If You're Waiting for the Funny, Keep Waiting

The occupational hazard to being a wisenheimer (and boy do I know how much my German wife will hate my deutschification of a word to sidestep a point), is when I try to offer something serious and in a straight-forward manner, you wait for other shoe to drop. Except today, there's no other shoe and no toe tags (and both are, with apologies to Martha Stewart, 'good things').

When the war in Afghanistan moved off the front page of our local newspaper and into the 300 block of our TV newscasts, it also vacated the front lobe of a lot of people's brains. Except we're still there, if by "we" you allow me the conceit to take credit for the talented people in US military uniforms, and others, who are part of the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, who've been doing the bulk of the heavy lifting and getting wounded and killed for over a decade.

Yeah, the current Thief In Charge, is a just another warlord who correctly filled out the questionnaire on how much he hates the Taliban-and should never be confused with a George Washington or an Abraham Lincoln. His days are drawing down as the Afghan people struggle with a form of government imposed on them from without, representative democracy, and no one seems sure, much less sanguine, as to how much future any of it may have.

All of this has happened almost accidentally and coincidentally in the decade plus of the Endless War on Terror that has maimed and wounded tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of thousands of civilians. For those military who return home "intact," that word, in light of economic and emotional challenges, can only be used advisedly.

So many dark thoughts on what I had hoped going to bed last night would be a genuine spring weekend, and my apologies if I am harshing your buzz (unless you are already buzzed; yeah, I'm talking about you, Washington State and you, Colorado) but I make it a point to check in with a site that LH shared with me, though the good Captain is a little behind right now in his posting, and I tell myself that I can almost see the silver lining. Feel free to feel the same.

And part of that silverness (silverosity?) might be for the month that just ended, there was this bright spot. I don't have a quip-if I still believed, maybe I'd have a prayer of thankfulness-but in its place I have a hope that I know will be bruised, battered and beaten, that this trend continues and that when we've brought the last American service member home and accounted for everyone, that we expend both the effort and the money needed and necessary to make each one of them, and ourselves, whole again.

There's a break in the fog of war and it behooves us all to see our way to the far shore and become the country we tell ourselves we are. Not just for today, but for everyday that remains.
 -bill kenny