To President Obama--Prove you are worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize

So our President has now won the NOBEL PEACE PRIZE. This is amazing. I wasn't aware he was even up for the award. I keep thinking this is a joke, and I'll have to pull this post down. But this is an interesting achievement, and one that will get some play for the man from Chicago/Hawaii/Kansas/Indonesia/Kenya...well, let's just say from all over.

For starters, it really shows me how a simple move back to diplomacy, something most of our past Presidents have employed as part of their typical governing approach, could be so welcomed by the rest of the world. Simply addressing the rest of the world with an open hand, rather than a closed fist may sound simple naive, but it has already achieved much. The positive relationships with Russia, China, Europe, and even much of the Middle East have been so torn asunder by the events of the past decade (some done TO us, some done BY us), that a move back to civil discourse was the only alternative to complete polarization--which had been the path of foreign policy until this year.

In the last two election cycles, people finally realized that we were not a nation of bullies and fighters. We were a nation of listeners, and of leaders. A nation who used force when it HAD to, not when it CHOSE to. And we continue to have hope that we have a leader who understands this, and is moving to match the foreign policy agenda to the reality of the world landscape.

BUT

We shall see if that really happens. My hope is that a success in Health Care, coupled with this honor of the Nobel Peace Prize, will give the President the courage to do the right thing, and END the mission in Afghanistan. It is time.

We need to get our troops home from Afghanistan, and from Iraq. It's been far too long to spend our money and soldiers on a mission that is NOT achievable. Notice I did NOT use the cop-out language of "mission that is not defined". I think we all know why we're in Afghanistan. At least we know why we went originally. And I agreed with that decision...back then.

But we are no longer achieving the mission we set out to achieve. And we cannot achieve this mission, as long as we are seen as the occupying force in these countries--unable to ever fully root out this "evil" that our previous President kept referring to. And THAT, sadly, is not going to change, while we are still in these countries with 200,000+ forces and countless mercenaries, shooting at anyone that wears a "black hat".

We can't achieve the mission because it is unachievable. The best I can understand it is that we don't want the Taliban to rule Afghanistan because they will let al Qaeda back in, set up camps, and attack us again. So we shoot at the Taliban, and sometimes the locals, and hope that the people of this country will somehow rise up and take back their native lands, and do our bidding on our behalf--rooting out al Qaeda and the Taliban, and ultimately, Bin Laden himself (remember him!?).

Sound like a plan? Somehow we've conflated this goal into the ultimate winning or losing struggle. "If we don't win this game, we're doomed". I don't understand why we should even be playing. Our odds of achieving this aim can't be better than 1 in 5. And for that long shot, we'll waste time, money and resources (lives!) so that, in a BEST case scenario, we only have to fight our enemies in 10 OTHER places around the globe. Sorry. This dog don't hunt no more. Time to pull the plug.

Here's hoping Obama has the guts to make the right call.