Nobel Laureate

It was another nuanced and elite Obama speech. Meaning, it was the best he or anyone could have mustered, under the circumstances. Of course he could have done better by declining the Nobel Peace prize. Or, at the last moment, in light of his surrender of the direction of foreign policy to the Pentagon, he could have accepted and then surrendered the prize right back. Put it on "hold". Alternatively, the esteemed Nobel Prize committee, having baited him with the Peace prize could have switched it at the last moment for the Nobel Prize for Literature; or for poetry; or for oratory. Because our President can certainly talk the talk of peace; it's only when he tries to walk his talk that he trips and stumbles.

But if it had to be the Peace Prize, I just wonder why Nobel didn't decide to give it to John "Flipper" McCain? What would have been the bloody difference?

I have come to hate politics and have recently thought a lot about not writing/blogging about it anymore. I am so tired of dwelling on what divides us Americans, one from the other. But whenever I think of Iraq and Afghanistan, my fatigue yields to rage. Nothing and no one has been able to convince me that the wars of George W. Bush do not represent the greatest self-administered foreign policy debacle in our nation's history. And, let's not kid ourselves as many pundits try to, that Bush is over and done and gone. He's not gone. And the people who held his loosened reins over his warhorses in Iraq and Afghanistan still wield them now.

My readers are tired of Afghanistan, too. Their fatigue is palpable. I feel it through the words in comments; I certainly pick it up by the absence of some of my faithful commentariat. But to those I say, if you are tired now of Afghanistan, think how tired you're going to be in 2024? That's the year Karsai says we can expect not to have to fund armed the forces (police and military) of Afghanistan. As a short-timer, I have it easier than most of you; I certainly will not have to live all those 14 years out.

But I think most Americans are the same as the way they were during Bush's unnecessary invasion and occupation of Iraq; they obediently went shopping at the bidding of their President. "Don't worry about it. I'm the decider." He said at one point.

Well, on the cusp of President Obama's determination to find purpose and "mission" for our lost patrols in Afghanistan, I don't think my fellow Americans really want to give that desert quagmire much thought either. It doesn't sell advertising like Tiger Woods does. For example, there was not one word about Afghanistan in my Los Angeles Times this morning. Not one bloody word.

Out of sight, out of mind?