution of poisoning Destro’s soup so he won’t betray you, and that your mercenaries are both able and willing to shoot to kill. We’ll assume that, in terms of manpower and material, your Cobra is about equal to the United States Marine Corps. The action will be taking place in the real world and the present day. Cobra’s base is the island of Singapore, which you conquered through devious means before our story begins; you killed off the government but not the general populace, as obviously you need slaves to work the fields, clean the bathrooms, keep the troops happy, and so forth. The natives are also useful as human shields, of course.

Technologically, your troops have about the same stuff as the United States–with one exception. That, of course, is the MASS device. It can be used either as a straight teleporter or as a weapon of mass destruction; to do the latter you have to begin a transport and purposefully abort. If you do the latter, whatever city you were attacking is utterly annilhilated; there’s no magic undo button as in the series. You have enough of the three elements that power the device to destroy a maximum of 1 city the size of New York; contrariwise, if yourestrict yourself to teleporting troops and so forth, you can stretch the fuel out for years and years.

Conquer the Earth.

I would have to make allies. The US probably and let them use the MASS Device and Cobran-American empire conquers the world. :smiley:

I can’t participate in this thread as your premise has already assumed that I would be stupid enough to enslave the people of Singapore rather than keep the infrastructure left me by the genius Lee Kwan Yew.

You may assume that you have enslaved another island nation if you wish. The prime virtue of having a nation of slaves is their usefulness as human shields. Also of course someone has to clean the bathrooms. It’s not common knowledge, but Napoleon’s invasion of Russia failed largely because of poor sanitary practices.

Ahhh! Water-Loo.

Well there’s your problem right there. I have to assume I enslaved a nation. Slave nations are inferior to modern capitalist ones in every way, so therefore the premise is that I am a stupid tin pot dictator and not an evil mastermind, and therefore the very premise is flawed.

Singapore would be the perfect state from which to launch a campaign of terror and to finance it, if you of course kept it as it is and did everything covertly.

Fine. DON’T enslave Singapore. Just use it as your base.

Ok first off, I’d work on collecting surplus cold war weapons around Central Asia and supply the Taliban with the weapons they need. I’d work on agitating the Baluchi population in Western Pakistan to dilute the military support from the Pakistani military fighting the Pashtun in Waziristan. I’d fund several false flag terrorist operations in India and have Al Qaeda or Laskhar-e-Toiba claim credit for them, or at least have a group claiming to be them do so, funding the operations through the same non-profits that gave aid to Lashkar-e-Toiba and Al Qaeda in the past. I’d help Arabs who want to fight transport to Afghanistan.

I’d probably convince everyone that Lee Kwan Yew is still alive but in seclusion so that no one knows that I am running things. I’d find an ex-Mossad/IDF agent who was a little coo coo and engineer them getting caught poisoning the water supply in Ramallah.

I’d fund terrorist operations on US soil, encouraging Somali youths in Minnesota to go around blowing low-profile dams and bridges, the sorts of conduits that tend not to be well guarded but are important to irrigation or access to rural agricultural areas, or that provide electricity to homes in oil producing regions. I’d try and get some people to cut loose in the Mall of America, or preferrably an even lower profile mall so that the American populace is terrified specifically because it’s low profile meaning that it could happen anywhere. IE, running into some anonymous office park somewhere with an assault rifle, preferrably a couple. I’d train a sniper or three to randomly shoot someone, or even better to shoot low level state politicians who cannot afford security details but to disrupt the patterns so that they cannot be narrowed down regionally. IE, a couple city councilmen killed in Minneapolis one week and a couple in Dallas the next.

I’d kill a few cops in restive areas such as around French Islamic ghettos, and bad parts of Los Angeles in order to foment gang violence and a rivalry with the police. I’d steal drug shipments from one gang and make it look like another gang did it so as to start a gang war. I’d burn down a few Los Angeles suburbs during fire season in a way that very obviously looks like arson.

I’d kill off emergency medical personnel in order to put a tax on civil infrastructure in first world nations as police try to protect EMTs.

I’d destroy pipelines in several places along far flung regional conduits to such as through Georgia or in Nigeria to drive up the price of oil and cause a famine in certain areas.

I’d use some of my military force to enter areas such as the non-governmental zones in Paraguay around Ciudad de Este, and make it seem very clear that they are Americans. I’d kill Zapatista leaders.

I’d send troops to war blighted regions with UN peacekeeping forces and resell captured weapons back to whichever side is losing.

I’d found quasi-missionary terrorist organizations in the name of Evangelical Christianity and have them operate in Muslim parts of Africa such as Somalia.

I’d poison a high profile western politician with Polonium so it appeared like Russia did it.

I’d plant minutemen along the Mexican border and have them murder border jumpers, preferrably by planting a Coyote who is in on it and have one of the border jumpers escape to tell the tale.

I’d work with the Mexican cartels to get them to transport a dirty bomb in with a drug shipment, preferrably unbeknownst to them and alert the DEA so that if they get caught at the border the US decides to send more troops to the border to deal with the cartel problem. If they failed to stop it, I would detonate it either at the height of ski season or or the 4th of July during the Ideas Conference in Aspen.

I’d hire MS13 to perform random mid-profile hits to get MS13 to go up a notch on the FBIs watch list.

I’d smuggle weapons and cash to FARC in Colombia.

I’d hire a supertanker to hold oil reserves off the coast of Singapore in order to indefinitely tie up a part of the limited supply of transoceanic oil transport. I’d hire another one and blow it up in the strait of Hormuz and send a group to help clean it up.

I’d form a Bahai terrorist organization to take credit for attacks in Iran, Iraq, the UAE and Saudi Arabia and do my best to make it look like it was funded by western or Israeli sources.

I’d act as ambassador for Singapore and go to negotiate with North Korea on behalf of the UN but secretly convince Kim Jong Il of a Japanese assassination plot.

I’d fund a Marxist terrorist organization to attack banking interests in the Caymans, Mauritius and Singapore claiming them as the backbone of global capitalist corruption.

I’d hire an Alex Jones type person to spread conspiracy theories about how Singapore is behind all of these plots, and how there is an alien from Sirius who is using Lee Kwan Yew as a puppet in order to enslave the human race.

Can we presume my staff can shoot better than the average Stormtrooper or Cylon?