Obama sees light of new day on horizon...

... but maybe it's just the flash from the long-awaited Iranian nuclear warhead!

The Commander in Chief larded it on good and thick at Arlington today. Not only did he see light on the horizon, he sees an America that is stronger than before, and apparently this has everything to do with the sacrifice of veterans who saved American freedom and democracy not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but also in Viet Nam.

Now a cynic might listen to this speech and say, hmm... Viet Nam? How did that make us stronger? Iraq? Afghanistan? Stronger?...

A cynic might even say America lost those three wars; how does losing make you stronger?

There's guys in sandals and sheets running around all over the middle east firmly convinced they've put the run to Uncle Sam, but Obama assures the nation that things have never looked better, strength-wise.

Obama also pointed out that this is the first Memorial Day in nine years when American soldiers are not dying in Iraq. He left out the part that American contractors are now dying in Iraq instead. Those privatized soldiers who look like soldiers and carry guns like soldiers and do all the same soldiery stuff that soldiers used to do before war-making became a profit center for private corporations.

Contractor casualties passed military casualties sometime in 2010 in both Iraq and Afghanistan. So while Obama may technically be telling the truth, it's certainly not the whole truth.

And then there were the usual bromides about how sending the bravest and the best is the most heart-wrenching decision blah blah blah and he'll never do it unless he really really has to.

For really important stuff. So important that America's freedom and democracy hangs in the balance.

Like those al-Qaeda cells that seem to be popping up all over every failed African state that happens to have untapped oil reserves.

Like those Towelistans that want nukes or have them already.

Like those narco-terror cartels in Honduras and Colombia...

Make no mistake. America's privatized for-profit armies will be fighting for a long time to come.

Why America needs to bring back the military draft

There's a school of thought that believes all of America's future wars can be won with remote-control drones piloted by teen gamers sitting in air-conditioned offices in the Nevada desert.

That school of thought is laboring under a misconception. Drone strikes are not winning wars. Instead, they are making enemies. Every time you take out a bunch of school kids gathering firewood in Pakistan (hey, what the hell, looked like a Taliban meeting on that 21 inch screen in Nevada) you've got a couple dozen survivors and relatives sworn to revenge.

Wars will never be won without boots on the ground, and lots of them.

The miracle of the "volunteer army" is that it limits membership to those who see enlisting as their best possible option. Who might that be?

Well, it's not a cross-section of America, that's for sure. But it is a cross-section of America's disenfranchised and marginalized.

If America is to continue its course of war without end, maybe it's time to spread the costs a little more evenly. Give Americans of all backgrounds an equal opportunity to be heroic patriots.

And cut out those bullshit college exemptions that gave the middle class a free pass back in the Viet Nam era. Let every American family taste the consequences of the empire's foreign policy. Why limit opportunities for heroic patriotism to white trailer trash and ghetto blacks and illegal immigrants?

My guess is that American foreign policy would make a sharp U-turn withing six months of an all-inclusive draft.