The age-old question: Surge or Pull Out?

When a question gets too complicated to understand and resolve I try to reframe the issue in terms that are easier to comprehend. Take, for example, the current US political debate about the major issue in the Middle East, which goes something like this:

Should the U.S. stay in Iraq? Do we let the surge complete, or do we pull out before the job is finished?

One side argues that the surge is working; that even if the US shouldn’t have gone into Iraq in the first place, now we’re there and we owe it to them to stick it out until the end; that if we pull out now it will be a disaster for those we leave behind. The other side argues that our involvement is not working, staying only makes it worse, and the longer we stay the longer we’ll have to live (and die) with the failed consequences. Complex concepts are involved: Democracy, Self-Determination, Imperialism, Terrorism, Energy & Economies, Security, Life, Death, Right, Wrong.

Heady stuff. Too complicated for almost anyone to understand in these terms. So let’s try to reframe the issue in terms that are more familiar. Most of us are not familiar with finding ourselves, personally, in a mess in the Middle East. But of a lot of us may be familiar with this situation: you’re a teenager making out in the back of your parent’s car in a dark parking spot and you’ve gone farther than you originally anticipated. What do you do, continue the surge or pull out?

Continue the surge, or pull out?

For those of you not following yet, let me clarify the analogous substitutions:

• For "Middle East" think "back seat of your parents’ car"
• For "U.S." think "boy" or, if you must, "penis"
• For "Iraq" think "girl" or, if you must, "vagina"
• For "surge" think (come on, do you really need a new term?) "ejaculation"
• For "pull out"? (you really want a new term? You don’t get one.)

So the problem is a lot easier to understand now. Right? Here it is again, written twice, once without substitution (for those with brains who can do it in their head) and written again for those who don’t like to think (that’s you, GWB):

1. The question about the issue in the Middle East is this: Should the U.S. stay in Iraq? Do we let the surge complete, or do we pull out before the job is finished?
   
   
2. The question about the issue in the back seat of your parents’ car is this: Should the penis stay in the vagina? Do we let the ejaculation complete, or do we pull out before the job is finished?

Now it’s an issue we can all understand and really debate. We can all now see how we might have gotten ourselves into a situation for which we weren’t fully prepared—how we may have planned for months to penetrate Iraq without giving sufficient thought about what to do after that primary mission was accomplished.

If we pull out now, before the job is finished, both parties are sure to experience a period of disappointment—they’re probably going to have to finish the job alone. Maybe there will be messy years of Iraqi-on-Iraqi action. But if we stay in, we’re going to have to do the decent thing and pay for our momentary decision for a long long time (at least the next eighteen years, or longer if the little democracy we've created goes to college).

There. Is it all clear now? I hope so.

It is my sincere hope that I’ve done my small part to make these important issues easier to discuss, and made the questions easier to answer. Most of all I hope that each time you hear a politician or pundit say "surge" or "pull out" you’ll feel a little tingle in your bikini area.


Posted From: The Cape
Mood: Tingly
Now listening to: Pair of Dice Buy the Baath or Shiites