Bleeding Red.

Some people -- the conservative young kids, especially -- have been led to believe that Ronald Reagan's charisma and leadership ended the Cold War, bringing about the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Well, partly...

Reagan led by identifying core principles, and sticking to them. Playing toughball with the Soviets, if it was only a war of words* and escalating defense budgets.

Truth be told, the Soviets beat themselves. Spent more than they had. Overextended themselves in Afghanistan while trying to compete with American defense spending, and neglecting their basic population needs at home.

Eventually, it all added up (or didn't) and the regime crumbled from within, with Gorbachev and Glasnost opening doors to a new way of life for the people. Or maybe the doors weren't opened so much, but effectively kicked down...

Today marks 104 months for American troops in Afghanistan. Mission "Like Us" doesn't have clearly defined goals so much, just a vague strategy of clearing out Taliban fighters, and primarily -- befriending the local populations, in the hopes that our construction and bringing of goodies like schools and wells to the Afghan people will help them accept our way of life and reject the Taliban baddies, long after American troops are gone.

I saw on 60 Minutes, I think it was, a poor 24-year-old troop leader, communicating through interpreters to tell elder tribesmen that if they work with the Americans, they will be safe and protected. If you were them, would you have faith in such promises?

Didn't we promise long ago -- conservatives and dems -- that there would be no military forces committed to "nation building"? 1,000 American troops dead in Afghanistan, compared to the 28,000 the Soviets lost fighting there. And still bleeding red fiscally. Gives a patriot pause for concern...

Bob Herbert is right. It's time to recalculate America's priorities, and focus on our own economy and cleanup war in the gulf. The Gulf of Mexico. We can't be the world's policeman when we should be playing defense here at home. The best way to get others to emulate our lifestyles and reject extremism at home is to offer up a worthy example.

America 2010 -- this ain't it.

Unemployment is crushing families and stifling the prospects of young people. Given that reality, President Obama’s take on the May numbers seemed oddly out of touch. “This report,” he said, “is a sign that our economy is getting stronger by the day.”

The economy is sick, and all efforts to revive it that do not directly confront the staggering levels of joblessness are doomed. Even the meager job growth in the private sector last month was composed mostly of temporary work. Lawrence Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, had the right take when he said, “These new data do not present a picture of a healthy private sector and offer nothing even closely resembling the job growth we need to dig us out of a very deep hole.”
...
It’s impossible to overstate the threat that this crisis of unemployment poses to the well-being of the United States. With so many people out of work and so much of the rest of the population deeply in debt, where is the spending going to come from to power a true economic recovery?
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Policy makers have acted as if they are unaware of the magnitude of this crisis. They have behaved as though somehow, through some economic magic perhaps, or the power of prayer, this ocean of joblessness will just disappear. That’s a pipe dream.

Even if we somehow experienced a sudden, extraordinary surge in job growth (which no one is expecting), it would take a very long time just to get back to the level of employment that we had when the recession started in late-2007.
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For all the money that has been spent so far, the Obama administration and Congress have not made the kinds of investments that would put large numbers of Americans back to work and lead to robust economic growth. What is needed are the same things that have been needed all along: a vast program of infrastructure repair and renewal; an enormous national investment in clean energy aimed at transforming the way we develop and use energy in this country; and a transformation of the public schools to guarantee every child a first-rate education in a first-rate facility.

This would be a staggeringly expensive and difficult undertaking and would entail a great deal of shared sacrifice. (It would also require an end to our insane waste of resources on mindless and endless warfare.) The benefits over the long term would be enormous.

Bold and effective leadership would have put us on this road to a sustainable future. Instead, we’re approaching a dead end.

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*Say what you will about Ronald Reagan's policies and his acting skills: you never for a second believed the man was just mouthing the words. He passionately believed in what he was selling, and the people too bought in.

What's the good of having Barack Obama's charismatic skills, if he's still delegating/debating/compromising on the vision -- as we saw in the sausage-making process that gave us an unconstitutional healthcare law that does little to address the systematic problems it set out to cure?