Victorious Interruptus?

With last evening's speech, President Obama made clear what everyone already knew anyway:  Neither he, nor his base, nor even his party for the most part, care much for shouldering the real burdens of national security.

While his announced timeline for withdrawal of the surge forces from Afghanistan reeked of political calculation, (September 2012?  Puhleeze), his posture actually communicated something different even from that.  As we would expect, it certainly wasn't anything like a pro-war or, better, a pro-victory speech.  No lefty and few Democrats could credibly pull that off.  But it wasn't exactly anti-war either.  There was no chest-thumping or fist-shaking rhetoric of the "Give peace a chance" kind.   (By the way, stop and think about how incongruous that image always is.)  No, for the most part, the president came across as though he was just plain bored.

Opposition to the War on Terror for Obama, for all of his lefty base, as well as the lion's share of his party, has long since served for them its political purpose.  They recaptured the Senate (all of Congress for a time) and the White House as well.  And let's be honest, Obama's Afghanistan mini-surge was accomplished chiefly to justify his campaign position that the "real" war, the "good" war, was to be fought there and not in Iraq.

But that was then.  Now, there are domestic priorities:  wealth to redistribute, businesses, large and small, to regulate, climate catastrophes to control, new "victims" to discover and champion, etc.  Being a nanny is a full-time job.

Don't be fooled, this has nothing to do with saving money.  No Administration, no party, that unapologeticaly wastes $800 billion on a failed stimuls package, spends untold trillions on institutionalizing socialized medicine, oversees huge expansions in the money supply, and mocks all GOP proposals to control spending while offering none of their own, can be taken seriously when it adds "money saved" to the end of its list as to why the war in Afghanistan should now be ended.

No.  Obama, his base, and his party are simply bored with national security.  Let's pray their lack of interest will not end with any more dead Americans before we show them the door in the fall of 2012.