Let's pause a moment as the New Year begins and take stock of ourselves as what we truly are: the preeminent war-making machine on planet Earth. Let's consider just what the American way of war might have in store for us in 2010.

In Afghanistan, the American military is only part of the story. There's also a polyglot "army" representing the U.S. that wears no uniforms and fights shape-shifting enemies to the death in a murderous war enveloped in a blanket of secrecy.

Let's stop here and try to imagine these two enemies, the U.S. military and al- Qaeda, side by side in the same universe of war. What, in that case, would the line-up of forces look like?

The U.S. evidently isn't about to leave Afghanistan any time soon and the president seems to have set his watch to the Pentagon's clock.

In the last two decades our fantasies about a military plot to take over the government is entertainingly outré exactly because, in the Washington of 2010, such a thought is ludicrous. It's already happened.