'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

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.