Pandora and the cactus

It's quite possible that the situation in Iraq is beyond a "rational" Western solution.

Nothing against rationality. It got held up in traffic and just may be a little too late to save the heroine from the buzzsaw.

We've ripped the scab off a very very old, very very bad wound. The kind that lasts for centuries.

Are we slouching toward Armageddon? Well, here's how our own Ambassador to Iraq repeatedly describes the situation: Pandora's Box.

That's swell. So, then what?

A look at the Pandora myth suggests two alternative interpretations. Pandora closed the box before a final property escaped (which it eventually did).

Was this last offering from the gods "hope" ...or a final folly, "delusion"?

Hope is considered an evil in this story because according to Hesiod it implies the control of the future, and since no one can control the future, to have hope is to be deluded. Other people think that Hope being left in the box symbolizes Hope often being humanity's only comfort.

There's an old joke where a man walking through the desert finds another man, who has thrown off his clothes and impaled himself on a cactus. He asks the naked man why he did it. The reply? "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Well, we're naked and bleeding in the desert. We don't have much of an explanation, and there's little prospect of a painless way out.

Given that, "cutting and running" sounds as good as any alternative I can think of. Oh, and a side order of impeachment, please. Make it a double.