"Bye-Bye Oh-Four" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Bye-Bye Oh-Four

New Year’s Eve is such an arbitrary moment. Like most holidays. It’s not like we’re at a low, mid or high point in the sun’s cycle. But we make resolutions, most of which will never be kept, and we drink champagne and we watch revelers carousing in Times Square and elsewhere. For the umpteenth consecutive year, I’ll be asleep when the clock ticks over in the Pacific Time Zone, and probably when it happens in the Mountain states as well.

I’m not bah-humbugging the notion of a fresh start. It’s just that it’s hard to be enthusiastic about our future at the moment, at least from a political perspective. While the rest of the world responded immediately, our erstwhile leader took three days to recognize the tsunamic tragedy. Guess he’s been too busy clearing brush on his Hollywood set ranch in Texas. And peopling his new cabinet with head-bobbing yes-people. And resubmitting to the Senate for confirmation a list of neoliths he thinks should have lifetime court appointments.

The mess in Iraq is worsening. When they’re not killing Americans sitting down to lunch in blood-spattered green zones, the psycho-rebels are luring Iraqi police into ambushes. Or they’re storming police stations, dragging out their own countrymen, and executing them in the streets. As Reuters observed, "Plans were unveiled to deploy 100,000 Iraqi forces to stave off a bloodbath on election day exactly a month from now."

Meanwhile the Pentagon announced plans to cut $60 billion from their budget over the next six years. That’s a lot of money, sort of. It’s what we spent on Iraq this year. But to put that belt-tightening in perspective, at its current rate, the Five-Sided Funny Farm is budgeted to spend $2.5 trillion between now and 2010. Or to put that in human terms, if you’re making $50,000 this year, you’re going to cut back to $49,000 next year.

I’ve long felt out of synch with world events. I used to say that I had been dropped on the wrong planet. Since election day I’ve had a sense, however, that the pendulum has passed the nadir and that while we still have a long stretch to ride in the darkness, there will come a time when the light will shine again. I hope I’m right this time, that the coming year treats you well.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.