Great News!

According to this article, Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, believes that al-Qaida is no longer operating in Afghanistan.

Great! Mission accomplished, payback for 9/11 complete. So when are we bringing our boys home?

Wait, aren't we sending even more troops to Afghanistan?

Oh, yeah, that's right—we still haven't completed that pipeline to the Indian Ocean that we wanted in the region, and we haven't yet bound ourselves to India by invading Pakistan...ummm, I mean, "supporting" Pakistan's valiant offensives against the Taliban (you know, that little troublesome group we essentially created to help stave off the last invaders of Afghanistan, the Soviets), and we haven't found Osama bin Laden, and we haven't completed our nationbuilding exercises in the region (as pushed by the new pro-war "progressive" thinktank, the Center for a New American Security, from which Obama conscripted his Undersecretary of Defense).

We're gettin' in deep, people, and it ain't likely to get better anytime soon.

You know, I wonder what happened to all those anti-war protesters we used to have? Are they all at a conference or something? Since Obama passed himself off as the anti-war candidate last year, maybe they all quit once he was elected, expecting the Pax Americana to descend upon the earth. Or maybe they have all bought into the "wrong war" mantra of some so-called "progressives" in Congress. And I expect a few of them were just Bush-bashers and Republican-haters (which is fine, since both Bush and most recent Republican politicians deserve nearly every unkind thing one can think of to say about them, and I say that as a registered Republican and as someone who voted for Bush). But aren't there any anti-war protesters out there who are actually against war? Or is that kind of ideological consonance unattainable in our day by anyone who is not a Jain, Buddhist, Mennonite, Quaker, or Amish? (Luckily, there are a few decent anti-war people around—they just aren't the ones we heard screaming during the Bush years who now seem to have lost their voices—and they often have good things to say.)

OK, I suppose the only really great news here is that the good ol' U.S. of A. hasn't strayed from its course since 1917, when the war-mongering, Constitution-trampling "Progressive" Woodrow Wilson set us off on our enduring Imperial Quest to "make the world safe for democracy".

If you consider that a good thing.