The Miracle of Birth

Many of you are looking at the accompanying image and saying, "That has nothing to do with birth, its a bomb exploding." Any you would be right. The technically savvy among you might say, "That is a napalm bomb exploding", and they would also be right. And you would all be missing the point.

Our Secretary of State, and nascent presidential candidate, Condoleeza Rice has described the Israeli bombs falling on Lebanon as the "birth pangs of a new Middle East". See ? Its a good thing. Now she didn't say whether she meant the "democratic, stable and free Middle East" the Administration has been predicting for some time or the "U.S. dominated secure source of cheap oil Middle East" some skeptics have accused us of seeking, so we guess you can take your pick.

In any case, this birth seems to be taking longer than was originally contemplated when Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld predicted that the Iraq war would take "weeks, not months". Perhaps we should be thinking about inducing labor.

Or maybe we should be thinking about Plan B which is the subject of a Reuters story with sourcing so murky you can't tell if it is a high American or Iraqi official who opines that "Iraq as a political project is finished". Plan B, to continue the baby/birth analogy, involves a Solomonic splitting of the baby (Iraq) in two, East and West. Details of splitting Baghdad remain to be be resolved, but surely enough killing can provide a solution.

Maybe that's what President Bush meant when he responded to President Putin's lack of enthusiasm for Iraqi democracy by saying, "Just wait." Waiting has not turned out to be a productive strategy in Afghanistan or Iraq or Lebanon so far so we'll just have to remain patient and

Stay Naked
jd