Downsize This

He hasn't even taken the oath yet, but there's plenty of evidence already that Obama is just another political phony.

We've been fooled and betrayed by the Democrats again.

But...but...he was a young, good looking, intelligent, articulate BLACK guy, so easy and eminently correct to love. How could we have gone wrong?

And would it really have made a difference if we had ignored the election, or even chosen McCain/Palin?

Obama has announced he's rethinking his position on the Iraq War, or as the New York Times put it, undergoing an "apparent evolution" in his approach to this egregious crime and national disgrace. Jeremy Scahill (via John Caruso at Jon Schwarz's blog) supplies the necessary corrective to our wide-eyed naivete and idealism, and our national infatuation with Obama: Anyone who took the time to cut past Barack Obama's campaign rhetoric of "change" and bringing an "end" to the Iraq war realized early on that the now-president-elect had a plan that boiled down to a down-sizing and rebranding of the occupation.

Caruso adds, I particularly appreciate the Times' choice of headline: "Campaign Promises on Ending the War in Iraq Now Muted by Reality." This is an extremely useful principle I'm sure we'd all like to employ at one time or another: "Unfortunately, Tom, my promise to pay back that money you loaned me has now been muted by reality—namely, the reality that I never had any intention to. Sucker!"

Also, as usual, Dennis Perrin has a few choice words for the Democratic wolves in sheeps' clothing, whose hypocrisy is abundantly revealed even before they grasp the levers of power.

We are not getting that pony for Christmas after all.

Of course, the war will continue, and since it's endless, and pursued for its own sake, it makes little difference whether we're dropping napalm on farmers and water buffalo planting rice in "enemy enclaves" in the Mekong Delta or shredding little kids in Anbar Province with cluster bombs. It's all the same, and now that Americans have been lulled out of their collective anxiety by the stock market's ceasing to drop like a stone while gas prices continue to do so, we can all go to Disneyland while the war continues. Is there a better definition of moral depravity?

Remember that after the Seventh Seal was opened, it was quiet in heaven for the space of half an hour.