As everyone sat around the table for a big family dinner, the youngest son announced that he had just signed up at an army recruitment office. There were audible gasps from the gathering, followed by laughter as his older brothers expressed their disbelief that he could handle army life. "Oh, come on, quit joking," snickered one. "You haven't really signed up, have you?" "You'd never get through basic training," scoffed another. Finally his father spoke up. "It's going to take a lot of discipline. Are you ready for that?" Coming under fire from all sides, the new recruit looked to his mother for help. But she said simply: "Are you really going to make your own bed every morning?" The Afghan War has clearly reached a stage similar to that moment at your child's party where you realize you have forgotten to give the other parents a pick-up time. Jeremy Hardy