December 17, 2010

What’s wrong with this picture?

We are beginning the pullout of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, saying the country will achieve stability once we’ve departed, but the government is still corrupt, the nation fractured, the Taliban laying in wait.

We continue to support Pakistan but elements in the nation's military and security services continue to turn a blind eye to – or actively support -- al-Qaeda factions residing in its tribal areas on the Afghan border.

We are preparing for holiday festivities – including the annual gathering of throngs in New York's Times Square on New Year’s Eve – but the government, as outlined in a New York Times report on “thinking the unthinkable” is finally advising us (many years after the Bush Administration should have begun such a program) how to survive a dirty bomb. (Seek shelter on lower floors, not higher ones, since fallout rises.)

We have money in the national coffer to bailout car companies, banks and brokerage firms, insurance companies, Fannie and Freddie Mac, but not a penny for a comprehensive 9/11 health bill, which was nixed by legislators this week? (Senator Harry Reid has vowed to bring the bill back for a re-vote before the lame-duck session ends.)

We have the highest unemployment rate in a generation and yet many Wall Street firms are having their best year ever in 2010.

‘Tis the season for magical thinking.