Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer...

David Broooks evaluates last week's speech in Oslo, and it seems he still has a case of the tingles: "The Oslo speech was the most profound of his presidency, and maybe his life".

Obama's Christian Realism
President Obama has revived a cold war liberal doctrine — that evil must be fought without succumbing to the sinfulness within — and tried to apply it to a different world.

Meanwhile, over on the Volokh blog,
I found this comment, buried deep in a "Just War" comment thread, to be rather sobering a read:

David Sucher says:
I don’t see any mention here of ‘likelihood of winning.’ It seems to me that if you embark on a just cause using violence but have no real hope of ‘winning’ — however you have already described it — then you cannot have a just war.

So there has to be some large mention of whether you can win in determining a just war. Now I assume that violence in immediate self-defense are always more likely than not “just.” But once again — your method of self-defense — from, say, Al Quaeda by sending 200,000 troops to Afghanistan — has to meet the effectiveness test for your war to be ‘just.’

Of course no proponent will admit this particular Afghanistan war won’t work (or even likely not to work) so we are back at square one right now. But the discussion of ‘just war’ must take into account whether you can win, or if you will just make matters worse.
December 14, 2009, 8:21 pm

And as Tom Blackburn pointed out in yesterday's column, factors like troops and money, and public support, are exhaustible things...

Our pundits might see the current administration promising a multi-lifetime self-filling stocking full of Cold War level operations worldwide, but how long will our commitments last, once the tingle subsides and common realities set in? And at what price victory? a secure stalemate?

The never-ending days of America as global policeman are behind us, as surely as we've flipped our calendars into a new century. It's like that secular Santa song currently making the rounds:

I've warned all my friends and neighbours.
Better watch out for yourselves...

Everybody!

She had hooves prints on her forehead
and incriminating Claus marks on her back...