GUESS WHAT TODAY IS! September 21, 2012 has been proclaimed the International Day of Peace by the United Nations. Permit me to casually lean toward my wastebasket and puke! Wiping my mouth with my sleeve, I now will be presumptuous enough to re-name the day International Pie in the Sky Day.

In a world where approximately 30 conflicts are ongoing presently (go get ‘em, U.N.), a proclamation of this sort is about as valid as calling the World Series the World Series. The United States alone is involved in conflicts in multiple venues: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, to name a few. The U.S. Navy is hunting pirates in the Indian Ocean and patrolling off Iran’s coast in the Persian Gulf (somewhat euphemistically referred to as “war games”). U.S. troops are training and advising local forces in West Africa, Central Africa, and the Philippines. We are assisting in the hunt for Joseph Kony, whose brutal Lord’s Resistance Army is operating in Uganda, South Sudan, the Congo, and the Central African Republic. In fact, when Adm. William McRaven of the Special Forces Command recently appeared before the Senate, he admitted that U.S. special operations forces are engaged in “more than 100 countries worldwide.”

Did I hear a sharp intake of disgusted breath?

Perhaps it makes sense that the country with the most guns per capita on the planet has become the world’s policeman, targeting unfriendly ideologues and protecting friendly ones, taking out the Libyan brute, whom nobody liked anyway, but looking the other way while the Syrian brute, who has powerful allies in Russian and China, murders his own people.

So feel free to celebrate this International Day of Peace if you are an optimistic sort. And don’t hold your breath waiting for either Obama or Romney to talk about our ongoing conflicts, notwithstanding that 67% of the American people think the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting. Our next celebration will be that early Tuesday in November called Pretend We Live in a Democracy Day.