Exit Strategy

Johnnie and Jane went trick or treating on Halloween and knocked on an old lady's door, who gave them candy but felt it odd to close the door on them because they just stood there instead of running off to the next house, so she asked "What's the matter, kids?" and Johnnie said "We don't have an exit strategy."

Before you laugh: Afghanistan is costing us a million dollars per soldier per year.

A good joke can be reused. This one came out years ago and it was about President Bush on Iraq. President Clinton had Somalia and Bosnia, and it could have definitely been used with President Johnson on Viet Nam. The only difference is that this year "exit strategy" is called "off-ramp." It's all the same. It is unfortunate that we keep finding ourselves in the same spot, year after year, but I have to trust that our President knows a hell of a lot more than I do.

But wait... maybe I should apply this to my personal life. I should think ahead and ask myself "how am I going to get out of this" before I do anything. If I had, I would not have dated, gotten engaged, married, nor had kids (now you can laugh). I've made mistakes year after year. So, now, and in the future, I will not even date. I'm going to stick to the predictable, the reliable, even the boring... to what I know... solo... that has a built-in exit strategy. I will keep a much lower profile ("remain in the noise floor" in engineering), because I will not enter.

Versus the more common exit strategy of leaving once they get some.



- text © 2009 by Willy

P.S., That I need what I know is yet another blog.