More Change We Can Believe In

Thanksgiving is coming, and I'm thankful to live in a country where dissociative identity disorder is a national religion:

The United States won't join its NATO allies and many other countries in formally banning landmines, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said during his midday briefing Tuesday.

"This administration undertook a policy review and we decided our landmine policy remains in effect," Kelly said in response to a question. "We made our policy review and we determined that we would not be able to meet our national defense needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we sign this convention."

What he means is we won't be able to do this, or this, because we have the 3rd largest mine arsenal in the world and what if we decide we need to start blowing up more hapless passersby again?

But it's all right; we'll clean up after ourselves:

Kelly said the United States continues to work with governments as well as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to help remove landmines.

"The U.S. is proud to be the world's single largest supporter of humanitarian mine action," Kelly said. "Since 1993 the U.S. has provided more than $1.5 billion worldwide dedicated to building new partnerships with more than 50 post-conflict countries and supporting efforts by dozens of NGOs to promote stability and set the stage for recovery and development through mine clearance and conventional-weapons destruction programs."

He's proud, because we have lowered the bar of acceptable atrocity so low in the last 8 years that it's now considered real humanitarianism to help other countries wipe up the blood we caused while we preserve the potential for spilling more by reviving our own landmine production. But what else would you expect from a guy who works for a broad who likes cluster bombs?