Now that Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki has suggested we’ve overstayed our welcome, the President should take a look at Groucho Marx’s classic example of a graceful exit from an embarrassing situation:
Hello, I must be going/I cannot stay/I came to say/
I must be going/I'm glad I came/But just the same/I must be going... Ta-Ta!
Protocol requires a polite response to the PM’s statement that Americans can leave “any time they want” and his top aide’s saying we are treating Iraq like "an experiment in an American laboratory."
For the sake of diplomacy, as we go out the door, we should be deaf to the complaint that our military is committing human rights violations, embarrassing the Iraqi government and cooperating with "gangs of killers" in the campaign against al-Qaeda.
But no good guest should overlook his host’s heavy hints that the party’s over. Groucho never would have. Here are our hats, what’s our hurry?
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