You march toward the express lane checkout because you've only got four items. But there's a problem, two actually: you'd be the 10th person in the line and the clerk is wearing a "trainee" badge. The express line isn't in fact moving all that expressly. However, a couple lanes over, there are only two shoppers, but their carts are loaded. Even if you weren't somewhat pressed for time, you hate waiting. So, you're stuck with a decision, actually two: one is to enter neither line, in which case you'll be there until the night manager ushers you out the door sans groceries; the second is to elect either the molasses-slow "express" lane or move to behind the two loaded-for-bear shoppers. If you move to the non-express lane, and, en route from the store, cast a glance to the express lane to find you'd still be there, you might muse inwardly how you had made a wise decision.
 
Exactly! Ain't hindsight grand? The down and dirty to it though, is that you had neither a clue that things might work the way they did nor was "wisdom" a part of the process. The real down and dirty of it is that, for all you knew, things could have worked differently.

Same-o, same-o Iraq and the decision is to either side with Rep Jack Murtha, to begin an immediate phased 6-month pull out, or to support President "Stay the course" Bush's proposition to leave Iraq only once the United States can depart with honor and "victory."  Can't do both, and can't do neither. It is one or the other. So, to quote Tom "Lt Pete ‘Maverick' Mitchell" Cruise in Top Gun, "This could get complicated." And that engages a suitable, tag-on corollary, also from a Tom Cruise movie, A Few Good Men. Except his time it's Jack "Col. Nathan Jessup" Nicholson, "The Truth? You can't handle the truth!"

But we've got to. Tragically, given the spot the country and the entire world is in, today all of us must somehow seek for it, then follow where it seems to lead.

Many voices proclaim that nothing is more sacred than life. As a veteran, as an American, I vociferously disagree. There's honor. There's dignity. To me, without those, life dribbles to insignificance. To me, "honor" and "dignity" are all that are worthwhile about the human condition and experience. They are all that separate us wholly from every other form of life; the simians, the raccoons, the amoeba.

Now we're where we can cut, surgically, to the very nub of the issue. Dignity cannot exist in the absence of thinking, of reasoning. More precisely, it's about each and every one of us, for ourselves, thinking critically, not marching lockstep to one person's tune or another's. The loudly squeaking wheel may not always get the grease, but it does draw considerable attention, as do the squawkers on the right side of the radio dial. I am not going to here suggest (and I don't mean to pick on them exclusively) that Messrs Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Hannity have the same spirit and soul and political objectives as did Josef Goebbels; only the same affections for a safe distance from personal military service and for a successful marketing strategy: whether true or not, if you proclaim something often enough and loudly enough, many will come to believe the claims made. From the opposite end of the spectrum, but with considerably less of that broadcast spectrum, are Randi Rhodes and Mike Malloy. Many, many times I've heard all of them make assertions each knew or should have known were just plain false, intended solely to mislead and to inflame their audience.

But, you know what? That's okay, it's part of their shtick. It's a major part of the implement that harvests the billions to their networks. The real peril inheres in every listener (and/or voter) who has surrendered his or her responsibility to think critically, who has mistaken volume and quantity for substance, who has presumed and assumed a heralded talk-show host (or, for that matter, anyone in a position of authority) must know what he or she is talking about. That's being neither patriotic nor loyal, it's being mindless and cowardly.  

Finally, the ultimate primogenitor point of all of this, as it pertains to Iraq: OIL. It IS all about oil. And it's every bit as important to you and to me and as it is to anyone who's on whatever side is the other side of the one we're on. Do any of us really want to risk it, that al Qaeda, or that any group that is as disposed to the unconscionable ruthlessness of al Qaeda, might gain manipulative control of most of the world's oil inventory?

An old movie illustrates it best: Three Days of the Condor, starring Robert Redford as Joseph Turner, a bookish sort employed in a CIA repository devoted to reading every foreign publication. By a fluke that had no more prior thought than the one concerning which checkout lane we'd enter, everyone in the tiny operation is murdered except for him. He spends the rest of the movie trying to unravel the reason, primarily to avoid joining the stiff ranks of his co-workers. One of the characters is a Leonard Atwood, played by Addison Powell.
Turner: "Oil. It's oil isn't it?"
Attwood: "Yes it is."

And where our present deliberations gain high relevance: Turner at last finds himself face-to-face with the CIA Director, J. Higgins, played by Cliff Robertson. Tuner demands to know from the director the "reason" the government plays the "games" it does, the games that resulted in his co-workers' deaths.
Higgins: "It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?"
Turner: "Ask them?"
Higgins: "Not now - then! Ask ‘em when they're running out. Ask ‘em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask ‘em when their engines stop. Ask ‘em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won't want us to ask ‘em. They'll just want us to get it for ‘em!"

It's Iraq. It's about you. It's about me. It's about all of us; our presents and our futures, and those of our kids and their kids. It's about the truth, whether we can (want to?) handle it, and what we, as in YOU and ME, have the intellectual and gut courage to do with and about it. It is getting complicated, isn' it? What decision will we make? What lane will we move into? Will our selection be informed, or pro forma? And will we be able to reconcile ourselves with the choices and decisions we've made?