Obama's War: Longer than Vietnam?

"Change" and "hope" were the mantras that got Obama's elected but he appears to offering us the same old gruel: perpetual war and futile Wilsonianism in foreign policy. Richard Holbrooke, Obama's envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, predicts that the Afghan War (now in its eighth year) will outlast the longest war in American history (Vietnam, fourteen years) .

There are some problems that can't be solved by shouting "yes we can," even if backed up with more U.S. blood and treasure, and this is one of them.

Eartha Kitt RIP

Eartha Kitt not only had talent (see, for example, her scene-stealing performance in St. Louis Blues) but fearlessly spoke truth to power.

In 1968, while at a public White House lunch, she properly embarassed Lady Bird Johnson by declaring
"You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed....They rebel in the street. They don't want to go to school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam."