Fourth annual flight suit day!

It was four years ago today that President Bush arrived on the USS Abraham Lincoln, decked out in a Navy flight suit, to announce that "major combat operations" had ended.

As much as my post may be titled sarcastically and facetiously, I actually do wish he had been right about that. Tempting as it might be to indulge in schadenfreude over the political misfortunes of the man who vaingloriously made this pronouncement, too many people have suffered to take even a dark delight in how wrong that statement was.

Today, the world is a much more dangerous place. The Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan, Iraq may soon have to be abandoned to a Somalia-like fate, and Iran has used the influence and power it has gained from this conflict, along with the weakened international position of the United States, to commence its sinister ascendence.

The one hope that remains - the one hope that always remains - is that life does go on mostly in little vignettes... the small stories matter more than the big ones. Somewhere, someplace, someone has decided to forgive someone else. Someone somewhere has decided that Muslims/Jews/Christians/Atheists/Hindus/Kurds/Sunnis/Shiites/Falun Gongers aren't so bad after all. Someone has given someone else a second chance. Someone has quit drinking, has given up selfishness and anger, and somebody else has let them.

The world beyond us could be cause for despair. Hopefully the world around us is not.