…and, as the commentators have commentated, it’s a challenge to find things to be thankful for (other than the ol’ “at least things aren’t worse” standby).

On top of the mass murder, war, riots, earthquake, dead dot-coms, runaway Boeing execs, general economic malaise, and other calamities affecting this world, nation, and region this year, government analysts just announced Washington state’s unemployment rate is the highest in the nation. And that’s before the 32,000-ish Boeing layoffs kick in.

And now comes something bound to dishearten the most hardy U.S. proponents of the war in Afghanistan–its stunning, nearly-complete success.

This was supposed to go on smoldering for months and years of stalemate. Now, the Taliban are only holding on to four provinces and a couple of surrounded townships; and that principally due to foreign mercenary soldiers. By year’s end, the Taliban could be crushed. Their house guest and patron Osama bin Laden could be captured any month now, or maybe he’ll just disappear as just another powerless refugee, or maybe he’ll be found dead of natural causes sometime next Autumn.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The Pentagon/GOP strategists almost admittedly wanted the start of Cold War II, the resumption of what some Vietnam-era activists called “the permanent war economy.”

This was supposed to be so pervasive, so intense, and so drawn-out that three decades’ worth of domestic anti-military sentiment would permanently disappear. The public would unanimously support the re-direction of the federal money spigot back toward weapons contractors.

Citizens daring to speak non-Limbaughesque points of view were to be silenced, either by the shouts of mass disapproval or the heavier hand of new anti-dissent regulations. We were expected to rabidly cheer the piece-by-piece dismantling of due process under the law. Even the mildly authority-questioning satires of Saturday Night Live and e-mail joke lists, the mid-October conventional wisdom went, would have to fall in line with a new and permanent spirit of disciplinary obedience, or face publc obsolescence.

Instead, we’ve got a war that debuted in the fall and just might leave the airwaves in midseason. (Unless, of course, the Bushies try to get it renewed by adding the plot-twist of invading another country or two.)

Maybe, instead, some of us could start scripting our own midseason replacement. One with the far more difficult (hence more intriguing) storyline of trying to build a lasting peace and a more equitable lot for the folk (including the female folk) of that once-obscure land.

Call your cable or satellite provider (or, more directly, your Congressional representatives). Tell them you want to see The Peace Show.

(This article’s permanent link.)