Billmon of Whiskey Bar sums it up:

The fact that realism has been pushed to the fringes of the political debate says a lot about America’s collective mental condition. Sanity isn’t very popular these days — not for those desperate to rescue Israel from its demographic predicament, or for those dreaming of a world that looks “just like us,” and certainly not for a president who believes he’s God's vice-gerent on earth, or for the 15%-20% of the population that’s counting down the days until the Rapture.

We seem to have reached the point where a half-baked strategy for endless war in the Middle East is actually easier to sell politically than a sensible energy policy, an end to American subservience to worst instincts of the Israeli national security state, and a focused campaign to destroy Al Qaeda while drying up the pools of hatred in which jihad festers and grows.

Clausewitz, that ultimate realist, once said that “he who neglects the possible in quest of the impossible is a fool.” That just might end up being the epitaph for America’s imperial adventure in the Middle East.

(Via Electrolite.)

Mr. Mon also notes: “If America has become an empire, it isn’t a condition that’s likely to last very long.”

So that’s good news for the rest of the world, anyway, I guess. It’d be nice to think that America was on its way to being — say — the next Britain, or Germany, or (we should be so lucky) Netherlands. Me, though, I’m betting on us becoming the next France.