The Scarlett O'Hara Principle of Time Management

I’ve been watching talking heads all morning holding forth on what to do about Iraq. I won’t dignify their exchanges with the label of “debate”. We haven’t had a real debate in this country since Nixon. His sweat-laden performance on TV reshaped how politicians let themselves be presented on TV.

Funny that it comes back to Nixon. He didn’t like Vietnam, didn’t start it, but got the brunt of the blame for it. He was faced with two options: keep on losing or pull out and lose. The first meant the continued death of American boys. The second meant almost certain genocide.

Granted, the Iraq war was conceived and contrived by a controlling Vice President and Secretary of Defense. They exploited a weak President in a time of national crisis to achieve their own ends. Other than settling old scores, I’m still not sure what their motivations were or why the executed things so badly.

Shock and awe we were promised. I’m pretty damned shocked by the incompetence and in awe of the utter lack of foresight that has been evident every step of the way.

That’s the only shock and awe I’ve experienced.

Still, we have a mess on our hands today. And like Nixon’s Vietnam quandary, there is no good answer.

Call it delayed shock and awe.

I watched the bombing of Baghdad online, and hoped for the best. I thought it was a mistake at the time, but hoped for the best. I thought we had other priorities that should be higher, but prayed for a good outcome.

But we’re back where we were 35 years ago. I remember seeing footage of Vietnam on TV as a kid. Then the last helicopter lifting off the roof of the American Embassy in Hanoi. I didn’t understand the significance of it, then. I was only 5 or so.

Since then, I’ve learned what happened after that last helicopter lifted off, and it ain’t pretty. The atrocities that started in Hanoi spread to Laos and Cambodia. Genocide became a reality, one that we were either powerless to intervene in or ignored.

So we come back to the talking heads. They’re still talking around the real issue: is it worth enough to keep troops in Iraq so that genocide does not occur again?

And would it if we were to withdraw, and to what extent? Would Iraq’s neighbors step in an prevent anarchy? Would the majority of Iraqi’s who oppose a civil war stop it?

Those are the real questions, but no one is addressing them, at least on the Sunday morning shows. Their still employing the Scarlett O’Hara Principle of Time Management: “After all, tomorrow is another day.”

Don’t deal with the real issues.

Delay. Delay. Delay.

After all, tomorrow is another election.

They need to go back to the scene where she's holding the roots she just dug up and swears that she'll "never go hungry again." They need to take the drapes down and make some sort of coherent policy, even if they have to weave it from scratch.

Tomorrow is another day, but we can't wait that long. After Rhett Bulter has walked off into the fog, we need something done yesterday.

Maybe Scarlett rebuilt her life, but if she hadn't taken that laise' faire attitude, maybe she wouldn't have had to. And in the end, she didn't seemed to have learned anything.

We cannot go back and correct the past. I know that all too well from my personal mistakes in judgement.

But we can change the future.

We can step up to the challenge, stop calling names and assigning blame, and get down to the dirty work of figuring out where we stand and what we should do.

Tomorrow may be another day, but I want someone to talk about what it's reallity is.

Scarlett may have changed her destiny by making a dress out of drapes, but a foreign policy based on whole-cloth just ain't the same.