The president's speech, summarized (full text is here): 9/11 really sucked, after going to war with the people who were responsible in Afghanistan we got distracted by a sideshow in Iraq, the sideshow led us to neglecting Afghanistan, the surge in Afghanistan was a tough call but I made a promise we'd draw down forces this July, we are meeting our goals and starting this July we'll begin the process of drawing down troop levels by 10,000 by the end of this year, and by next summer we'll have taken out 30,000 troops, by 2014 the process will be complete and the Afghans are on their own, we've killed more than half of al Qaeda including "the only leader that al Qaeda had ever known," al Qaeda is still crazy and we have to keep our eye on them, Afghan Security Forces have grown by almost 100,000 troops, next may we'll have a summit in Chicago to talk to NATO and our allies about all this stuff, Pakistan is freaking me out, we have to keep looking for terrorist safe-havens in Pakistan, will will insist Pakistan keeps his promises, this has been "a difficult decade for our country," we lost 4,500 Americans in Iraq and 1,500 in Afghanistan, thousands more have been wounded, some of them returned home haunted by demons, but "we take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding," now we gotta do some nation building at home, blah blah blah American dream, blah blah blah God, the end.

Then Wolf Blitzer intoned, "A short but upbeat speech by the president." (CNN, you hire the worst people.) "We have a lot to digest here in this hour."

My stomach has a tough enough time digesting as it is. The last thing I felt like doing was digesting with Wolf Blitzer. So I called my brother, who recently got out of the Army after a tour of duty in Iraq.

He liked the speech, thought the president's plan was sound, thought people don't really understand how it works and why "it's not good to just take everyone out." He mentioned that when he was in Iraq he was part of a draw-down, so his company took over what a battalion had covered before, and after his company left a platoon took over what his company had covered. "And because of human nature, no one's going to do something unless they have to do it, so the Afghan Security Forces will be like, 'Oh shit, we have to do this,' and that's what the Afghan army will have to do."

I asked him what it's like being part of a war (Iraq) that will go down as a sideshow and a distraction from the more relevant war (Afghanistan). "Uhh, it's kinda weird, but when I got there it was kinda like, 'All right, we're already in it.' It almost doesn't matter anymore because it's like, well [the U.S.] already started it. But yeah, it's kinda weird. When I was there it wasn't like, 'Yeah, I'm directly fighting the terrorists who attacked us.' It was more like, 'Oh man, this place is fucked up and we gotta help them.'"

He went on, "But I thought the speech was good—he had objectives, he's on track to meet them, and if you're on track it's fine. Its the sporadic stuff you gotta worry about. It's easier for people to say, 'Just bring everyone back,' but then it'll go to shit, and then everyone'll be like, 'Why were we there if it was just going to go to shit?' It's just a delicate process."

Mike has been out of the army since February and hasn't found a job yet. He's going to business school in the fall, but he'd like to get a job in the meanwhile, and it's tough out there. He said, referring to the president's speech overall, "And yeah I think it's time to focus more at home. So I can get a job. That'd be great."