Pick a Card, Any Card

 In the eight years of the new millennium we have been at war for seven. War reports are as regular as rain and less lengthy and detailed than the sports scores. Three wars do not command one-third the attention as the Olympics. The Olympics happen only once every four years; war is an everyday commonplace and an accepted part of our routine.

 In the service of a new cause, the trusty Cold War rhetoric has been dusted off.

 Once again, the great Americans actors of that era are icons; their polished images placed on the candidate's podium. Kennan. Acheson. Marshall. Truman. Once again "we face a threat as great as the Soviets." We "cannot be protected by oceans." "We must increase the Army and Marines by 92,000." We need a new strategy for a new World."

These are the words of Barack Obama, and at this low ebb in American consciousness, he is passing as the "peace" candidate. Like "collateral damage" or "pre-emptive," both peace and antiwar have acquired new meanings.

 Mr. McCain likes both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Obama prefers Afghanistan. The war in Iraq is bad war; the war in Afghanistan is good war. Having put his spiritual adviser on the shelf, and presumably sent Jesus off to summer camp to sing "goombayah," the Democratic candidate, who has leapfrogged to the front of the line largely on his "anti-war" stance, does not oppose our invasion of Iraq on religious grounds. He does not raise moral objections. The Iraq War must be ended because it isn't very bright. What we are doing there is not wrong; it is simply not clever enough. We do not need to be better people, simply more intelligent..

 In Berlin's Tiergarten, Mr. Obama began the last act of his World Statesman Tour by palming his identity.

 "I am not here as a candidate", he said.

  He flashed the card they had all come to see. "We must reject the cold-war mindset".                                   

 With his eager-to-believe audience now focused on that image, he pulled the switch.

 The old coals, perhaps the very same ones flown into Templehof in 1948, were raked over again by way of "rejecting" the cold war mindset. "Sixty years after the airlift, we are called on again." "Today's dangers are no less grave." "The Twentieth Century taught us we share a common destiny." "Today's dangers are no less grave."

                           " ...just as we succeeded in the cold war.."

(Now you don't)

 The crowd went home believing they had heard what they had come to hear. In America, the change they longed for was happening. They believed that Obama would reduce conflict despite the fact that what he actually said was "we need more troops, more helicopters, more satellites and more predator drones." They thought they had found a new partner for a peace loving Germany.  They missed the call for Germany to re-arm, to once again send it's armies to foreign lands, and to support a military alliance seeking to expand its borders to Germany's ancient enemy, Russia.

 Not every deck of cards has thirteen each of clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades. There is another deck. This is the deck that fortune tellers and gypsies have used since time began. This is the deck that tells us the future.

 Those that deal from that deck have been working the Tiergarten for years.  Berlin has always been one of their favorite stops. In November they'll travel to the States, appearing at a voting booth near you. Look for the smiling faces. They know how much we Americans love a good joke. They especially like that old saw of Henry Ford's. "You can order your Model A in any color you like, as long as it's black."

 And because they know how much we love democracy, and that democracy is all about making choices, they'll have two cards in the deck this year. We are free to pick either one. They're both war, of course, but we still get to choose.

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