In the spring of 2006, I bought...

...a Honda Civic Hybrid, much like the one above. At the time, I was driving about 150 miles a day to a job in Milwaukee and a hybrid seemed like a good idea.

It was only after I bought the car -- in typical Tracy fashion -- that I did my due diligence. And you know what I found out? The price of gas would have had to go a lot higher to justify the premium I paid for a hybrid. In hindsight, I would've been better off just buying a standard Honda Civic.

In other words, I made a mistake.

I'm reminded of this by the president's recent decision to intervene in the civil war in Libya. I guess I'm a little late in adding my two cents' worth because I never thought it would actually happen. Just a few weeks ago, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said:

"In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as Gen. MacArthur so delicately put it."

And so I figured, that settles that. After all, if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that our recent adventures in the Middle East haven't gone as well as planned (if they were planned at all). In fact, you could even say that the moral of the story is: It's a lot easier to invade a country than it is to leave one.

But then last week the president suddenly, inexplicably -- goaded on by the Clintons? -- did a 180-degree turn and set the current process in motion. And now we're involved in a third Middle Eastern conflict. How will it go? That's anyone's guess, but it's hard to imagine it will end well. (If you look at Iraq and Afghanistan, it's hard to imagine it will end.)

So what's all this have to do with my Honda? Well, in both cases it was a bad decision. But at least with mine, no one died.