Monday, May 03, 2004

I can think of another word

Garry Trudeau interviewed on the recent Doonesbury storyline showing a character losing a leg in Iraq:

Iraq feels like a compressed version -- Vietnam on an accelerated timetable," he said. "The sorts of mistakes we're making are unique to Iraq, but their consequences are just as dire as they were in Vietnam. And the outlook is just as bleak."

And a BBC columnist says "Events in Iraq have been spinning out of control so fast on so many fronts that the W word -- withdrawal -- is now being mentioned." And he quotes a "senior defence analyst" as saying (emphasis mine):

It begins to look as though there is going to be a rather messy political solution to the whole affair, possibly brokered by the United Nations. Expect to see an agreement where both sides can claim some sort of a victory, followed by a rather hasty withdrawal of coalition troops at some stage in the next six months.

That's not the first time someone has suggested we should just declare victory and get the fuck out. It's an old business strategy. Several years ago at one of the tech companies I worked for, there was a project in trouble. We were doing it in partnership with a customer; they were paying part of the project's costs. At one point my company decided to back out once the next milestone was reached. On that day, there was a party, we handed out t-shirts that said "We did it!" and the next Monday cancelled the rest of the project.

In the case of Iraq, there would be two t-shirts. One would have a picture of George W. in his flight suit and say Mission Accomplished! The other would have a picture of Saddam Hussein looking like the guy on the cover of the Aqualung album and read We got him! Then we can all go home.

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