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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (98141)	5/13/2003 8:58:39 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

As Buddhists would say, this is like eating a porcupine; you have to see it through to its proper ending or you'll be in pain. I'm not a Buddhist, and maybe they have different ways of doing these things, but it seems to me that the only painless way to eat a porcupine is to skin it first. If that option's not available, better not to eat it at all. But I am not optimistic about this prospect because it takes stamina of doing it right at least for the next 10 years and probably for the next 30 years. This may be true, but realistically the option is not available. Neither the Iraqis nor the Americans will stand for it. At a certain point we may have no choice but to let go and live with what we get, and that point may come sooner than we'd like. Regardless of doing it right or wrong, in the short term (say over the next 2-5 years) this is an unstabilizing process. Here we agree.

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (98141)	5/13/2003 11:15:05 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<As Buddhists would say, this is like eating a porcupine; you have to see it through to its proper ending or you'll be in pain.> There are other creative solutions to that problem: Put it in a blender with ice, call it Quill Smoothie. The Hiroshima Solution. Just say you ate it, declare victory and go home, while the porcupine slinks off into the wilderness. Say it repeatedly and loudly, if anyone sees the porcupine alive. The Afghan Solution. Hire someone else to eat the porcupine for you. The Pinochet Solution. (Why are Buddhists eating porcupines anyway? Aren't they vegetarians, reverencing all life, even the very prickly kind?)