It would’ve made a fine Onion headline or an epic SNL skit. Even more amusing than this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, though, was the reaction of the Taliban to it. In denouncing Obama’s prize, they attempted to invert the moral dimension of the war in Afghanistan by accusing the president of “escalating violence and killing civilians.”

The pacifist left-wing fringe and its right-wing isolationist counterparts, who cling to the notion that terrorists and other malefactors would go away if only we would stop fighting them, largely agreed with the Taliban. Most appeared to think that Obama could’ve made peace in the world and saved the most lives by immediately withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, dismantling all of America’s nukes and resolving everything through dialogue. Having failed to do so, according to the pacifist mentality, makes Obama unworthy of the prize.

The fact that Obama hasn’t cut and run yet suggests he does feel some need to actually fight the war on terrorism and isn’t completely ensconced in this congenial anti-war fantasy land. Back in the real world, the president has no doubt noticed that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. officer in Afghanistan, has made several public appearances warning of difficulties there.

That sentence alone should raise eyebrows; when Truman and MacArthur clashed publicly over the Korean War, Truman sacked MacArthur outright for what he felt was a challenge to his authority. McChrystal going to the press was also a subversion of the chain of command, but in this day and age, he merely got a slight dressing-down.

This forbearance is definitely a credit to the sometimes-oversensitive Obama administration, since the general was professional and sober in his comments. Nevertheless, McChrystal’s comments add to broad concern that the administration is content with treading water in Afghanistan while blaming Bush — an understandable but unacceptable excuse, given the president’s campaign promise to fix Afghanistan.

Some more forgiving observers, who still want to see positive outcomes in Afghanistan (also known in politically-incorrect parlance as “winning”), argue that the administration is just figuring out what to do and, for once, not wasting time giving away our secret war plans on national television. That seems like a little bit of a stretch, given the president’s recent activities.

The less charitable explanation is that everything the government does requires some amount of political capital and that the populist activists and old-economy union bosses that got Obama elected are way more interested in backdoor single-payer than defeating the Taliban. That’s almost too cynical even for cranky old me. Almost.

Either way, Obama should’ve saved the thumb twiddling for the domestic front, where most of his actions (not including the mixed bag that has been Federal Reserve policy) may well have been worse than doing nothing at all.

Appointing McChrystal to lead the war in Afghanistan was a smart move, even if it meant replacing a previous commander who had served honorably but wasn’t the right man in the right place. But the new general is worried that things are getting worse, and his bosses are dithering.

A good counterinsurgency operation requires quantity as well as quality in soldiers, and the “light footprint” scheme isn’t working for Obama any better than it did for Bush. The administration was voted in and now “owns” the war and the duty to prosecute it effectively.

Reach columnist Russ Wung at opinion@dailyuw.com.