Holding the wolf's ears

The Iraq war can be compared to the phrase that Jefferson made about slavery, apparently. To Jefferson, the issues of slavery that divide Americans were like holding the wolf's ears. You don't want to hold them: You don't want to let them go.

The article explains that we may be reaching the so-called tipping point, where people would very much like to be free from problems in Iraq yet they are fully cognizant of their responsibilities there, including the efforts not to create a power vacuum, not to allow Iraq to devolve into a civil war that lets the powers of Iran and Turkey compete to suppress or control the territories already incarnadined by the blood of so many American soldiers and so many Iraqis.

Those who understand, at least vaguely, that Turkey doesn't want an independent Kurdistan, and that Iran doesn't want the Sunnis to be in control again, understand too that we are trapped holding the wolf's ears, the hungry jaws snapping at us. And we are whimpering at the future repercussions of either choice.