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August 06, 2006
Can't we all just get along?
In a potentially positive development for the Middle East today, the U.S. and France are circulating a cease-fire plan at the U.N. to end, or at least tone down, the Israeli/Hezbollah conflict.
I'm a little suspicious of this. The U.S. and France working together on a peace plan? This is the diplomatic equivalent of taking your cousin to the prom - sure, you showed up, but nobody is going to take you seriously.
If that's a case of politics making strange bedfellows, current events can also get you sent to the metaphorical couch.
Sheik Safar al-Hawali, a Sunni cleric who apparently helped inspire Osama bin Laden, has called Hezbollah, a Shiite group, "the party of the devil." The devil immediately objected, saying, "Don't bring me into this. I left the Middle East for Las Vegas years ago, and to be honest, I haven't regretted it for one day."
All of this Sunni/Shiite animosity and sectarianism is enough to make you dizzy. As they head towards civil war in Iraq, it's hard to see much of a place for our soldiers there.
Now, I'd never advocate a "cut-and-run" strategy. That's unpatriotic, and I bleed red, white and blue (puzzling Western medicine, by the way). But I'm starting to seriously consider a "mosey-on-out-of-town" approach. I'm thinking we quietly shut down our shop and saunter towards the door. We'll send a postcard when we get home, something along the lines of, "Glad you're not here."
It's the kind of tough-love approach that makes me so popular with the ladies. It's as easy as telling your girlfriend you need to "redeploy your forces over the horizon." And believe me, that kind of talk melts people like butter.
Posted by Greg Sidor at August 6, 2006 12:06 AM