Iraq– a very slippery baby

I wonder what they teach ’em in the various “schools of life” where Bombs-Away Don, Wolfie, and rest of the Authors of the Misadventure in Iraq came up? I’ll tell you one very valuable life lesson I learned, back when I had my first baby (Beirut, 1978). It was from the true British classic, Dr. Hugh Jolly’s book of baby-care.
So here’s what I learned from Dr. Jolly. When you’re planning to bath a baby, you have to plan everything well, sort of starting from the end of this complex operation. So what you don’t do is start out by running the bath-water, stripping the clothes off the babe and dunking him in the bath. Becaue if you do that, what happens is– one wet, cold, slippery baby and no clothes or towel to wrap him in!!
Yikes!!
What you’re supposed to do (and every parent who’s ever bathed a baby figures this out pretty fast) is start from the end, figure out the clean clothes you want to put the babe into; find the clean diaper and any ointments, lotions etc you’ll need before slapping the diaper (sorry, nappy) on; dig the little bitty baby hairbrush out from the closet; lay out the towel just so, ready to plunk the baby onto. And then– not a moment before– you can run the bathwater, find the babe, and start undressing him.
I guess in the Pentagon they used to call it an “exit strategy”.
But here’s a suggestion. Why don’t they hand over the handling of all foreign and security policy to people who know a thing or two about the world… people who’ve been active-duty parents… people who know a bit about short-term and long-term planning… people who could tell you that security doesn’t grow out of the barrel of a gun… people who could tell you you don’t just make a massive downpayment on an “exit strategy” from a convicted fraudster and then, without any further planning, plunge the baby straight into the bath?
This present so-called US “policy” in Iraq would be farcical if it weren’t so, well, just plain tragic.