First Messiah, Now Prince of Peace Prize
Friday, October 9, 2009 at 08:23AM More confirmation that the Nobel Peace Prize is complete bullshøt.
Last night, in the big Office "Jim and Pam Get Married" episode that we've been anticipating for four years, the opening scene is Pam asking her colleagues to avoid using or eating things that have strong smells because she has morning sickness. The reaction from the others is typical: Meredith says she's not giving up her afternoon cigar for anyone, Dwight will continue eating his hard-boiled eggs, etc. Next scene: Dwight, sitting across from Pam looks right at her as he chomps down on his hard-boiled egg. Pam, looking right at Dwight, picks up her trash can and vomits into it. This causes a wave of nausea, so to speak, to pass through the Office, as one person after the other throws up, like sympathetic yawning. Dwight, the center of the vomit storm, looks perplexed as he continues to eat his egg.
That's kinda how it looked around here this morning when we got the Nobel news.
Can we have a new mantra? "Obama, Peace Prize be upon him."
As I was listening to the radio yesterday, I marveled at the back-to-back news that (a) the Taliban claimed responsibility for a huge car bomb outside the Indian embassy in Kabul, and (b) that the Afghan strategy would be to fight al-Qaeda and to de-emphasized fighting the Taliban, the goal being only to block their return to power over the central government.
Obama's developing strategy on the Taliban will "not tolerate their return to power," the senior official said. But the U.S. would fight only to keep the Taliban from retaking control of Afghanistan's central government -- something it is now far from being capable of -- and from giving renewed sanctuary in Afghanistan to Al-Qaeda, the official said.
Well, OK, then. They can bomb the hell out of Kabul, but as long as they aren't taking control of the central government, that's fine. Or, they can rule most of Afghanistan, but as long as Kabul is at least nominally in the hands of some figurehead, we won't get mad.
Chant with me: "Obama, Peace Prize be upon him."
Afghanistan's central government is famously weak anyway. Hamid Karzai can stay in place for years like an embolized tumor while the entire country is dominated by the Taliban and its allies. Even I know that, and I didn't major in International Studies like our prize-winning president. How on earth is this hairsplitting non-strategy supposed to prevent the complete collapse of Afghanistan? And how is our fabulous strategic brain trust (Joe Biden) going to unbraid the Taliban-al-Qaeda knot?
"Obama, Peace Prize be upon him."
And for what it's worth: I advocate withdrawing all of our troops now. The administration's non-strategy is guaranteed to get more of our volunteer military killed. I'd just as soon have our troops alive and idle and out of harm's way, even if Afghanistan then deteriorates into civil war and millions again come under the ugly tyranny of extremist Islam. Better we keep them for the day when the American people vote in an administration that is serious about protecting the United States and American interests.
"Obama, Peace Prize be upon him."
I tried to find out what the administration really means to do, and found this LA Times article, richly steeped in double-talk, which is a sure sign that the Obama administration wants us to believe that they are being really smart. More spin than this:
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Reader Comments (4)
Zsa Zsa Gabor in drag.
But it seems obvious that Obama is desperately looking for a way to avoid surging troops. The best way to win a war, from their perspective, is to redefine down your enemy. They're clearly moving towards the idea that only al Qaeda is our enemy, and we can live with the Taliban. What the dopes don't realize is that the Taliban (actually the Quetta Shura Taliban, or as they call themselves, the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan") are strategic enablers of al Qaeda. If QST is allowed to come back, they'll invite in al Qaeda, just as they did before our 2001 invasion.