Obama's Peace prize is a badge of shame.

President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today. Normally, such a prize could be considered an honor to the recipient. However, for a world leader engaged in a war against terror (even if he won't acknowledge it as such) to accept a peace prize is an insult to his country. For a world leader engaged in a war against the perpetrators of the most notorious mass murders of Americans in the modern era and losing the war, accepting the peace prize is a total humiliation.

Why exactly are we fighting the war in Afghanistan now? It can't be to defeat Al Qaeda since, according to President Obama, we're not at "war" with "terror" anymore. It can't be to defeat the Taliban since, according to President Obama, we willing to neogtiate with the "moderate Taliban".

It turns out that the latest thinking from the White House is that we're fighting to keep Osama bin Ladin from taking a cabinet position in Afghanistan's government:

Those talks have sharpened the mission's focus to fighting Al Qaeda above all other goals and downgraded the emphasis on defeating the Taliban, a senior administration official who participated in the discussions said Thursday. This second official was authorized to talk to The Associated Press but not to be identified, because the discussions were private.

Under the evolving strategy, the official said, the U.S. would fight only to keep the Taliban from retaking control of Afghanistan's central government -- something it is now far from being capable of -- and from turning the country back into the sanctuary for Al Qaeda that it was before the 2001 invasion ousted the regime.

The official said Obama will determine how many more U.S. troops to deploy to Afghanistan based only on keeping Al Qaeda at bay.

Obama's peace prize is the sugar intended to make this bitter pill go down.