Plant those trees!
Given the success of the elections in Afghanistan, here, here, here and here, we can look forward with optimism to the advance of democracy in Iraq in January. All this reminds us of what is said to have been a favourite story of John F. Kennedy's. The aged Marshall Louis-Hubert Lyautey, retired in his chateau, asked his gardener if he would start planting a row of oak trees on the following day. "But Mon Marechal," said the gardener, looking at the eighty-year old Lyautey. "The trees will take more than fifty years to grow." "Oh," said the Marshal. "In that case, plant them today. We have no time to lose."
Indeed.
