obomba

Ah, don't get me wrong, Obama zhuxi is what I consider to be the closest thing to a living, breathing political hero, and it's not as if he asked for the peace prize. Perhaps in some revolting way, escalating the war is his way of achieving peace? The disgusting thing is that I ask this rhetorically.

The NYT's Peter Baker concludes his lyrical analysis of the irony of the Nobel-Afghanistan ordeal by posing these BIG 'ole questions:

With the Nobel medal staring down at him in the White House for the next three years or perhaps seven, will the designated peacemaker eventually figure out just what peace means in a land without it? Will he earn the prize he has already received?

Verses I thought were especially poignant in this tragic news song:

That was eight years ago last week and never on that night, as we watched the might of the world’s most powerful nation rain down on the primitive army of soldiers clad in rags and sandals, did it occur to us that America so many years later would still be trying to figure out how to win — or whether it even could. The journey from the rugged village of Topdara to the halls of the White House is a quintessential story about the limits of power and imagination.

The idea of clear lines and neat definitions does not apply in Afghanistan. Over the following few months, many of the themes of the last eight years would become clear. There were civilians killed by errant American bombs and intrigues among Afghans who ostensibly were our allies and common cause forged with a ruthless warlord who did just enough of the Americans’ bidding to stay on the payroll while waging his own private war for control of his local province.

And what is the Taliban, anyway? It was not just Mullah Muhammad Omar, the one-eyed master who forced women to wear burqas and banned music, dancing, alcohol and kites. It was the boys we met who fought for the Taliban because that was what everyone did. Or who did it for food and shelter. Or who were press-ganged into it without recourse to resist. The terms were binary — Taliban or not Taliban — in a country that was kaleidoscopic.